\u201cI had a dream,\u201d Oleg Salenko excitedly told his room-mate upon awaking in a California hotel. \u201cI\u2019m going to score lots of goals, we\u2019re going to thrash Cameroon, and we\u2019re going to reach the final.\u201d Dmitri Radchenko felt his long-time friend \u201cneeded admitting to a mental asylum\u201d.<\/p>\n
Oleg Salenko had just two caps going into 1994, began that year\u2019s FIFA World Cup\u2122 on the bench, and never played international football after it. Russia needed to thrash Cameroon, who had been minutes away from reaching the Italia \u2019\u06f9\u06f0 semi-finals and whose players were on a big bonus to win their final Group B game, and watch other results go their way to reach the knockout phase.<\/p>\n
Yet two of Salenko\u2019s premonitions proved fact over fantasy. One was even wilder than his concoction. Ernst Wilimowski, Ademir de Menezes, Sandor Kocsis, Just Fontaine, Eusebio and Emilio Butragueno shared the record for most goals in a World Cup game. They would no longer after 75 minutes at Stanford Stadium. That was when Salenko dinked home his fifth goal \u2013 all from his right boot \u2013 to inspire a 6-1 victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know it was a record at the time,\u201d said Salenko years later. \u201cI heard something over the loud speaker, but I was concentrated on us winning by as many goals as possible, it was in English, and I wasn\u2019t quite sure what it was.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are records for this, that and everything. I couldn\u2019t have possibly imagined I\u2019d set a record for the most goals in a World Cup game.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight after full-time me and Dmitri got taken for doping. The match kicked off at 1pm and it was 40 \u00b0C. We were unbelievably dehydrated and waited an hour-and-a-half to give a urine sample.<\/p>\n
\u201cI only found out hours later that it was a prestigious record for the most goals in a World Cup game. It was obviously amazing, but at the time I was really anxious to see if we would go through.\u201d<\/p>\n
The thumping victory left Russia with three shots at reaching the knockout phase. All, improbably, proved futile. First, Saudi Arabia stunned Belgium, then Bulgaria upset Argentina, and finally Nigeria sunk Greece. The Eastern Europeans were out.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was only afterwards that I began to appreciate the record,\u201d said Salenko. \u201cYou look at those great strikers who scored four goals in a [World Cup] game. You consider that legends like Pele, [Gerd] Muller and [Paolo] Rossi didn\u2019t even manage that.<\/p>\n
\u201cScoring five a game is something I\u2019m very proud of. That\u2019s the beauty of the World Cup \u2013 the whole world is watching. If you do something spectacular, you\u2019ll be remembered forever. I still get people from all over the world coming up to me to talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Salenko\u2019s final strike past Jacques Songo’o left him on six goals at USA \u2019\u06f9\u06f4 \u2013 he was also Russia\u2019s solitary marksman in a 3-1 defeat to a Martin Dahlin-inspired Sweden \u2013 only for Hristo Stoichkov to net four times thereafter and tie his total. It meant the Russian and the Bulgarian shared the adidas Golden Boot, and that the former is, remarkably, the only man to have claimed it without playing in the knockout rounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was an honour to share the Golden Boot with such a great player,\u201d said Salenko. \u201cWe\u2019ve bumped into each other several times. He was at Barcelona and I was at Valencia. He\u2019d joke that I should be grateful he didn\u2019t score one more, and I\u2019d joke that he should be grateful I passed to \u2018Dimka\u2019 rather than scoring myself against Cameroon!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cI had a dream,\u201d Oleg Salenko excitedly told his room-mate upon awaking in a California hotel. \u201cI\u2019m going to score lots of goals, we\u2019re going to thrash Cameroon, and we\u2019re going to reach the final.\u201d Dmitri Radchenko felt his long-time friend \u201cneeded admitting to a mental asylum\u201d. Oleg Salenko had just two caps going into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":996930,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20966],"tags":[9648,27192],"class_list":["post-996929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fifa-news","tag-fifa","tag-fifa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=996929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/996930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=996929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=996929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=996929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}