{"id":1256,"date":"2020-12-06T12:10:17","date_gmt":"2020-12-06T12:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=133639"},"modified":"2020-12-06T12:10:17","modified_gmt":"2020-12-06T12:10:17","slug":"soviet-soccer-hero-ponedelnik-dies-at-83","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/06\/soviet-soccer-hero-ponedelnik-dies-at-83\/","title":{"rendered":"Soviet Soccer ‘Hero’ Ponedelnik Dies At 83"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Viktor Ponedelnik, the last surviving member of the Soviet soccer team that won the inaugural European championships 60 years ago, has died at the age of 83.<\/p>\n

The Russian football federation made the announcement in a statement<\/a> on its website on December 6. It did not say where or when Ponedelnik had passed away.<\/p>\n

The federation described Ponedelnik in a tweet<\/a> as a \u201clegend\u201d
while UEFA’s website called him a “hero”<\/a> for scoring the winning goal in the final of the European championship in 1960.<\/p>\n

The center forward\u2019s header in extra time against Yugoslavia gave the Soviets a 2-1 victory in the final in Paris.<\/p>\n

Four years later, he helped the Soviet team reach the European final in Spain but they were beaten 2-1 by the host country.<\/p>\n

He was also part of the U.S.S.R. team that reached the quarterfinals of the 1962 World Cup in Chile.<\/p>\n

Ponedelnik played 29 matches as part of the Soviet national team in which he scored 20 goals.<\/p>\n

He began his career playing for two teams in his native Rostov-on-Don before going on to join Moscow\u2019s CSKA and Spartak Moscow.<\/p>\n

After his playing career, he coached the Rostselmash club in Rostov-on-Don.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Viktor Ponedelnik, the last surviving member of the Soviet soccer team that won the inaugural European championships 60 years ago, has died at the age of 83. The\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1256"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1256"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1257,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1256\/revisions\/1257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}