Yuri Gavrilov


Yuri Vasilyevich Gavrilov is a Russian football manager and a former midfielder who played for Dynamo Moscow and Spartak Moscow.
He made 46 appearances for the Soviet Union national football team and scored 10 goals. He also competed for the Soviet Union at the 1980 Summer Olympics and the 1982 FIFA World Cup in Spain. His creative skills are immortalized by Konstantin Beskov's famous phrase "If you don't know what to do with the ball, pass it to Gavrilov". Yuri Gavrilov has his own football school in Moscow called SC Svyatogor.

Career

Gavrilov's football career started in Iskra Moscow football school when he was 7. He was invited by school director who saw Yury playing with other kids on the Iskra stadium. When he was 19, Konstantin Beskov took him to Dinamo Moscow from Iskra amateur team. But there was an expensive number of quality players in 1970s Dinamo, and Gavrilov couldn't find a permanent place in Dinamo squad.
Gavrilov followed Konstantin Beskov into Spartak Moscow in 1977. Gavrilov achieved the key playmaker role in new Spartak Moscow team built up by Beskov. After being winger in Dinamo, Gavrilov's new role in Spartak team let him show his best abilities and proved himself one of the all-time best Soviet football creative mid-fielders.
While he made a lot of good passes, he scored a lot of goals as well. Gavrilov was Soviet Top League top goal-scorer twice, scored 140 times during his career.
During his professional career Gavrilov played also for the Finnish club Porin Pallotoverit and Moldovan club FC Agro Chişinău.
In 2001 Gavrilov took charge of the DR Congo national football team for one game. He coached DR Congo in the 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification match against Ivory Coast.