Oleg Blokhin (Ukraine)

Hero status throughout Ukraine would hardly be a new experience for national coach Blokhin, a man already feted in his homeland for his achievements as a player with Dynamo Kiev. Crowned league champion of the former USSR seven times, he also picked up a pair of European Cup Winners’ Cups, in 1975 against Ferencvaros of Hungary and in 1986 against Spain’s Atletico Madrid. The fact that Dynamo were one of the continent’s leading sides at the time had a lot to do with their top striker Blokhin, who found the net in both European finals in typically unerring fashion.

His remarkable displays at stadiums all over Europe also earned him the ultimate individual reward in 1975, when he was named European Footballer of the Year. During his long career he sparkled both for club and country, scoring 211 goals in 432 Soviet league games, as well as 42 times in 112 games for the USSR.

Great players do not necessarily make good coaches, but Blokhin’s transition into management has been seamless. When he took the reins of the national side at the start of their 2006 WC qualification campaign, the doom-mongers predicted that guiding Ukraine out of a stereotypical ‘group of death’ would be virtually impossible.