Raimonds Dambis

Raimonds Dambis (born 1924) is a former Latvian footballer and football manager.

Playing biography[]

Dambis was born in Dobele, Latvia. As a teenager before World War II he played with Dobele senior teams but after the war, with , he played from 1948 to 1949 in the top Latvian league. Later he joined Vulkāns Kuldīga which was a higher level team than Daugava. After the 1952 season the technically skilled forward was invited to play with the strongest club of the Latvian league in the 1950s - Sarkanais Metalurgs Liepāja.

With Metalurgs Dambis won the Latvian league and the Latvian Cup in 1953 and 1954. While in Dobele and Kuldīga Dambis was known as a brilliant goalscorer, with Metalurgs he showed himself as a good passer for Miervaldis Drāznieks and . He was one of the very few footballers who were not from Liepāja in the Metalurgs squad in the fifties. In 1955 Dambis played with the top Latvian club - Daugava Rīga and scored two goals in the first Soviet league. An injury made him retire from active football in 1955, so Dambis switched to coaching.

Coaching biography[]

From 1958 to 1967 Dambis coached (later renamed as FK Baltika), in 1961 winning the bronze medals of the Latvian league, in 1965 - the Latvian Cup. From 1968 to 1970 he was the head coach of Zvejnieks Liepāja, in the 1970s for several years he was assistant to in Zvejnieks. After a conflict with Ptičkins Dambis left the club never to work in football again.^[1]

Honours[]

As player[]

• Latvian top league winner: 2 (1953, 1954)
• Latvian Cup winner: 2 (1953, 1954)

As manager[]

• Latvian Cup winner (1965)

References[]