Kuchuk Leonid was a famous Belarusian and Soviet footballer in the past. Now he is known as a coach. And he is the father of Alexei Kuchuk. A 30-year-old footballer completed his career as a field player two years ago and is now training the Belarusian Krumkachy-d team. However, I would like to pay attention to Kuchuk Sr.
early years
Leonid was born in Minsk on August 27, 1959. His first club was the local “Torpedo”, where he studied the basics of football art. At the age of twenty, he moved to Minsk Dynamo. He was even included in the composition of the players for the USSR championship, but Leonid Kuchuk never played a single match.
The young defender did not stop at Dynamo, and moved to Gomselmash. This club from Gomel played in the Second League, but in its composition a football player could gain experience, since he was given enough playing time. He spent eight years in the team, after which he moved to Vitebsk for two seasons, for which he played 101 matches and even scored one goal. In 1990, he served as a coach. Then he played two seasons for FC Molodechno, the same for FC Attack, and in 1998, having played three matches for Dynamo 93, he decided to hang his boots on a nail.
Start of coaching
After the completion of his playing career, Kuchuk Leonid immediately took Dynamo 93 under his leadership. True, only two games. And then, their club lost with a total score of 0: 8. So for a long time he did not stay there, and immediately moved to Molodechno. With a club from the city of the same name, success was also not achieved, since it took 14th place in the ranking of the Championship according to its results.
As a result, Leonid Kuchuk decided to stop coaching. But five years later, the football world heard about it again. It turned out that the coach will enter the staff of Lokomotiv. He worked there for a year, after which for a long time (6 years, to be more precise) he moved to Sheriff from Tiraspol (Republic of Moldova). Together with this club Kuchuk Leonid Stanislavovich achieved significant success and many titles. He even managed to bring the “Sheriff” to the Europa League and even the Champions League. Moreover, in 2007 the team from Tiraspol was included in the list of clubs that did not suffer a single defeat in a season. For this, the Spanish edition of Don Balon awarded the Sheriff with an appropriate prize.
Further years
In 2010, Leonid became the head coach of Salute from Belgorod. In the first match, the club defeated the Sochi "Pearl". But still, the season was not very successful, so Kuchuk resigned at the end of the season.
In 2011, he began coaching the Kiev Arsenal. He managed to lead the team to participate in European cups. At first, everything went well, but at the end of 2012 the club lost two major sponsors, therefore, in order to save money, it was decided to terminate the contracts with five players and a coach.
Kuban and Lokomotiv
In 2013, Kuchuk returned to Russia. At first he coached the Krasnodar Kuban. Then he became known as the coach of Lokomotiv. In 2014, he returned to Kuban again. The fact is that on September 15 he was suspended from work at Lokomotiv. And, according to the idea, they should have paid compensation. But this did not happen - the club refused. And this is despite the fact that under the leadership of Kuchuk Lokomotiv won the bronze medal in the Premier League for the first time since 2006. Leonid filed a lawsuit, providing video evidence - the record shows how the security does not let him into training. Olga Smorodskaya, president of the club, denied the veracity of this fact. As a result, Leonid solved the problem by filing a complaint with the RFU and demanding compensation. Lokomotiv tried to challenge the decision, but the Lausanne Sports Court of Arbitration rejected the club's appeal. As a result, Leonid was compensated EUR 1,800,000.
But, nevertheless, Kuchuk said in an interview that while working in these two clubs, including Lokomotiv, he had the opportunity to train very strong players. His foreign players were especially impressive - the Croatian Vedran Chorluka and the Frenchman Lassana Diarra. Kuchuk said that such players are a real decoration of the Championship.