“Slutsk” is a like a warm-hearted Soviet movie. Some words about «Slutsk» from within

“Slutsk” is beloved all over the world: Leonid Slutsky (russian coach) helps them with the formation for the match, a fan from New York wrote a song, their main fan club is based in Australia (almost seven thousand Facebook subscribers). The club was lucky, now its matches are one of the few football shows on the planet, and its name is in tune with the English "slut" - it’s more fun to support it than for “Vitebsk” or “Energetik-BSU” , so the fans got load of memes about the club from the town for 60 thousand inhabitants.

“Slutsk” (managed not by Leonid Slutsky, but coach Vitaliy Pavlov) is in second place in the Belarusian championship, has already launched an English version of Facebook, and messages and voice messages in foreign languages ​​are sent to its players every day.

“Attention from all around the world,” says midfielder Yegor Semenov. - Before each match, a guy from Poland writes to me, sends motivational messages in broken Russian: “Come on, come on,” “Break the next one.” If I didn't play - the fans try to find out what had happened. I answer everyone in English, trying to translate. Once I began to correspond with a fan from Germany, he recorded voice in German, I replied: “Thank you very much, I don’t understand anything.” =)

“Now I really bliss out of what is happening,” rejoices 35-year-old defender Vitaly Trubilo. - I couldn't imagine that at the end of our career we would get so much attention. Yesterday I talked with the sports channel of Israel, at home matches an anthem is played, which was written by a fan from the USA and my brother made a cover in Russian. I enter the pitch listening to the voice of a family one. Fantastic!"

And really fantastic! We talked with the players of "Slutsk" about life, Slutsk and football - it turned out warm-hearted.

The pipes of the sugar factory as a window view from the rooms at the base, players make fun of their cars, fans from around the world help the club

The players themselves call “Slutsk” a small club from a small town with 60 thousand inhabitants, where there is a cafe, several shops and a museum of belts. According to the local goalkeeper Ilya Branovets, Slutsk is not a resort, but there are bright sides: the city is located in the center of the country, from where it is convenient to travel for entertainment to Minsk (100 km) or Salihorsk (30 km).

Salaries in "Slutsk" are lower than in large Belarusian clubs such as BATE, Soligorsk Shakhtar and Brest Dynamo, players do not disclose the amount, but do not hide that they live modestly, “without a crown on their heads” and laugh at the difference between them and football players richer.

“My Volvo car has a "kind of aerographics" - a rust on the door,” laughs midfielder Yegor Semenov. - After defeating the Soligorsk Shakhtar, we stopped at a gas station on the road to Minsk and met our rivals. We drove Kia Solaris of one of our partners. They drive Porsche Cayenne. "It's good we are not in your Volvo," the players joked.

The club says that it lives with debts, but looks for sponsors and launched a crowdfunding campaign, opening charity accounts in four currencies: Belarusian and Russian rubles, dollars and euros. Those who donate money will receive “a gift from the available attributes (from an autograph card to a souvenir T-shirt with autographs of football players), depending on the amount”.

Local footballers (they are minority) live at home, and the rest stay on the base, on the second floor of the sugar factory dormitory allocated for them (“Every day in Slutsk I see pipes,” says Vitaliy Trubilo (note - pipes in Russian is "Trubi"). On the third floor - reserve team. On the fourth - workers with whom the players almost do not intersect. On the football floor there is a laundry room, a recovery room for massage, a kitchen where players can cook something. The nearby restaurant serves dinner and lunch.

“It's not all-you-can-eat buffet,” explains midfielder Yuri Kozlov. “They cook what the doctors ordered: pasta with chicken and other sports dishes. Near the base there is an football pitch with artificial turf, a bathhouse, barrels for procedures, and the central stadium with a gym is in five minutes drive by a club minibus. The rooms at the base are like in a hotel. We live in two or three. The room has a TV, fridge, a poster and the coat of arms of Slutsk.”

