Mladen Mladenović

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Mladen Mladenović
Personnel
birthday September 13, 1964
place of birth RijekaSFR Yugoslavia
size 178 cm
position Libero / midfield
Juniors
Years station
0000-1981 NK Rijeka
Men's
Years station Games (goals) 1
1981-1989 NK Rijeka 122 (22)
1985-1986 →  NK Zadar  (loan) 16 0(4)
1989-1991 Dinamo Zagreb 57 (16)
1991-1993 CD Castellón 66 (21)
1993-1994 NK Rijeka 31 (20)
1994-1996 SV Austria Salzburg 46 (15)
1996-1997 Gamba Osaka 20 (11)
1997-1998 Hajduk Split 12 0(4)
1998 NK Rijeka 9 0(2)
National team
Years selection Games (goals)
1990-1996 Croatia 19 0(3)
Stations as a trainer
Years station
0000-2002 NK Žminj
2002-2003 NK Rijeka
NK Halubjan Viškovo
NK Cres
2006-2008 NK Orijent Rijeka
1 Only league games are given.

Mladen Mladenović (born September 13, 1964 in Rijeka ) is a former Yugoslav and Croatian football player and today's coach .

As a national player, he played in the first international match of a Croatian national team and took part in the 1996 European Football Championship .

Since 2002 he has worked as a trainer and sports director.

Club career

Mladenović began his career in the youth of his home club NK Rijeka , where he made his debut in the professional team in the 1981/82 season. In the following three seasons he was only used sporadically, before he made his breakthrough in Rijeka after a six-month loan at NK Zadar . After seven professional years in midfield of the 1st Yugoslav soccer league , he was sold to Dinamo Zagreb .

At Dinamo he got a regular place under the then young coach Josip Kuže and developed next to players like Kujtim Shala , Davor Šuker and Zvonimir Boban to the top performers and as a result also national players of Croatia . Although the team is considered to be one of the strongest in the club's history from the beginning of the 1990s until today, it was only behind the then great rivals Red Star Belgrade and its miracle team with players such as Vladimir Jugović , Siniša Mihajlović , Robert Prosinečki , Dragan Stojkovic and Dejan Savićević , only two times runner-up and also won a cup. Simultaneously with the break-up of Yugoslavia, the team was sold out, whereupon all top performers, including Mladenović, who scored 16 league goals in two seasons, left the club.

After a transfer to Austria to SV Salzburg, which had just been taken over by Otto Barić , failed due to an excessively high transfer fee, he accepted a financially lucrative offer from the Spanish club CD Castellón, which had just been relegated from the first class . In Valencia , he was supposed to compensate for the relegation-related departure of Igor Dobrovolskiy and become the leading figure for the immediate resurgence. Although Mladenović subsequently presented himself as the hoped-for leader and acted as an outstanding personality in the game of Castellón, the squad was too mediocre to meet the high expectations. Although he had a talented midfield partner in his debut season with Gaizka Mendieta , who had just made his way up from youth to professional player, he was sold to city rivals Valencia CF in the following season . After two years as an under-challenged player in midfield of the Segunda División , he asked for a move to his home country, which was granted to him because of his high salary, which could be saved.

For the 1993/94 season he went back to his hometown club NK Rijeka, where he was able to improve his strong performance from previous years. In his home environment, Mladenović played unleashed, scored 20 goals as a midfielder and was voted the best player in the top Croatian league .

As a result, he moved to Austria for SV Austria Salzburg three years later . If the change of the player failed in 1991 due to the transfer fee, the club now had the necessary financial means to handle the transfer after reaching the UEFA Cup final . As the absolute dream player of coach Otto Barić, he celebrated a brilliant debut with ten goals in preparation for the season and subsequently formed a strong Croatian block in the team together with Tomislav Kocijan , Dean Računica and Nikola Jurčević . In his debut season, he then celebrated winning the ÖFB Supercup , the championship title and becoming the first Austrian team to enter the Champions League .

The start into the following season was unusually weak for the successful Salzburg team with the failure of Steaua Bucharest in the Champions League qualification and a veritable false start in the league , which led to internal quarrels until the departure of successful coach Barić. Regardless of the problems, Mladenović improved again and scored seven goals in 15 games in the autumn before pressing for a change with Jurčević and Računica due to the departure of Barić. In order to realize the long-awaited change of the Norwegian striker Tore André Flo , club boss Quehenberger then gave his consent for a sale.

