Brighton’s Soviet Superstar Sergei Gotsmanov

Not many players can establish themselves as crowd favourites and gain a reputation as one of the most talented footballers ever to play for a club in just three months and 16 appearances. But then Sergei Gotsmanov was not most players.

With Brighton enduring a difficult 1989-90 season, manager Barry Lloyd was forced to think outside the box when it came to trying to find ways to help the Seagulls avoid relegation into the third tier. The answer he came up with was to delve behind the Iron Curtain for reinforcements, which is where he discovered 30-year-old Gotsmanov.

The gifted midfielder had broken into Dinamo Minsk’s first team at the age of 17 and went onto rack up over 350 appearances for his hometown club over the next 13 years, bar a one-year spell with the wonderfully named Belarusian side Brest while on compulsory military service.

Gotsmanov’s talents made him a mainstay of the USSR’s brilliant national team of the mid 1980’s, winning 31 caps and playing in their 1988 European Championship final defeat to the Netherlands. Four years prior to that, he’d scored at Wembley against England for the Soviets in their 2-0 victory.

Put simply, players like Gotsmanov shouldn’t have been pratting around in a side towards the bottom of England’s second tier. But then Soviet’s didn’t come to England to play football, full stop. In fact, only one previous Soviet had played in the Football League prior to Gotsmanov, the equally-decorated Sergei Baltacha who turned out for Ipswich Town in the 1988-89 season.

Whilst the Cold War may have left the entire world of tenterhooks for much of the previous 40 odd years, Lloyd cleverly used the human race’s fear of potential nuclear annihilation to his advantage by convincing a player who should have been miles out of Brighton’s reach to come on trial at the Goldstone.

It didn’t take much to persuade Gotsmanov to make the 1372 mile journey from Minsk to Hove. Lloyd told The Argus, “There were three of four players over there who had been flagged up to me, but I didn’t go with anyone particularly in mind. Once I’d identified him, persuading him to come was quite comfortable. It was a new experience for him.”

And so Gotsmanov arrived in Sussex, not speaking a word of English. Not that it mattered. It became very apparent very quickly that he was a class above anything else that Lloyd had available to him in his squad. Gotsmanov played a couple of times for the reserves before making his first team debut as a substitute away at Sunderland on February 24th 1990.

An injury to Garry Nelson in a 1-0 home win over Middlesbrough four days later presented Gotsmanov with his second appearance from the bench and he was given his first start in the next home game against Oldham Athletic. Although he’d spent most of his career as a midfielder, Lloyd decided to go with Gotsmanov for Nelson in a straight attacking swap and the Belarusian responded with a goal and a man-of-the-match performance. “We’ve got a Russian international” sang the North Stand to laud their new hero.

His strike against the Latics was a superb first time effort from a through ball, the finish of a seasoned striker rather than a midfielder being played out of position. A week later and he had his second Albion goal with what proved to be the winner in a 2-1 win over Plymouth Argyle. Gotsmanov had already showed his class but this one was all about guts, showing quick reactions and bravery to smash home.

Gotsmanov’s third goal for the Albion summed up just how good he was. Hull City were the visitors when Gotsmanov found himself running at their defence with the sort of close control that doesn’t look possible without the ball being physically glued to a boot. A couple of stepovers later bamboozled two defenders to the point where they fell over before Gotsmanov rounded the goalkeeper like he wasn’t there.

After all that magic, he began audaciously celebrating with a little dance and his arms in the air before he’d even put the ball into the back of the empty net. It was a sublime piece of skill so good that it deserved an audience at least 10 times that of the 6,789 who’d rocked up to the Goldstone for a rare Friday night game.

It was the goal that confirmed Gotsmanov’s place in Albion folklore. Lloyd said after the game, “Call it cheek or a piece of pure theatre, what everyone surely recognised about the goal was that it bore the hallmark of supreme confidence. Much has been said about Sergei since he arrived at the Goldstone. Certainly, he is a player with whom we have been delighted and he is a superb example to other players here, both in skill, technique and dedication.
But the goal was something else! Skipping round tackles and holding your arms aloft before slotting the ball into the net, it’s the stuff of which dreams are made.”

Unfortunately for the Albion, the dream would come to an end shortly after. He managed one more goal, a powerful drive against Leeds United that showed his ability to find space in the tightest of situations. The club pulled out all the stops to try and keep Gotsmanov at the Goldstone, even making a big deal out of presenting him with a Lada as a courtesy car in some sort of strange attempt to remind him of home.

Whilst the Albion could only offer a second hand Russian car, top flight Southampton had much more clout and were able to pay Dinamo Minsk a fee of £150,000 as well as wages to Gotsmanov that Brighton simply couldn’t match. They could also offer Division One football, which was a stage much more deserving of the talents of the brilliant Belarusian.

And so Gotsmanov headed along the South Coast. His time at the Dell wasn’t a great success, with the suspicion being that the Saints had brought him in just to keep their other new Soviet signing, Aleksei Cherednik, company. After just a year with Southampton, he moved to Germany side Hallescher for a brief spell before returning to Dinamo Minsk, who he helped win the first three Belarusian League titles and two Belarusian Cups following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He also became the first ever goal scorer for the Belarus national side, netting in a 1-1 draw with Ukraine in 28 October 1992.

All those achievements make for quite the footballing CV. And in the grand scheme of things, four goals in 16 games in England’s second tier may pale in comparison to scoring at Wembley, winning national leagues or playing in a European Championship final. But even so, the mark that Gotsmanov left on everyone who had the pleasure of seeing him in an Albion shirt is undeniable. The Brighton faithful took this Soviet Superstar to their hearts. Sergei Gotsmanov, from Belarus from Love.