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CHAMPIONS
LEAGUE
"All of a sudden, the sport was accused of encouraging the bourgeoisie and five mem
bers of Spartak were arrested and taken through an official inquiry. All statements against
us were false. They accused us of being terrorists and having spread anti-
Russian propaganda and even if they couldn't prove anything, the chairman of the club
was executed. The rest of us were sentenced to ten years' prison and later sent to Siberia.
Maybe it saved my life that the son of Stalin was a horse rider with Spartak like my daugh
ter. I don't know."
"But what helped me to survive those ten years in that Siberian labour camp was being in
a pretty good shape and, not least, that I had been a very good footballer. The chief of
the camp was a football-suppporter and he asked me to organize training regularly, to
arrange an internal tournament and to build a team that could defeat teams from other
similar camps."
The Lenin Order which he received as the athlete ever was taken away from Nikolai
Starostin but returned to him when he was rehabilitated during the destalinization, intro
duced by Stalin's successor Nikita Khrusjtjov in the middle of the 1950s.
In 1947 Nikolai Starostin returned to freedom and under his astute leadership Spartak
became a great club with skillful attack-minded players demonstrating a charming style
which was atypical in Russian football. Everywhere around the world they invited Spartak,
now described as "The Globetrotters from Moscow". In the 1950s Spartak won the
national championship three times and the Olympic Final in Melbourne in 1956 eight play
ers from Spartak helped Sovjet Union to defeat Yugoslavia 1 -0. One of those players was
the wing half and captain, the elegant and artistic Igor Netto, described by Nikolai
Starostin as Spartak's best player ever.
Speaking about Spartak Moscow, Nikolai Starostin always looked happy, and so he did
every time he saw Karl-Heinz Heimann, the former long-serving chief editor of "Kicker
Sportmagazin" and now a regular columnist with the German magazine. Even if Nikolai
Starostin was open and friendly to everybody, he respected the old Russian saying: "One
old friend is better than two new ones."
"In 1945, when I was 20, the Russians took me as a prisoner of war" Karl-Heinz Heimann
tells. "But I was determined never to give up the hope of returning to my country one day.
That attitude and my involvement in sport did help me. I got confirmed that sport elimina
tes ideological, political and religious differences,"
"The Russians became my friends and I learnt their language" Karl-Heinz Heimann conti
nues. "And when I was released, in November 1949, I just wanted to see a Russian club
before returning home. I went to Spartak and the first person I met was Nikolai Starostin."
Nikolai Starostin is described by Karl-Heinz Heimann as one of the all time great perso
nalities within the game. Oleg Romantsev, a pupil of Nikolai Starostin as a player as well
as a coach, calls him a genius. But it is the common impression of everyone that this lit
tle man is a great person and that no football enthusiast will ever be the same after having
met him.
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