Robert Prosinečki

Early life and career

Prosinečki was born in Schwenningen, West Germany, into a family of Yugoslav gastarbeiters of mixed ethnicity. His father Đuro was Croatian, hailing from the Gornji Čemehovec village near Kraljevec na Sutli, and his mother Emilija Đoković is Serbian, originally from the Ježevica village near Čačak.

Young Robert spent his childhood in Germany before moving back to SR Croatia with his family in 1979, at the age of ten. By that time he had already been playing in the Stuttgarter Kickers youth system. Once in Croatia, he continued in the youth setup of Dinamo Zagreb.

Dinamo Zagreb

After moving up the youth ranks for years, Prosinečki started getting occasional first team appearances during the 1986–87 league season under head coach Miroslav Blažević. On his league debut versus FK Željezničar, he managed to score a goal. By the end of the season, he recorded one more league appearance.

Wanting to secure his son's financial future, Prosinečki's father Đuro started pushing within club hierarchy for a professional contract to be given to his 18-year-old son. However, coach Blažević sent him away, famously claiming that he would eat his coaching diploma if Prosinečki ever became a real football player.

Red Star Belgrade

In the summer of 1987 Đuro Prosinečki took Robert over to Belgrade and got the professional contract they were after. Dragan Džajić, Red Star's then football director, remembers the transfer as follows:

Immediately upon arrival to his new club, Prosinečki became a first team regular and furthermore, much to Blažević's chagrin, also rapidly established himself as one of Yugoslavia's most gifted and talented players. Playing under head coach Vasović, the youngster earned a spot in Red Star's midfield alongside Dragan Stojković, Žarko Đurović, and Goran Milojević just a few weeks into the 1987–88 league season and never looked back. In October 1987 he was part of the Yugoslav youth squad which won the World Youth Championship in Chile, with Prosinečki winning the Golden Ball award as the tournament's best player. Playing in Chile meant that he was away from the club for the entire month of October, and he was already held in such high regard at Red Star that club brass attempted to bring him back from South America after the tournament's group stages, so that he could play in their 1987–88 UEFA Cup second round tie versus Club Brugge. The Yugoslav team players protested to FIFA, and João Havelange, the organisation's chairman at the time, intervened to keep Prosinečki in Chile.

During his four-year spell at the club Prosinečki helped Red Star win three Yugoslav First League titles and one Yugoslav Cup, as well as participating in the club's greatest success in history by winning the 1991 European Cup.

Real Madrid

Prosinečki joined the Spanish giants during the summer 1991 for a transfer fee of ₧450 Million (€15 million). Led by club president Ramón Mendoza and head coach Radomir Antić, the club had huge expectations from their expensive and highly rated signing. Real went through a difficult previous season, twice making a coaching change and barely getting a UEFA Cup spot by finishing third in La Liga under Antić, their third head coach that season.

However, pretty much immediately 22-year-old Prosinečki got sidelined with a string of muscular injuries. Administered by team doctors, he underwent a series of tests as well as a strict dietary regime in addition to getting forced into changing many lifestyle-related habits. Still, the first season turned out to be a complete write-off: he appeared in only three league matches with a notable shining moment - scoring a free-kick goal versus FC Barcelona in El Clásico on 19 October 1991.

Although injury-riddled as well, Prosinečki's second season at Real did provide a hint of a breakthrough with 29 league appearances and 3 goals, however, it was still far off the expectations indicated by his reputation and price tag.

His best season was incidentally his last, with six league goals.

Spain, Croatia

During the 1994 summer transfer window, Real brass decided that his physical fragility and injuries were too much to deal with and offloaded him to Real Oviedo.

He then moved to Barcelona where he spent two seasons, and then one in Sevilla.

In 1997 he returned home to play for NK Croatia Zagreb (Dinamo's name at the time).

In 2001, he moved again to Standard Liège, and soon to Portsmouth.

Portsmouth

In summer 2001, 32-year-old Prosinečki signed for Division 1 (second-tier of the English football league system) side Portsmouth on a one-year deal.

Prosinečki is still held as a folk hero at Portsmouth FC for his marvelous one man performances in the centre of midfield. The team were saved from relegation through his goals and assists in the 2001–02 season, the highlight of which was scoring a hattrick against Barnsley. At the end of the 2007-08 Premier League season the readers of The News picked Prosinečki as part of an all-time best Portsmouth eleven. He was the only non-British player to be among the selection.

After speaking with Prosinečki current Croatia international Niko Kranjčar made the decision to sign for Portsmouth in the summer of 2006.

Career end

He then had one-year stints at Olimpija Ljubljana, and then at NK Zagreb.

In spring 2005 he ended his career in low tier club NK Savski Marof.

International career

Prosinečki has 49 caps for Croatia and has scored 10 goals for his country. He was also capped 15 times, scoring four goals, for Yugoslavia. In 1987, Prosinečki was named the tournament's best player as Yugoslavia won the World Youth Championship in Chile along with fellow Croatians Zvonimir Boban, Robert Jarni, Davor Šuker and Igor Štimac. He then played for Yugoslavia at the 1990 World Cup and for Croatia at Euro 96 and the 1998 and 2002 World Cups. It was in 1998 that Prosinečki and the Croatian squad won third place in the World Cup, with Prosinečki scoring two goals along the way - this making him the only player in history to have scored World Cup finals goals for two different nations.

