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Starukhin’s best football arrived late, which makes his peak even more distinctive: at Shakhtar Donetsk he became a powerful, penalty-box centre-forward built on strength, timing and ruthless finishing rather than decorative movement. The 1979 Soviet Footballer of the Year award captured a season in which his scoring influence was impossible to ignore, especially in a league where goals were rarely handed out like free mints. He offered aerial presence, back-to-goal security and the kind of direct attacking gravity that forced defences to collapse around him.
