Viktor Leonenko
| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Ві́ктор Євге́нович Лео́ненко | ||
| Date of birth | 5 October 1969 | ||
| Place of birth | Tyumen, RSFSR, Soviet Union | ||
| Height | 1.76 m (5 ft 9 in) | ||
| Playing position | Striker | ||
| Senior career* | |||
| Years | Team | Apps | (Gls) |
| 1988–91 | FC Geolog Tyumen | 93 | (26) |
| 1991–92 | FC Dynamo Moscow | 20 | (14) |
| 1992–98 | FC Dynamo Kyiv | 98 | (61) |
| 1998–00 | CSKA Kyiv | 13 | (5) |
| 2001–02 | FC Zakarpattia Uzhhorod | 12 | (3) |
| Total | 236 | (109) | |
| National team | |||
| 1992–1996 | Ukraine | 14 | (6) |
| * Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only. |
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Viktor Yevhenovych Leonenko (born 5 October 1969 in Tyumen, Russia) is a former footballer and Ukraine international who played as a forward. At least since 2006 he is a football commentator and analyst for the televised football forum "3 time" at the Ukrainian TV-network ICTV. He was a highly technical and individual football performer being able to receive a pass while having a limited amount of space available and efficiently converting a goal chance opportunities.
Leonenko was born in Russia. His short stints at Russian clubs such as Geolog Tyumen and FC Dynamo Moscow did not really reflect his playing abilities. On the proposition of Dynamo Kyiv, Leonenko literally ran away from Moscow. That move could have cost him at least two years to lifetime disqualification, however, both Dynamos found a consensus on the issue the transfer was finalized. Later he acknowledged that if a similar proposition would have come from Spartak Moscow, he might have stayed in the Russian capital. Leonenko considers Dynamo Kyiv and Spartak Moscow the classic clubs of the Soviet Union.
Being a successful striker for Dynamo in the early to mid-1990s (Leonenko was named Ukrainian Footballer of the Year in 1992, 1993, and 1994), Leonenko was eventually forced to the bench with the emergence of the striker partnership of Serhiy Rebrov and Andriy Shevchenko. The contemporary coach of Dynamo at that time Yozhef Sabo justified his relegation to reserves for being overweight. With appearance of Valeriy Lobanovsky who is considered the "architect" of Dynamo school and who preferred the football of eleven, simply a teamwork, the individualism of Leonenko did not fit his organizational plans and the Siberian striker eventually not only did not participate in trainings, but eventually was loaned out elsewhere. He joined Sunderland on trial in November 1996, but injured an ankle on his first day of training. In 1998, Leonenko moved to play for CSKA Kyiv and ended his career with FC Zakarpattia Uzhhorod in 2001.
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