Baltacha was developed by longtime Dynamo Kyiv and USSR national team coach
Valeriy Lobanovskyi, who spotted Baltacha at the Kharkiv Oblast sports boarding school (today the
Kharkiv College of Sports) of footballing excellence, which he had left home to attend at the age of 13. Before moving to Kharkiv, Baltacha started his football career in native Mariupol playing for local youth sports club "Azovstal". While being officially invited to Dynamo, in 1976 Baltacha spent his first season on loan playing for
Metalist Kharkiv which at that time was playing at the third tier and his second season in Dynamo's reserves. It wasn't until 1978 when he finally made his debut for the Dynamo's first team that was hosting
Spartak Moscow on 28 April 1978. As preparation to the
1980 Summer Olympics, in 1979 Baltacha played couple of games for
Ukraine at the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR. Baltacha was on the winning side in the
Cup Winners' Cup in 1986, the
Soviet Top League and
Soviet Cup four times, and the
Soviet Super Cup on three occasions. He also appeared in the
FIFA World Cup in 1982, was a finalist in the
European Championships in 1988 and won the bronze medal at
the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. As the Soviet government eased restrictions on traveling abroad for athletes, in 1988 at age 30 Baltacha traveled to England and Scotland, playing for
Ipswich Town and
St Johnstone. His debut for Ipswich (in which he scored) was the first time a Soviet international had played in
the Football League. He also had a spell as player manager of Inverness Caledonian in the Scottish Highland Football League, and was with Caledonian when they amalgamated with Inverness Thistle and entered the Scottish Football League in 1994 as Caledonian Thistle. Baltacha worked as a
physical education teacher and tutor at
Bacon's College in South East
London until 2012, having formerly been a physical education teacher at Geoffrey Chaucer Technology College (
Old Kent Road, London) and a coach at the
Charlton Athletic academy. Since 2012 Sergei Baltacha works as Professional Development Phase Lead Coach at the Charlton Athletic FC Academy. == Personal life ==