Vasily Butusov

Vasily Butusov started playing football in the team of his secondary school. Later he played for the clubs Victoria (1909), Udelnaya (1909-11), Unitas (1911-22), and Spartak in Leningrad’s Vyborg District “A” (1923-26). With St. Petersburg, he won the championship of the Russian Empire in 1912 and placed second in 1913. With his respective teams he won the championship and the cup of the St. Petersburg/Leningrad district three times each (championship in 1912, 1925 and 1926, cup in 1911, 1912, 1913).

Before World War I, Butusov was considered the country’s strongest centre forward. At the 1912 Olympic Games, he became the first captain of the Russian national team and scored the national team’s first goal in their match against Finland. He won a total of five caps in 1912 and 1913 and captained the team three times. After his active career he became the country’s leading football referee in the 1920s and 1930s.

In World War I, Butusov was drafted as a motorcyclist and served at the front in Galicia (Austria-Hungary) until 1915. He was taken prisoner by the Germans and later liberated by Russian troops. After the revolution he served in the Red Army in Military Field Construction Works units from 1919-21.

In Octobre 1930, Butusov was arrested by the Soviet secret police OGPU for allegedly belonging to an anti-Soviet organisation. He was released after one year, probably thanks to the influence of his brother Mikhail. In World War II, Butusov was again drafted into the Army, serving as a military engineer of 3rd rank at the Leningrad Front in 1941. Trying to break the German lines around Leningrad he was captured by German troops and spent more than three years in German POW camps until he was liberated near Nürnberg (Nuremberg) at the end of the war.

Five of his brothers, Mikhail, Kirill, Konstantin, Alexander, and Pavel, also played high level football. Mikhail won two caps with the Soviet Union’s team and, like his brother Vasily, he scored the first goal for a Soviet national team in 1922.