USSR next – their was no doubt her football was ascending and 1981 was judged positively on both club and national team level: Dinamo (Tbilisi) won the Cup Winners Cup and team USSR qualified for the 1982 World Cup finals for the first time since 1969. Retrospectively, the most important thing was that all bright players of the 1980s were already impressive at home, if not yet famous abroad. However, international ranking was not showing big improvement: the UEFA club ranking for 1980-81 placed USSR 8th, just above Bulgaria, and the more important 5-year ranking placed the Soviets also 8th – the last country having the right to use 3 teams in the next UEFA Cup tournament: above Italy, but behind DDR. At home, the picture was strangely mixed. The Third Division football was judged improving at last – it was noticed that more players interested the top clubs than before. On the negative side, more talent meant only that the big clubs quickly snatched the emerging talent during the season and the smaller clubs of third division were in the position of Sisyphus, having to start new teams at the very moment they thought they managed to build a good team. The rest was familiar problem without solution: there was old great divide, the Ural mountains. East of them the quality of football rapidly decreased. Better football was played West, in the European parts of USSR. The vast Third Division was divided into 9 zones, the winners of each went to play qualification for three promotional spots and at the end Daugava (Riga), Dinamo (Kirov), and Rotor (Volgograd) earned promotion. All newcomers located West of Ural. It was not foreseen, but this year Rotor started its journey up to eventually becoming one of the strongest Soviet teams of the 1980s.
Second Division was only criticized, as every year before: whatever good was happening was not in the second level of Soviet football. Old, painfully familiar problems – the quality was low, most teams were not interested in anything but keeping a place in the Second Division, no more than 3 clubs wanting to go up. The league was to be reduced from 24 to 22 teams for the next season, one more attempt to force disinterested clubs into more competitive attitude. So 5 teams were going down – since most of the league was fairly equal, the championship was largely preoccupied with escaping relegation: 4 teams finished with 40 points, one with 41, 7 with 44 – 15 clubs mostly tried to stay away from the last 5 places. At the end Traktor, Dinamo, Kuzbass, Spartak (Ordzhonokidze), and Prykarpatye went down. SKA (Khabarovsk) and Buston (Dzhizak) survived on better goal-difference. Some clubs were heavily criticized for complete lack of ambition – particularly Karpaty (Lvov) and SKA (Odessa) – and generally it was observed, that there was no really up and coming team, mediocrity ruled.
Kolos (Nikopol) was among the typical ‘disinterested’ clubs – they finished 5th, not bad at all for a relatively new member of the league, but they did not catch the eye of the observers. May be the specialists were wrong in their case – eventually Kolos moved up.
Three clubs competed for the two promotional spots: Lokomotiv (Moscow), Torpedo (Kutaisi), and Metallist (Kharkov). Lokomotiv lost the race, finishing 3rd with 54 points, but it was the only team seen as improving and trying to build serious squad.
With 56 points Torpedo (Kutaisi) took 2nd place and was promoted.
Once again going to play top league football: standing from left: M. Tzivtzivadze – coach, M. Kvernadze, D. Dardzhania, T. Tznobiladze, G. Koridze, V. Merechko, M. Machaidze, G. Gvadzabia, A. Kantaria, V. Shvelia, Sh. Okropirashvili – captain, G. Sardia – assistant coach.
Crouching: G. Panchulidze, R. Burkadze, D. Kviria, R. Pestvenidze – assistant coach, G. Gabichvadze, G. Machaidze, L. Agaronov, N. Meskhia.
Well done, but.. there was no much enthusiasm even in the club. When Shota Okropirashvili introduced his team in the the ‘Football-Hockey’ weekly, he praised the club’s bus driver and was very reserved about his teammates. Practically only the brothers Gocha and Manuchar Machaidze were noted – the former stars of Dinamo (Tbilisi) were getting too old, however. Not much for a team going to play first division football. Outside observers were even more critical: the club was accused of lacking sufficient youth system and practically not producing talented players. To a point, it was true and part of huge problem: clubs like Torpedo were more or less just suppliers to bigger clubs – Dinamo (Tbilisi) in this case. Thus, they hardly had big interest in producing young stars – they would be taken away immediately. Probably replaced by no longer needed veterans, may be not… as it was, having the Machaidze brothers was just enough to win promotion. The next season was pain in the ass already… it was obvious that to survive in the first division a new team had to be recruited.
The champions of Second Division were generally judged as steady – at the end the even, constant form, elevated them above the rest, 6 points ahead of Torpedo (Kutaisi). Metallist (Kharkov) won, but was never seen as dominant.
The champions of Second Division: standing from left: N. Aleshin – assistant coach, V. Bulgakov – assistant coach, R. Potochnyak – captain, A. Dovby, S. Malko, Yu. Tzymbalyuk, Yu. Sivukha, V. Kamarzaev, I. Ledney, A. Kossolapov, E. Lemeshko – coach, A. Zaslavsky – administrator.
First row: S. Sapeshko, S. Bernikov, N. Leonov, L. Saakov, L. Tkachenko, A. Gorbik, V. Kryachko, V. Linke, V. Suslo.
Well, the lost boys were coming back – Metallist was first-league member once upon a time: 18 years ago. After that they sunk into complete obscurity, spending time in third division, from which they emerged just recently. Going up was the positive news. The only positive news… the champions were judged with caution, even critically. Compared to Torpedo (Kutaisi), they had no famous player at all. Just a few players had experience with top level football – the captain Rostislav Potochnyak most of all, but never played for a big club and was already 33-years old. A key veteran – the striker Nodar Bachiashvili – missed a lot from the season, because of injuries. Clearly his days were over. To a point, Metallist benefited from sinking into obscurity – the coach Lemeshko was able to build reliable squad, without worrying that bigger clubs would steal his players. That was all too familiar problem for smaller clubs and painful examples were right in the face: Zarya (Voroshilovgrad) lost almost a whole generation of players after winning the Soviet title in 1972 – the result was sinking into the middle of second division. Karpaty (Lvov) seemingly lost any ambition for something higher than mid-table second league place, tired from losing players. Metallist, having no particularly bright youngsters, avoided losses and built a good team, which impressed observers, when they came back to second division. But.. the team aged and now, when they were promoted, they were seen as too old. That is, with little chances to stay in first division, for Metallist had to start rebuilding at this very time. On the surface, that was true – but the grim expectations were proved wrong. For the moment, though, neither of the promoted clubs appeared to be good news.