Pavel Borodin, the Best Forward

Pavel Borodin said that he couldn't even imagine he might become a professional football player at his age
The secretary general of the union state of Russia and Belarus, Pavel Borodin, became the best shooter at the 7th international tournament held between football teams of CIS parliaments, regional administrations and city administrations of Russia.

The tournament was held in Dagomys, in Russia's Sochi, last weekend. Pavel Borodin played for the Ilyinka team for the Union of Russia and Belarus. The team lost the quarterfinals to Gazprom’s team, and finally took 5th place in the tournament. It is strange, but one of the goals was scored by Pavel Borodin by hand, but the referee didn't notice the foul and registered the goal.

As a result, Pavel Borodin scored 10 goals at the 7th international tournament in Dagomys. The lion's share of his success belongs to his team partner, the famous Russian football specialist Mikhail Gershkovich, who wonderfully served the ball to Borodin several times.

After one of the matches, Pavel Borodin said that he couldn't even imagine he might become a professional football player at his age. However, the wonderful shooter had no time to stay at the tournament until the presentation of prizes, as he had to leave for Moscow Sunday evening.

The football tournament was the first held on artificial turf. Director General of the tournament Yury Belous says that the artificial turf is the newest development of this kind. What is more, the stadium where the event took place was built within two weeks, and the lawn itself was laid in one night only.

A rather curious event occurred during the laying of the new lawn. Villagers from the settlement of Volkovo near the stadium saw that in the evening workers of the stadium were getting ready to lay a new lawn. But when they saw that the stadium ground had turned wonderfully emerald green already the next morning, the people were extremely surprised. The villagers thought that the grass had grown so quickly thanks to some miraculous seeds, and the smartest people in the village even attempted to steal sacks with the "wonderful seeds" meant for laying the stadium ground.

In fact, the sacks were filled with green rubber crumbs that were used for making the athletic field's surface according to the standards of modern technology. Fortunately, workers at the stadium managed to prevent the theft.
 
Let's get back to the sports side of the event. There were many politicians in leading roles in the football teams. Besides Pavel Borodin, vice-governor of Leningrad Region Alexander Yakovlev, Chairman of Voronezh parliament Sergey Koliukh, Penza Mayor Alexander Kalashnikov and Chairman of a Kazakh parliamentary committee Sharip Omarov also wonderfully played at the football tournament.

At that, not only famous politicians, but also well-known football specialists took part in the Dagomys tournament. A football team of Gazprom JSC was the winner of the 7th international football tournament; in the final round, it defeated the Kazakh parliament’s team with a score of 1:0.

On the whole, 20 football teams took part in the event. A team of Russian journalists won only one game out of six and took 16th place.

RIAN