Vasyl Rats, ‘double agent’

A Vasyl Rats (03-25-1961), the oldest of the 15 footballers of First division born in the current Ukrainealthough he really grew up and trained in the Soviet Union (USSR), they gave him the choice at the beginning of 1989 between signing a three-year contract with the Glasgow Rangers or medium, with the possibility of two others, in the Spanish. The player, bastion of a Dynamo Kyiv in which he had been a decade, he did not hesitate. “The sun is better than Barcelona that the rain of Scotlandhe proclaimed. And to Sarrià who left, along with his wife, pregnant with their first child.

The parakeet story of this footballer, today beaten like so many others by the war, promised for that initial declaration of principles. But, beyond the sun, he could take little else at Espanyol. In an endless negotiation, he did not debut until April 8 and, although from that first moment he played in all the games (11) the 90 minutes –120 in the case of the last and most fateful–, he could not debut that the team of Xavier Clement would descend to Second division. His teammates say that he did not accept the outcome of the promotion against him with too much pain Mallorca. But even so, she almost stayed. And to sign up for a blacklist.

Rats had not only been the owner of the left-handed flank of Dynamo Kiev -champion of the Recopa of 1986 against the Atletico Madridand of the League Soviet in 1985, 1986 and later in 1990–, but also from the USSR. World Cup in Mexico’86where he scored a great goal against France (I would tie the also experienced Luis Fernandez), and runner-up in the European Championship of 1988 – after the Orange from Van Basten– under the baton of Valeri Lobanovskithe legendary coach had warned him, when he informed him that he would make the leap to Espanyol, that he was going to need him present in his country throughout the year prior to the world Cup from 1990.

In these that, despite the decline, from the noble floor of Sarrià they tested him to execute a purchase option until June 1991, for 50 million pesetas (about 300,000 euros) for Dinamo, with his own apartment and car for him. And the possibility, on the rebound, that his son was born in sunny Barcelona. Rats thought about it a lot, but finally he rejected the proposal due to the possibility that in the USSR he would be considered a “traitor” and this, in addition, could affect his family still living in Kiev.

The ‘flight’ of ‘Laszlo’ with a thrombosis

Back at Dinamo, Rats played the Italy World Cup, with which he closed a career of 47 caps and four goals. It would be very shortly after, on the eve of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when the need to leave the country arose again. “My wife would go to the store for milk, but if she was half an hour late, most of the food was already gone. Honestly, she only thought of going somewhere else, ”she confessed, years later, in an interview.

And that’s how it came, at the end of 1990, a round opportunity. The option to land on the Ferencvaros Hungarian, a country with which he was united by roots – he was born in Fanhykovovery close to the border with Romania and Hungary, and part of his family came from Magyar lands. But it wasn’t easy for him either. the afternoon of the New Years Eve, after training in Kiev, he felt unwell. Suddenly, the right side of his body was unresponsive. A virus had caused a thrombosis that was dealt with in secret, so that it would not reach the ears of Ferencvaros, with whom he was able to sign –once fully recovered– a couple of months later.

already installed in Budapest even after his retirement, in 1993, precisely because of the consequences of that thrombosis, the former Espanyol player adapted his name to Hungarian, Flagworked in a plastics company until he founded his own, Rats and sons, basically dedicated to acting as intermediaries between Hungarian and Ukrainian businessmen. But not for that she abandoned football.

Koncha-Zaspa, from luxury to abandonment

He started as an assistant at Ferencvaros in the 1996-97 season, and a decade later he returned to his native country to join the coaching staff of Dynamo Kiev. Another experience in the neighbor Football Club Obolon-Brovarin 2011, was the last before he left the bench for health reasons.

decorated as Honorable Master of Sports by the USSR in 1986 and by the president of Ukraine with the Order of Merit in 2016, after collaborating in children’s tournaments, especially in his native region, in the months prior to the invasion by the Russia from Vladimir Putin Vasyl Rats still lived in the suburb of Koncha-Zaspa, south of Kiev, where the sports city of Dinamo is located, and news these days for the shocking images of its abandoned mansions. There he loses track a few weeks before his 61st birthday, with the wish that he can celebrate them in peace.