Respected weekly France Football names Lev Yashin as world’s best-ever football goalkeeper

MOSCOW, December 14. /TASS/. French weekly magazine France Football reported on Monday that Russia’s Lev Yashin, the winner of the 1963 Golden Ball (Ballon d’Or), is now the best goalkeeper in the history of the sport of football. The Ballon d’Or is a prestigious football award presented annually by French football magazine France Football since 1956. The award goes to the best football player of the year in various categories. Lev Yashin Lev Yashin (October 22, 1929 - March 20, 1990) was a goalkeeper for Dynamo Moscow FC and the Soviet national team. He is considered as the greatest goalkeeper in the history of football and had an iconic status for revolutionizing the game of a goalkeeper. He remains the only goalkeeper in the history of football to win the Ballon d’Or. Throughout his career he stopped a total of over 150 penalty kicks, by far more than any other goalkeeper in history and has a record of over 270 clean sheets, which means that he never conceded a goal in over 270 matches. He played in three World Cups in 1958, 1962 and 1966 and has a record of four clean sheets in an overall of 12 matches in World Cup finals. He also appeared at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, but in the capacity of the third-choice backup and assistant coach. He made an unforgettable impression on the world society, when he first appeared at the 1958 World Cup in Sweden, which was the first to be broadcast internationally. Always dressed in black from head to toe he earned his international nicknames of the ‘Black Spider’ and ‘Black Panther.’ Read more