This Saturday marks the 55th birthday of the former forward of Moscow's "Dynamo" Dmitry Cheryshev.
Dmitry Nikolaevich was born on May 11, 1969, in Nizhny Novgorod, where he began playing football at the school of the local "Torpedo". His adult career started with performances for the Dzerzhinsk "Khimik" and Nizhny Novgorod "Locomotive".
In the winter of 1993, he was invited to "Dynamo" by Valery Gazzaev, and after spending some time adapting, Cheryshev distinguished himself by scoring 7 times in the last 7 rounds of the championship. A year later, he was already scoring against Madrid's "Real" in the UEFA Cup, and among the fans, he earned the nickname "elektrichka" (commuter train) for his insane speed.
He also possessed excellent ball control technique, a good burst of speed, and could evade defenders at high velocity. Cheryshev had a well-placed shot and often threatened the goal from outside the penalty area. It was precisely such a shot at the "Spartak" goal that led the white-and-blues to the final of the Russian Cup in 1995. Unfortunately, an injury prevented him from playing in the triumphant match against "Rotor".
The 1996 season was the best in his Dynamo career – he earned the title of the third top scorer of the Russian championship with 17 goals and moved to Spain. In total, he scored 41 goals in 128 matches for Dynamo (5th place in the club's Russian history), as well as silver and bronze medals in the Russian championship.
In Spain, Cheryshev played for 7 seasons, mainly for Sporting Gijón, where he earned the nickname "Russian bullet" thanks to his speed. After ending his career, he became a coach and for several years trained youth teams of Real Madrid, where his son Denis also played, who later made it to the main team and the Russian national team.
In the early 2010s, he returned to Russia, where he coached the Nizhny Novgorod team "Volga" and the youth team of "Zenit". In the 2015/16 season, he was part of Unai Emery's coaching staff at Sevilla, which won the Europa League. Later, he managed "Mordovia", "Nizhny Novgorod" and "Santa Coloma" from Andorra, and is now the head coach of the Yaroslavl team "Shinnik".