International goals

He is the only player in World Cup history to score for two different national teams. In 1990, he scored one goal for Yugoslavia in a group match against the United Arab Emirates and eight years later he added two goals for Croatia by scoring in a group match against Jamaica and in the third place match against the Netherlands. He played in a total of nine World Cup matches, three for Yugoslavia in 1990 and six for Croatia in 1998 and 2002.

Coaching career

Prosinečki began his coaching career in 2006 as an assistant to head coach Slaven Bilić at the Croatian national football team.

Red Star Belgrade

In December 2010 during the mid-season winter break in 2010-11 Serbian Superliga, Prosinečki was announced as the new head coach of Red Star Belgrade. Returning to the club of his biggest playing successes, the announcement made major headlines all over the Balkans and also generated plenty of buzz in the rest of Europe. The angle of Prosinečki being the first Croatian to coach in Serbia following the Yugoslav Wars also got a lot of attention. His annual sallary was not officially disclosed, however, Serbian press speculated with figures from US$100,000 to $250,000 per year.

Fifteen matches into the season, the famous yet recently beleaguered Serbian club was in second place, five points behind league leaders FK Partizan. Red Star brass led by club president Vladan Lukić (Prosinečki's former teammate at Marakana) thus steered clear of stating league title as an explicit requirement for the club legend, still, it was understood that making an outside run at the title remained a priority. Prosinečki announced his intent to mold Red Star into an attacking team that utilizes short-passing game to break down opponents, picking Slobodan Marović and Žarko Đurović (also Red Star colleagues from playing days) to be his assistants. Immediately, however, the issue of Prosinečki's pro coaching licence came up when it was discovered that he may not yet meet criteria for one, which according to Serbian Superliga rules would preclude him from being physically present on the sidelines during official matches. The things were straightened out by the time league restarted and Prosinečki's bench debut, which was scheduled to take place versus FK Smederevo at Marakana on 26 February 2011.

His side finished in second place, six points off bitter rivals FK Partizan. The following season, the 2011/12 season, his side again finished in second place and again second to Partizan, this time the margin was doubled from six to twelve points. In August 2012 Prosinečki resigned as a manager of Red Star.

Kayserispor

During next two months Prosinečki was linked to various teams, most notably Croatian sides HNK Rijeka and RNK Split, his former team Olimpija Ljubljana and even Slovenia national team. But on 15 October 2012 it was surprisingly announced that Prosinečki will replace Shota Arveladze as a manager of struggling Kayserispor in Turkish Super League. He became the new head coach of Kayserispor at the 8th week of the 2012–13 Süper Lig, and he gained 13 wins in 27 league matches and finished the league at 5th position.

The start of the 2013–14 season was not so successful for Prosinečki and his team. After achieving only one victory in 11 rounds, Kayserispor was at the bottom of the league table. In November 2013 Prosinečki resigned but his resignation was not accepted by the club board. A month and a half later, the club record had not improved. Kayserispor was 17th on the Süper Lig table and lost to Tokatspor in the Turkish Cup. On the last days of 2013 Prosinečki definitively resigned as manager of Kayserispor.

Azerbaijan

On 1 December 2014, Prosinečki was named as new manager of Azerbaijan national football team, replacing Berti Vogts with a two-year contract until UEFA Euro 2016. His contract fee was reported around 1.5 million dollars.

Managerial statistics

Club

International

Individual

As manager

Orders

Relationship with Ćiro Blažević

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, parallel with Prosinečki's rise to football superstardom at Red Star Belgrade, Real Madrid, FC Barcelona as well as Yugoslav and Croatian national teams, the story of him being chased away from Dinamo Zagreb in 1987 by the famous coach Ćiro Blažević grew in Croatian and Yugoslav media and public. To this day it is often cited and referenced as an example of football mismanagement, poor judgement, and bad work with youth categories. Colourful Blažević, the villain of the piece, rarely talked on the record about the circumstances of Prosinečki's departure. However, in 2010, Blažević deflected responsibility for the flap by claiming he actually gave the youngster a four-year contract that was eventually, according to Blažević, annulled by Dinamo president Ante Pavlović on a technicality due to not being processed administratively by the subfederation responsible. On the same occasion, Blažević went on to accuse Prosinečki's father Đuro of not negotiating in good faith with Dinamo by saying "he already had his combination with Red Star". Asked about his famous quote about eating his diploma if Prosinečki ever became a player, Blažević responded that he only used it as a motivation tool.

Blažević and Prosinečki would reignite their simmering feud eleven years later during the 1998 World Cup where they were part of the Croatian national team that made it all the way to the semifinals. In the semifinal match that Croatia lost 1-2 versus eventual winners France after going ahead 1-0, Blažević decided to leave 29-year-old Prosinečki on the bench (he eventually entered the contest in the 90th minute, coming on for Mario Stanić), which led to a lot of criticism.

Court case versus Dinamo

In the summer of 1997, 28-year-old Prosinečki came back to Zagreb in order to play for the club where he started his professional career. Now called Croatia Zagreb, the club was turned into a state project bankrolled by the Croatian government's highest echelons and personally supported by president Franjo Tuđman. By 2000, Prosinečki left Croatia Zagreb, but in late 2001 decided to initiate a lawsuit against the club (whose name was now restored back to Dinamo after continuous fan protests) over DM1,550,000 (€750,000) in unpaid wages.

Years later in 2009, court ruled against Prosinečki, mostly due to asserting that the lawsuit against Dinamo had no merit since Prosinečki played for Croatia Zagreb, and not Dinamo Zagreb. Commenting on the verdict in late 2009, Prosinečki said he was cheated out of his money.