Dmitri Bulykin

Dmitri Bulykin (born November 20, 1979 in Moscow) is a Russian football (soccer) striker and a popular public character. He currently plays for Belgium Jupiler Pro League team RSC Anderlecht.

Before joining Anderlecht, he played for Bayer 04 Leverkusen, FC Lokomotiv Moscow and FC Dynamo Moscow. In 2003-2005, he was a regular in Russian national team.

Club career

Bulykin began his football career with FC Lokomotiv Moscow in 1997. He stayed with Lokomotiv for three years scoring 18 goals in 68 appearances and attracted quite a bit of attention. One of the notorious moments at the time was his physical encounter with a tough and feared defender Gorlukovich. Bulykin was forced to leave Lokomotiv after falling out with manager Yuri Semin. He signed with FC Dynamo Moscow in 2000 and quickly established himself as the first team player for the next three seasons. He scored a total of 27 goals in 145 appearances for the club.

With improving performances for both club and country, Bulykin, who had never hidden his desire to move to a foreign club, was expected to move abroad. In January, 2004 he spent two weeks on trial with Everton F.C., but the club decided against signing the player. A year later, in hope to finally seal his long-awaited move to England, Bulykin went on trials with several Premier League clubs in a row, including Bolton Wanderers and Crystal Palace F.C., but, just like a year before, no deal was ever reached. A month later, Portsmouth F.C. were reportedly interested in the player's services but that transfer didn't happen either. As a result, Bulykin remained with Dynamo, and was quickly relegated to play in the second team, and eventually excluded from training process altogether.

While almost breaking his relationship with Dynamo, he re-signed for the 2006 season, after the former Russia manager Yuri Semin was appointed as the club's manager. Semin, however, was quickly sacked and under the next manager, Andrei Kobelev, Bulykin was placed on the transfer list, where he spent the rest of 2006. After Yartsev took over FC Torpedo Moscow, the former Premier League team from Moscow that left the top Russian football league for the first time since 1933, Bulykin was rumoured to have been offered a place on the club's roster. On January 30, 2007, Russian online sports edition, sports.ru, noted that Torpedo were not interested either. Trying to resolve Bulykin's deadlock with Dynamo, its general manager, Dmitri Ivanov, stated that the club would release Bulykin with no transfer cost, should there be any interest from anyone.

On August 28 2007, Bulykin secured a 1-year contract with German club Bayer 04 Leverkusen, after scoring a goal in two friendly matches during his trial at the Fußball-Bundesliga club. On December 19, 2007 he scored for the first time for the club, netting 2 goals against FC Zurich in the UEFA Cup, and was declared "man of the match" by UEFA.

In Round 20, Bulykin started for the first time in Bayer, but suffered an injury and was on the injured list for a month. On August 19, 2008 he moved to Belgium club RSC Anderlecht, and scored two goals in his first match there.

International career

Bulykin made his debut for Russian national football team on September 9, 2003 in the 2004 UEFA European Football Championship qualifier against the Republic of Ireland national football team under manager Georgi Yartsev. He made quite an impression in his only second appearance by scoring three goals in Russia's next qualifier against Swiss national football team. Russia eventually won 4-1 to subsequently qualify for the Euro 2004.

In the final tournament Bulykin struggled in Russia's two losses against Spain and Portugal. Bulykin finally made an impact against Greece by scoring a header off a Rolan Gusev corner in a game where Russia emerged victorious 2-1 to console their fans being the only team able to beat the eventual champions.

Bulykin was called up for the 2006 FIFA World Cup qualification and scored in the very first round against Slovakia in a 1-1 draw. When Georgi Yartsev resigned after a disappointing 1-1 draw with Estonia, Bulykin lost his place in the national team.

Trivia

- When Pelé visited Moscow in 2003, Bulykin emerged from the crowd of fans, and presented his own Dynamo jersey 10 to the football's great.
- Playing as the lone striker in FC Dynamo for most of the 2004, Bulykin scored 1 goal in the entire 2004 season of the Russian Premier League championship. This happened in April.
- The famous story and subsequent jokes about Bulykin and his mittens originated during one of the bad games for Dynamo, played on a chilly day, when the then-coach Yuri Semin shouted at Bulykin in front of the TV cameras: "Mittens! Take off the mittens!" This moment was televised and replayed nation-wide.
- In the 20th round of 2008 Bundesliga Championship, Bulykin, starting for the first time in his Bayer career, broke the Bundesliga record for the fastest yellow card received (on 12th second).

Famous quotes regarding Bulykin

- "Bulykin usually scores in April." - (Aleksandr Borodyuk, Russia national team manager)
- "I have 3 offers. One from Torpedo, and 2 more they don't want to tell me about." - (D.Bulykin himself)
- "Dmitry confessed once that he learned English hoping to play in England one day." - (Yuri Zavarzin, former owner of FC Dynamo)
- "They (Dynamo) won't let me play, but they won't let me change teams either. There were offers from other teams, but Dynamo did not find them satisfactory. They told me I'm an expensive player." - (D.Bulykin in his interview to Sport-Express)