As a result, a transfer to Dinamo Zagreb failed because of Salzburg's transfer request, before he surprisingly followed the call of his former coach Josip Kuže and surprisingly moved to Japan to Gamba Osaka for four million shillings . Flo then decided to move to Brann Bergen internally , which meant that Salzburg, with Mladenović, who had become the club's most successful goalscorer with a total of 25 goals in the previous year and a half, had given up the best offensive player and had to end the season without an adequate replacement.

Mladenović, with a rumored annual salary of eight million shillings, top earner at the Japanese underdog at the time, formed a well-balanced midfield duo with Vjekoslav Škrinjar , another old friend from earlier Dinamo times, and once again became the best goalscorer of his team with eleven goals this season. With table rank twelve, however, the club fell short of expectations, whereupon Kuže was replaced by his assistant coach, the Austrian Friedrich Koncilia .

As a result, he went with Gamba into the 1997 season, but was not used due to injury. After the commitment of Nebojša Krupniković , he subsequently received clearance at his own request and moved back to Croatia to Hajduk Split . At Hajduk he played as a safeguard for the offensively oriented Ivan Leko and Josip Skoko for half a year in the top field of the league for the championship title before he moved home to Rijka for the second half of the season, who had slipped into the lower third of the table in the meantime and into the "relegation- Play-Off " had to. After he won this with the club, he ended his playing career at the age of 33.

National team

Mladenović made his debut on October 17, 1990 in Croatia's first independent international match against the USA in the national team . He came into play when the score was 2-0 in minute 58 for the shooter of the first goal, Aljoša Asanović .

As a result, he was always in the extended circle of the national team and scored his first two goals in a friendly against Hungary on May 18, 1994 to the final score of 2: 2.

After the association decided not to qualify for the 1994 World Cup in the USA after its re-entry into FIFA , only friendlies followed over a period of two years, before it played in one game for the first time on October 9, 1994 in the 1996 European Cup qualifier against Lithuania official competition game for Croatia.

Croatia managed to qualify for the finals, which they threatened to miss in a row, as group winners, ahead of Italy . This was preceded by the announcement by coach Miroslav Blažević not to call up a player outside of Europe for the national team. The statement arose from the fact that in the mid-1990s, several Croatian national players, including Mladenović, switched to the J. League in Japan due to princely salaries and thus had to overcome several time zones when traveling to an international match. Blažević also sensed the lack of competition in the weaker league, which would reduce the level of performance of his players.

Regardless of the statement of his national coach, Mladenović moved to Japan anyway and was finally called up for the final squad for the European Championship due to his importance for the team as the only player who was not active in Europe. There he was used in the two preliminary round games against Denmark and Portugal and in the quarter-finals in the 1: 2 defeat against Germany . After the lost game, he ended his national team career after 19 games with three goals.

After the active career

After the end of his playing career, he completed training as a referee , before he switched back to the other side as coach of NK Žminj . From 2002 he worked as a coach at his youth club NK Rijeka, but was dismissed in March 2003 due to a series of defeats.

After a short intermezzo as Rijka's sporting director, coaching stations at the small clubs NK Halubjan Viškovo , NK Cres and most recently NK Orijent Rijeka followed . He is currently without a club.

successes

society

As a player

National team

Participation:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c Mladenovic was always the crowd favorite , Kurier from August 8, 1994 Page: 21 Department: Sport
  2. ^ Entry made to measure for the new Salzburg Croat , Kronen Zeitung of July 4, 1994 page: 30
  3. Is he coming or is he not coming? Andre Flo, the 22-year-old ... , Kronen Zeitung, December 7, 1995 Page: 46
  4. Rudi Quehenberger: “I didn't want to give Mladenovic away!” , Kronen Zeitung of December 4, 1995 page: 33
  5. a b c Eight million reasons for the change in sensation , Kronen Zeitung of December 21, 1995 page: 46
  6. Japan is right next to Tyrol , sports newspaper No. 4 from January 20, 1997, section: football
  7. October 17, 1990 (Croatian)  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. uvijekvjerni.hr, accessed November 9, 2010@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.uvijekvjerni.hr  
  8. A Friendly: Hungary-Croatia 2: 2 hns-cff.hr, accessed on November 9, 2010
  9. A Friendly: Croatia-Lithuania 2: 0 hns-cff.hr, accessed on November 9, 2010
  10. Lokica takes up Rijeka role (English) uefa.com, accessed November 9, 2010