The picture by Volkov Evgeni

The best goalkeeper of the USSR and the winner of the Asian Super Cup, Valeri Sarychev, has a lot of achievements as a goalkeeper. But do you know that Valery has got two different names? Valeri and Shin Eui-Son!? I'll tell you how it has happened.

From 1982 to 1991 Valeri played in “Torpedo”, where he won the bronze medal of the USSR championship twice (1988 and 1991). At the end of the 1991 season Valeri Sarychev went to see the South Korea: he was going to play there for a couple of years before retiring, but then he signed a contract with “Sonnam Ilhva Chunma”. In the first year, the team rose from the penultimate place to the second, while the skills of the new goalkeeper's game caused complete delight among the fans of the club: the club became a three-time champion of K-League - the top football division of South Korea, and the successful footballer decided to pursue a career ... But not everything was simple.

By the end of the 1990s most of the goalkeepers of K-League clubs were foreigners: there was a new ban on the presence of foreign goalkeepers in the teams. What did Valeri do? In 1999 he passed the exams and received South Korean citizenship and the Korean name Shin Eui-Son, which means “Hand of God”.

In 2005 he became a coach. He founded the first school for goalkeepers in Korea.