Spassky District
Oleg Romantsev was born on 4 January 1954 in the "selo" of Gavrilovskoye, Spassky District, Ryazan Oblast, situated about 150 miles southeast of Moscow. The son of a road construction manager, Romantsev's family led a peripatetic existence, living in various places including the Kola peninsula, Altay, and Kyrgyzstan before settling in Krasnoyarsk in the early 1960s where, at age 12, the young man worked as a loader's assistant at a house-building factory on a salary of 40 roubles. Having initially harboured a passion for trains, Romantsev found himself turning to football for support after his father walked out on the family, leaving his mother to support him and his brother and sister alone.