Idman.biz
"I had the warmest gloves."
Idman.biz reports that Shahruddin Mahammadaliyev, the goalkeeper of the Azerbaijan national football team and "Qarabagh," explained his childhood memory of standing in goal for the first time with these words while participating in the "PODKAT" project.
This happened when he was 10 years old in Dagestan. The goalkeeper stated that he initially played as a wing midfielder. However, in one episode, the team needed a goalkeeper, and the coach called him to go to the goal simply because his gloves were warmer. It was with this random decision that the professional career of the famous goalkeeper began.
Mahammadaliyev also spoke about leaving Azerbaijan and playing in Turkey for one season: "I couldn't handle it anymore. I play with emotions, and it was very difficult for me."
One of the reasons for this departure was the defeat to Poland's "Rakov" team in the UEFA Champions League qualifying round. At that time, he was severely criticized for his mistakes in international matches.
In the 2023/24 season, Mahammadaliyev played for "Adana Demirspor" and was a teammate of Mario Balotelli.
He expressed his experience of playing with the famous football player with these words: "It was fun." Mahammadaliyev says that Balotelli's mood was very changeable: "One day he would come to training with a smile, making jokes, and the next day he could act aggressively, angrily kicking the ball away and leaving the training unfinished. But this would soon be replaced by laughter again."
"My favorite goalkeeper in history is Lev Yashin." With this thought, Mahammadaliyev began to reveal the "top five" goalkeepers he considered the best, and especially mentioned the German Manuel Neuer, emphasizing that he made a great contribution to the theory of goalkeeping and created a new playing style.
Mahammadaliyev also recalled the match they played against Poland's "Legia" in 2020: "It was not a game, it was a war for us."
This was the most memorable and important match in his career. That game, within the framework of the UEFA Europa League qualifying stage, coincided with the first days of the Second Karabakh War. Gurban Gurbanov inspired the team so much that it was impossible to lose - despite playing away. That memorable game ended with a 3:0 victory for "Qarabagh."
At the end of the conversation, Mahammadaliyev emphasized that a conversation with Gurban Gurbanov changed his outlook at the moment when he could not get into the main team of "Qarabagh" and was thinking of leaving the team after being in reserve for a long time. In the "PODKAT" program, the goalkeeper characterized the head coach of the national champion as follows: "The feature I like the most is his courage - he knows how to stand behind his words!"
Idman.biz
