Ermin Siljak

Ermin Siljak
Personnel
birthday	May 11, 1973
place of birth	Ljubljana ,  Yugoslavia
position	striker
Juniors
Years	station
	NK Ilirija
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1992-1994	NK Svoboda	40 (16)
1994-1996	SCT Olimpija Ljubljana	78 (58)
1996-1997	SC Bastia	25 0(8)
1998-2001	Servette FC Genève	38 (13)
2001	Hammarby IF	4 0(0)
2002-2003	Panionios Athens	37 (13)
2003-2004	Dalian Shide	22 (13)
2005-2006	Excelsior Mouscron	18 0(7)
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
1992-1995	Slovenia U-21	14 (10)
2003	Slovenia B	2 0(1)
1994-2005	Slovenia	48 (14)
1 Only league games are given.

Ermin Šiljak (born May 11, 1973 in Ljubljana ) is a former Slovenian football player . The striker , who won the title of Slovenian top scorer in the Slovenska Nogometna Liga in 1996, won the Slovenian national championship title twice and the Swiss national title once during his career. With the Slovenian national team he took part in the 2000 European Championships .

Career

Career start in Slovenia

After Šiljak started playing football in his hometown at NK Ilirija , he made his adult debut for local rivals NK Svoboda . After he had drawn attention there, he moved in the course of the 1993/94 season within the city limits and the same league to SCT Olimpija Ljubljana . At his new club, he quickly established himself as a regular goalscorer and placed with 19 goals this season behind Štefan Škaper in second place in the league's list of goalscorers. On the one hand, he made a decisive contribution to winning the championship title, on the other hand he played his way into the Slovenian national team and made his debut alongside Sašo Udovič , Robert Oblak , Gregor Židan and Alfred Jermaniš on the occasion of a 2-0 defeat against the Macedonian national team with goals from Žarko Serafimovski and Zoran Boškovski in the national jersey .

At the end of the season 1994/95 Šiljak repeated the triumph in the championship with his club, with 17 goals this season he was again one of the most accurate strikers in the league. The following season was not without a title win for him. Although the club missed winning the championship for the first time since the country's independence, when they finished second with three points behind HIT Gorica , the team triumphed in the national cup for the first time. In the first leg he scored the decisive goal in the 1-0 win at NK Primorje , which meant winning the title after the 1-1 draw in the second leg. However, he had also shone in the league, with 28 goals this season he snatched the title of top scorer in the Slovenian first division ahead of Faik Kamberović and Dinko Vrabac .

Years abroad

Šiljak had attracted attention outside the country's borders with his goal threat and his international appearances with Olimpija Ljubljana in the European Cup and the national team of his home country. In the summer of 1996 he moved to the French Division 1 and signed a contract with SC Bastia . At the side of Morlaye Soumah , Wilfrid Gohel , Franck Vandecasteele and Anto Drobnjak , he was a regular part of the team's squad in the following two years, but only temporarily got beyond the status of supplementary player.

In the winter break of the season 1997/98 Šiljak left France and joined the Servette FC Genève in the Swiss first division. On the side of Alexandre Rey , Carlos Varela , Sébastien Fournier and Patrick Bühlmann , he won the Swiss championship with the club at the end of the following season, where he was injured at the beginning of the season. With a triple broken leg in an international match against Albania in September , he was out for a year and a half and only returned to the field in early 2000. Nevertheless, Srečko Katanec appointed him to the squad for EURO 2000 in Belgium and the Netherlands. In the preparatory game against Saudi Arabia on June 3, he celebrated his comeback in the selection with his 19th international appearance. In the subsequent tournament he sat on the bench in the first two games, before he was in the final group game next to Aleksander Knavs , Zlatko Zahovič and Aleš Čeh in the starting lineup and was replaced shortly before the end by Milan Osterc .

In the summer of 2001, Šiljak moved to Sweden and was under contract with Hammarby IF until the end of the 2001 season . With four short appearances, his stay in Northern Europe was not crowned with success, although the club won the national championship title for the first time in its history. Therefore he returned to Slovenia and signed a contract with the reigning champions NK Maribor during the winter break . Before resumption of play, he used a clause in his contract that enabled him to move abroad, and moved on to the Greek club Panionios Athens . By the end of the season he distinguished himself as a regular goalscorer and led the club to a UEFA Cup place with seven goals this season . Also in the following year he moved into the European Cup with the club, he still decided to change clubs. Since he regularly appeared as a goal scorer in qualifying for the European Championship in 2004 , various clubs were interested in him.

The Chinese club Dalian Shide became Šiljak's new employer . With four goals by the end of the season, he reached third place with the team in the first Chinese league. After the club stopped paying him, he returned to Europe in 2004 and signed a contract with the Belgian club Excelsior Mouscron in early 2005 . In the autumn of the year he ended his national team career after the 3-0 defeat against Scotland , which meant the elimination in qualifying for the 2006 World Cup . Until the end of the following season he played for the club in the First Division before ending his club career.

Web links

• Ermin Šiljak in the database of weltfussball.de
• Ermin Šiljak in the database of National-Football-Teams.com (English)
• Ermin Šiljak on the official website of the Slovenian PrvaLiga (Slovenian)
• Ermin Šiljak on the official website of the Slovenian Football Association (Slovenian)