Nikita Simonyan

Simonyan in 2011

Nikita Simonyan Pavlovich (Russian: Никита Павлович Симонян; born October 12, 1926 in Armavir, Soviet Union ) is a retired Russian football player and coach of Armenian descent. Among his greatest successes as a player were four Soviet football championships with Spartak Moscow (1952, 1953, 1956, 1958), as a coach, he was able to Spartak Moscow (1962, 1969) as well as with Ararat Yerevan (1973 ), total win three championships.

Life and career

As a player

Nikita Simonyan was born Mkrtytsch Simonyan in an Armenian family in southern Russia Armavir. The football games began the striker for Dinamo Sukhumi Abkhazian Club under coach Shota Lominadze. From there he moved Krylia Sovetov Moscow in 1946, until ultimately was the Soviet record champions Spartak Moscow attention to him. In 1949 moved to Spartak Simonyan and thus also in the highest Soviet League, where he was to remain until his career end. By 1959, he completed a total of 213 league games for the Muscovites, in which he scored 133 goals. 133 goals are still simplistic internal record.

With Spartak he won four league titles and two times the Soviet football trophy. 1954 Simonyan was also convened for the first time in the Soviet national team. In the Summer Olympics 1956 Simonyan won with the national team, even the gold medal in football. The World Cup finals in 1958 was not nearly successful for him. Already in the quarterfinals, he failed with the national team at the eventual finalists Sweden when he as well as his colleague Sergei Salnikow, Anatoli Ilyin, Victor Zarjow and Alexander Ivanov in the forward line did not score and the game after goals from Kurt Hamrin and Agne Simonsson with a 0 ended :2- defeat.

In the same year was after 20 internationals Simonjans National team career, in 1959 he finished his club career as a player.

As a coach

As early as 1960 he began to work as a coach for his old club Spartak. In 1962 he took the championship for the first time as a coach to Moscow in 1963 and 1965, the Soviet football trophy. 1965 ended his involvement with Spartak, but Simonyan was in 1967 again bound by the Brussels residents. In his second term, he could once again win the championship (1969 ), as well as the Cup (1971). 1972 his appointment ended at Spartak.

In the season of 1973 he was engaged by Ararat Yerevan as the new coach. In his first year he could enter with the Armenians at that time the biggest success in club history: The Soviet double, consisting of titles and winning the Cup. This was the only time that a club from Armenia won the Soviet football championship. By 1974 the club left Simonyan from Yerevan, however, again.

From 1977 to 1978 he was the coach of the Soviet national football team, from 1980 to 1981, he coached Chernomorets Odessa.

From 1984 to 1985 he was again won by Ararat Yerevan as a coach.

In 2000 he received the FIFA Order of Merit, the highest award of the World Football Association FIFA. 2009-2010, and for a time in 2012 Simonyan was president of the Russian Football Union. 2011 awarded him the Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan of Armenia the Medal of Honor.