Gabalafc.az is starting to a new project where you will be able to read interviews of veterans working for SC Gabala. The heading Veterans will allow you to know much about their past life and football career.

Today our guest is Yuri Baturenko, former player and today"s coach of Gabala. He was born on 29 December 1964 in Dushanbe of Tajikistan. The footballer played for FC Pamir (Tajikistan, 1982-1985, 1987-1992), MOIK (1986), Lokomotiv (Moscow, 1992-1995), Dinamo-Gazovik (Tumen, 1996), Tumen (1997), Sokol (Saratov, 1998) and so on. Baturenko came on 80 matches of USSR Premier League to score 5 goals. Then he went on with the Russia Premier League for 71 games and 8 goals. He started to his coaching time from 2000 with Lokomotiv Moscow. Baturenko gave a start to his time with SC Gabala since the 2013-2014 season. He talks:

-- My father was a military man in Tajikistan, so I started from there and came to Russia after the Soviet Union went down. Tajikistan went into political crisis and we left there. As a player, I was built up by Yuri Semin.

-- Could you talk about your first professional match?

-- I was not nervous and felt happy. I focused quite on the game and felt very tired in the 80th minute, then I asked the coach to let me out.

I earned my best successes with Lokomotiv at the Russian league where I got silver (in 1995- red.) and bronze (in 1994 - red.). My first visit to Azerbaijan as a footballer was when I played for Pamir. That time we played against Neftchi in a testing match.

-- What about your coaching time? How did you start?

-- When I was a player, I thought only about football. Futbolçu olduğum dövrdə yalnız meydançada olmaq barədə düşünürdüm. But I still was keen to be on the pitch after my player career ended. So I was not kept waiting for long and started with coaching when they appointed me to the coach position for the first team.

- Why Azerbaijan? How did you choose the way to our country?

- When Yuri Semin asked me about working for Azerbaijan I accepted this without hesitation. It is really exiting to work with him everywhere. I googled both about Azerbaijan and Gabala and then understood that I made the right chose. I got much excited by what I saw here in Gabala. You see here a real football environment at Gabala with perfect pitches, passion in youth and fans. And the targets of Gabala also helped me choosing the club. I believe we will reach to what we need at the end of the season. This will open a new page in my career.