Zakharov Igor is a former Soviet and Russianfootball player, as well as a former Russian football referee. He was only fifty years old, but he has already completed his professional career as a player and a judge. When Igor Zakharov went on the field, he acted as a defender.
Carier start
Igor Zakharov was born on June 8, 1966 in the city.Kaluga in the USSR, where he began to get involved in football, enrolling at a young age at a football school and starting to play sports there. As a result, he replaced several football academies, the last of which was the academy at the Zorky club in the city of Krasnogorsk. It was there that he spent the remnants of his youth and in 1984 signed a professional contract with the club when he was eighteen years old. However, there he spent only one season, having played 22 matches. Already in 1985, Igor Zakharov moved to the SKA Khabarovsk, where he was delayed for quite some time.
Player's career
Igor Zakharov showed himself in SKA with the besthand, rather quickly becoming one of the key players in the defensive line. He spent five years at the club, playing for him 151 matches - it was the longest period in one club for a player. Here he felt better, but in 1990 he changed his club registration, moving to “Ocean”, based in Nakhodka. He played 35 matches in the first season, scoring a debut goal in his professional career. However, since the next season, the overall situation has changed a bit - the USSR championship no longer existed, and Okean began to play in the Russian championship. During the following year, the footballer played another 45 matches, scoring two goals, and then moved to Luch, where he spent another season. There he entered the field 18 times, scored two goals, and in the summer of 1994 he moved to Krylia Sovetov. There he played 19 more matches, distinguished himself with three goals, after which in 1995 he reached the very peak, signing a contract with Zenit St. Petersburg. There he played 17 more matches, scored one goal, but did not stay for long - in the same year Igor Zakharov moved to Gazovik-Gazprom, which he played for over a year and a half. At his own expense, he recorded another 47 games in the new club and three goals. In 1997, the defender joined the last club in his career - Krasnodar "Kuban". There he played 11 more matches, scored another goal, and then announced that he was completing his professional career as a footballer, although at that time he was only 31 years old.
Beginning career arbiter
However, Zakharov was not going to leave football.He decided to become an arbitrator and began to judge at a semi-professional level, while working on obtaining a professional license. Within three years, he got everything he needed to become a full-fledged referee, and in 2000, he sued his first match in the Second Division. During the year he gained enough experience and in 2001 he was admitted to the First Division of Russia. For two years, he judged the games of the First Division, until he received the right to become a full arbiter in his country. In 2003, he scored his first match at the highest level, having entered the field in a game between Spartak-Alania and his former club, Wings of the Soviets. Since then, he managed to sue a lot of matches of the Russian Premier League, and in 2005 got a FIFA license.
Memorable moments
Igor Zakharov is a far from ordinary judge, andcertainly not ordinary. He was remembered by many fans for his unusual behavior in some moments, and sometimes not from the best side. For example, in one match, coaches and players suspected that he was drunk on the field, but Zakharov refused to pass the test, citing a number of factors. As a result, that episode ended up harmless for him, and so far no one knows whether the referee drank before the match, or just the representatives of one of the teams took offense at him. I also remember the moment when Zakharov showed a yellow card at all not to the player, but to the dog that ran out onto the field during the match. And, of course, the fans will long remember the 2006 episode, when during the match between the clubs Moscow and Dynamo goalkeeper Sergei Ovchinnikov lost patience and grabbed the referee for a T-shirt, using foul language and cursing him and trying to prove that he had taken the wrong judge decision. As a result, this incident led to a lengthy disqualification of the country's once top goalkeeper, Ovchinnikov, who decided to end his career as a footballer, without waiting for the opportunity to enter the field again. It is also worth noting that in 2008, Igor Zakharov was named the best arbiter in the country. Moscow, St. Petersburg, Krasnodar - he managed to play in many Russian cities, and he carried out judicial activity everywhere. But what made the referee finish his career so early?
Completion of career
Игорь Захаров в 2009 объявил о завершении career, although he was only 43 years old. What is the reason? Many assumed that he could not bear the bad attitude towards himself, as many coaches tried in every possible way to prove his lack of professionalism and incompetence on the field. However, Zakharov himself said that the reason for the completion of his career as an arbitrator was solely his health condition. It turns out that he had been suffering from back pain for several years, so in 2009 he decided to leave the sport, as he could not continue to act on the field for one and a half hours at the same level.
