A full-size plaster statue of Russia’s football coach, Guus Hiddink, has been erected at the ‘Moskovsky’ treatment and recreation complex in Crimea. Sculptor Evgeny Yablonsky and his assistants worked at breakneck speed to complete the monument in just tw

The statue was unveiled on June 21, just three hours before the sensational Russia-Netherlands quarter-final.

The sculptor had to change the usual procedure, leaving out the stage of making a clay model, instead shaping the statue straight away onto the metal frame.

“I’ve been a football fan for half a century,” said the complex’s director Aleksey Misyurov. “Just before the quarter-final match with the Netherlands I asked my long-time friend, sculptor Evgeny Yablonsky, to make a Guus Hiddink statue for us.”

The Dutchman, who’s won Russian hearts with the Russian team’s success at Euro 2008, is depicted wearing a tracksuit, with a ball in his hands.

“I’ve thoroughly examined Hiddink’s face in photos. He is an active and lively man, and at times I was itching to slightly depart from reality, add some drive,” Evgeny Yablonsky said.

The complex director says if Russia win Euro 2008, they will erect statues of eleven national team members besides their coach.

Football lynx

Football fans’ enthusiasm takes other forms as well. Two lynx kittens born in a travelling zoo currently located in Volgograd have been called Andrey and Roman – in honour of the Russian players Andrey Arshavin and Roman Pavlyuchenko.

“These kittens are speedy, grasping and they are real fighters – just like our forwards,” the zoo director said.

He added he is ready to present the lynx kittens to Arshavin and Pavlyuchenko.

In the city of Ekaterinburg a couple have gone to even greater extremes. They’ve named their newborn son Guus. The boy came into the world during the quarter-final with the Netherlands.