A story I couldn't fit in the article because the latter is already a little long as it is: Not only did Chernyshov make Lev Yashin choose soccer over hockey – but he also made Alexander Maltsev choose hockey over soccer.
Maltsev was a natural-born athlete. He stood out in soccer, basketball, tennis, volleyball, handball, table tennis and basically everything he ever tried. In 1968, the Dinamo hockey team played a soccer game against the reserve squad of the Dinamo Moscow soccer team. The hockey guys held up well and the game ended 1-1. Maltsev was the best player on the pitch. Tirelessly running around as an offensive midfielder, he gave one perfectly accurate and well-timed 30-40 meter pass after the other. Dinamo soccer coach Konstantin Beskov was stunned. After the match he offered Maltsev to join the soccer team on their upcoming tour to South America for a tryout. When Chernyshov was told about it by Maltsev, his jaw dropped and for once he lost his composure. He snapped: "What? Get lost!" But after he had regained his cool, he told Maltsev about his own soccer days and ended up saying: "Football is a very interesting thing and you can become a good football player. But you also have the makings of a hockey player. So choose." Maltsev chose hockey. He stated that he felt he couldn't betray Chernyshov who had already become his mentor.
How good a soccer player could Alexander Maltsev have been? Maltsev biographer Maxim Makarychev reports that Konstantin Beskov said: "Such a football player I have never seen." Beskov was born in 1920, so he had seen all of Vsevolod Bobrov, Eduard Streltsov, Igor Netto, Valentin Ivanov etc play (not to mention Lev Yashin, but let's just assume Beskov was only referring to field players, even though we can't be sure). As coach of the Soviet national team in 1963-64, Beskov had also seen international stars like Sandro Mazzola, Gianni Rivera, Cesare Maldini, Kurt Hamrin and Luis Suárez (Spain). I'm not aware of all the international encounters on the club level, so the list might actually be longer.