The reserve goalkeeper of "Slutsk" was brought up by his grandmother (cooked for him pancakes with cottage cheese and apples), fans call him a legend

Ilya Branovets, 30 years old (nine of them playing in Slutsk), this season played four games for reserve team

- We live in an apartment, but there is enough inner suburbs in the city, there are a lot of villages around Slutsk - you can go out into the countryside, sit on the Sluch River, make barbecue or go fishing.

Fans jokingly call me a legend, because I've been playing for a very long time for "Slutsk": they can stop me on the street and ask about club affairs - I never refuse to have a talk. An old lady, a big supporter lives in my area; she loves to repeat meeting me: “You're such a fine fellow, from a simple family.”

- Tell us about the family.

- My grandmother Elena Grigoryevna (she is 72 years old) also loves football, even now attends all of our games, it happens that she turns on any match at home on TV and calls: “Ilya, are you watching?”

I am from the village of Vetka, 20 kilometers from Slutsk, my elder sister and I were raised by grandparents: my parents divorced, my mother died, from the third grade (note - approx. 9-10 years old) we lived with my grandmother in an apartment in Slutsk, I was interested in drawing, then switched to football. My grandmother was catching up my sport uniform, cooked her special dish for me - pancakes with apple and cottage cheese. Very tasty! We had a cat - Kuzya: he only ate meat, we fed him up to 14 kilograms, but one day did not manage to cross the road and was run over...

Grandfather died when I was in 10th grade (note - 16-17 years old).

Father lives in the village - sometimes I visit him, there are no offenses left.

Now we don’t go anywhere and don’t travel, with my wife and child we walk in the yard, play checkers, chess and hide and seek, Pubg Mobile. In this game you and your team parachute, collect weapons, the one who survives wins.

We have a break in the championship in winter, it’s not possible to have vacations in the summer, so I let go my wife and child to the sea - to Turkey or Cyprus. But this year we haven’t gone anywhere - we are waiting for an addition to the family.

He left football and entrucked diapers, now - the best assistant in "Slutsk"

Yuri Kozlov, 28 years old, midfielder, 1 + 3 in six games this season

- Usually, during the season, I drive home to Minsk on my Mitsubishi Outlander a couple of times a week - to meet with my family, sit with friends in the apartment and play playstation, watch movies and go to the cafe. But now - because of the virus - I’m sitting in Slutsk, I’m not going out anywhere, playing poker with the guys, I can sleep in the afternoon and watch TV. I love detective stories, read "The Lewis Man" by Peter May, watch a series about Jordan on Netflix.

Since childhood, I've been professionally involved in football; in 2011, I went on loan to "Slonim", playing in the second league of Belarus. We played on very poor pitches far from Minsk, they delayed salaries for two months, I didn’t want such football, and decided to stop suffering. With the bonus then it turned out 700-800 dollars a month - the same money I could get at another job closer to home. At first, I received $ 500 as a loader of car tools, unloaded wagons, and transferred the goods to the client. At first, my back and arms ached, but two weeks later I got involved.

Then I loaded shampoos, diapers and became a storekeeper of orthopedic mattresses, and in my second year of work I returned to the amateur level in the "Luch" team, which reached the Premier League (and then the club teamed up with the "Mogilev Dnipro"), raised a salary of 300 dollars to the same 700 -800, so I didn’t have to combine the job and football anymore.

In “Slutsk” the conditions are better - I feel very comfortable. We constantly laugh with the teammates - recently cack ourselves laughing on Serdyuk, who flew into the billboard with his foot. We watch videos and all sorts of memes.

Slutsk defender played in the Czech Republic, rode a BMW, now rushes off-road on a tractor and self-isolates while fishing

Vitaly Trubilo, 35, spent seven seasons in the Czech Premier League, 1 assists in 7 games this season

- I played in "Bohemians 1905", the native club of that same Panenka. He is an honorary president, talked to us at the games, nostalgic thoughts emanated from him that they used to play better and football was generally different.

I live at the base in Slutsk. I see no reason to bring my family from Minsk: I go home two or three times a week, and my wife will be bored in Slutsk after Petersburg (she is from there). We met on the Internet: I played in "Slavia" football club, invited her on an excursion to Prague, we went out, she began visiting me in Prague, and so it all started.

