 Spartak star Nikita Simonyan considered Salnikov as one of the "golden generation" of Soviet players in the 1950s and 1960s.He scored a total of 138 goals for club and country, and is ranked 26th in the Grigory Fedotov club, a list of Soviet and Russian players that have scored 100 or more goals.Salnikov made his debut for USSR on 8 September 1954 in a friendly against Sweden.