During my career I’ve already played enough cards and playstation, so in my free time I go fishing, where I isolate myself and breathe fresh air. Three years ago I went fishing for the first time, and since then I can’t tear myself away, even transported all the equipment to Slutsk, it is kept in the warehouse at the base, then I load it into the car and go to the Salihorsk water reservoir.

I catch it on a feeder (a fishing rod with a reel, where not a bait but a whole feeder hangs on a fishing line), I take a folding chair and throw the fishing rod at 50-60 meters. I buy a special bait from cookies, bran, corn and a mixture of biscuit, which the fish seem to like. Apparently, the fish loves it, because it comes.

Predators (perch and pike perch) are caught on a spinning rod, but I like peaceful white fish more: bream, roach and silver bream. Sometimes I let it go, sometimes I take it, I give a couple of fish to my cousin or our captain Igor Bobko - they salt it and dry.

For me, fishing is a leisure interest and communication with nature, especially in hard-to-reach places where there are no people, no sounds of cars. I like to go to the grandmother in the village on the Pripyat River - there is no radiation in that part, if you could see how pure the water is there, you would immediately understand that it is safe there. I get to these wild places on a tractor-motoblock: I drive along ditches and forests, I smile, it is very romantic.

Vitaly Trubilo fishing

- Holy mackerel, until recently I lived in Prague! I walked around taffety dressed, liked to buy beautiful clothes and cars (I had BMW 5 series), and now I’m climbing into wild impassable places. I drive Volkswagen Golf GTI - it has 260 horses, but in Minsk at the usual time I can ride a trolley bus or shuttle van. I’m not ashamed- there is no crown on my head.

Now in social networks everyone writes “hello” and “how are you”, asking for a game uniform, but I don’t have a single "Slutsk" T-shirt: our team has a few of them, when we finish the season, we give them to reserve team.

"Thank God they didn’t beat us." "Brazilian" Semenov from the video of Leonid Slutsky at the age of 19 worked as a physical education teacher and was popular among the eighth-grade girls, helped his father in hosting weddings

Egor Semenov, 32 years old, midfielder, 1 goal in 7 games this season, Leonid Slutsky called him a "Brazilian"

- I played football since childhood, but the healthcare was such that no one examined me properly, at the age of 18 health problems were revealed, and I had to take a break. I studied extramural in physical education and went to work at school as a physical education teacher, played in amateur leagues, played in the lower leagues - it turned out that I was healthy like a bull and I returned to football.

In the second year of university at the age of 19 I got a job in school - in those years experimental 12 classes were introduced (note - a short-time experiment in Belarus education system, instead of 11 years school education was prolongated to 12), where adult children, my peers, who could smoke before the lessons on the porch, studied. There was a hockey class at the school (there was an ice arena nearby): these guys did not go to classes, but respected me because they played table tennis and basketball, and I did not report to the principal. The classes of the elementary grades were nervous job for me, I had to carefully monitor everyone, because I could forget to pick someone up from the class, or I could not take someone to lunch; once my favourite student jumped over the buckjump and broke his arm - I almost got fired.

Also there was sympathy from the girls - especially from the eighth grade (15-16 y.o.), they ran to my office, asked for some sport equipment, were very shy, blushed and ran away.

Then, already during football, I helped my father, the host of weddings, I was responsible for the music mixing console. Enough of everything: people sleeping, hyperactive people, and fights. Thank God they didn’t beat us.

Last year, we rented an apartment in Slutsk, but now my family - a wife and two children - are in Minsk, they are helped by grandparents, and I am at the base in Slutsk, I come home for long weekends. I do not use public transport - if many of our players need to go to Minsk, we get into someone else’s car and drive. In recent years, leisure has been tied to children - children's centers, water parks, walks, sometimes we make long trips to Poland.

- What's next?

- If we win the championship - we will ask for bonus, haha.

Original: https://www.sports.ru/tribuna/blogs/lipuchayamouse/2778290.html