Velibor Vasović

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Velibor Vasović
Velibor Vasovic.jpg
Velibor Vasovic 1972
Personnel
birthday October 3, 1939
place of birth Požarevac ,  Kingdom of Yugoslavia
date of death March 4, 2002
Place of death Belgrade ,  Yugoslavia
position Libero
Juniors
Years station
1954-1958 FK Partizan
Men's
Years station Games (goals) 1
1958-1963 FK Partizan 88 (6)
1963-1964 FK Red Star Belgrade 13 (0)
1964-1966 FK Partizan 40 (4)
1966-1971 Ajax Amsterdam 145 (13)
National team
Years selection Games (goals)
1961-1966 Yugoslavia 32 (2)
Stations as a trainer
Years station
1971-1973 FK Partizan
1974-1975 Prolet Zrenjanin
1975-1976 Angers SCO
1976-1977 Paris Saint-Germain
1978-1979 Paris Saint-Germain
1983 Ethnikos Piraeus
1986-1988 FK Red Star Belgrade
1989 AC Bellinzona
1 Only league games are given.

Velibor Vasović , Serbian - Cyrillic Велибор Васовић , (born October 3, 1939 in Požarevac , Kingdom of Yugoslavia , † March 4, 2002 in Belgrade ), was a Yugoslav football player and coach . As a player, he was part of the successful teams of FK Partizan Belgrade and Ajax Amsterdam in the 1960s to the early 1970s. As a trainer, he was mainly active in Yugoslavia and France and was champion in 1988 with the Belgrade club FK Red Star .

Life

Velibor Vasović was born the youngest of nine children. His later training took place in Belgrade where he joined the top club FK Partizan at the age of 15 . From 1958 he was part of the combat team and won three national championship titles in a row between 1961 and 1963.

Debut in the national team

Wesko , as he was often called, made his debut in the Yugoslav national football team in June 1961 , but did not make it into the squad that was quite successful at the 1962 World Cup . At the end of 1962 and beginning of 1963 he was one of the team that tried to qualify for the 1964 European Championship . Yugoslavia failed in the round of 16 to Sweden after the team had eliminated Belgium with the help of a winner from Vasović.

At the end of the 1962/63 season, his move to Partizan's big rival, FK Red Star, for which, according to rumors at the time, he was paid 5,000,000 dinars - which in socialist Yugoslavia at that time, the equivalent of two Mercedes-Benz - caused a stir . Vehicles was. Red Star wins the championship and cup double that season.

The following season he was back for Partizan on the ball and he won his fifth championship in a row with the club. In 1964 and 1965 Vasović took part with Yugoslavia in qualifying for the 1966 World Cup, but failed there against France.

In the season 1965/66 Partizan disappointed in the league and was only eleventh. However, Partizan's performances in the European Cup caused a stir . The team trained by Abdullah Gegiç overcame French champions FC Nantes and Werder Bremen from Germany on their way to the final . In the quarterfinals, after a 4-1 defeat in the first leg at Sparta Prague , they managed to catch up with a 5-0 home win. In the semifinals, the English champions Manchester United were eliminated. Partizan became the first Eastern European team to reach the final of this competition. There the record winner of the tournament, Real Madrid, awaited in the Heysel Stadium in Brussels . Captain Vasović was able to order the opening goal for Partizan in the 55th minute with a header. Real turned the game around in the last 15 minutes and won 2-1.

In 1966 Vasović also played his 32nd and last international match. Overall, he scored two goals, but also an own goal.

Success in Amsterdam

Vasović then moved to the new Dutch champions Ajax Amsterdam , where coach Rinus Michels was about to help young star Johan Cruyff build a successful team with a new formative style of play, Total Football . Vasović, soon nicknamed Vasco , formed the backbone of the defense with his experience. In 1967 the Amsterdam Football Club not only managed to defend their title, but also won the double with the cup. In the European Cup, Ajax achieved a sensational success when Liverpool FC were kept at a distance of 5: 1/2: 2 in the round of 16 . In the quarter-finals, however, came out against Dukla Prague with a narrow result. In 1968 Vasović celebrated his third title win in the second year with the renewed defense of the national championship title - but the European Cup was disappointing: Ajax was eliminated in the first round, albeit narrowly, against the old champions of the Real Madrid competition. In 1969 there was no trophy, but Ajax stepped into the European limelight for the first time when they made it to the European Cup final in 1969 . AC Milan was waiting there with its stars Karl-Heinz Schnellinger , Giovanni Trapattoni and midfield conductor Gianni Rivera . The young Dutch could not do much to counter the experience of the 1963 European Cup winners and clearly lost 4-1 in front of just 32,000 spectators at the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu in Madrid, with Vasović short-term shortening to 2-1 with a penalty at the beginning of the second half.

In the 1969/70 season, Ajax advanced to the semi-finals of the UEFA Cup predecessor Messestädte-Pokal , but was defeated there by the eventual winner Arsenal from London. But more important was the renewed win of the double in the Netherlands, with which the club qualified again for the European Cup. In 1970/71 Ajax eliminated Celtic Glasgow , which was European Cup winner itself in 1967, and Atlético Madrid in this competition . Vasović was the head of the world class defense with Ruud Krol and Wim Suurbier as full-backs and Barry Hulshoff as pre-stopper, who was notorious for her offside trap .

Panathinaikos AO from Greece , which was financed by Aristotle Onassis and trained by Ferenc Puskás , waited for the final, which was held this time at Wembley Stadium in London . In front of around 85,000 spectators, Ajax won 2-0 and became the second Dutch club to win this valuable trophy in succession to SC Feijenoord from Rotterdam. As the club's first foreign captain, it was Vasović who was the first Ajaciede to proudly raise the European Cup.

At the national level, the success was limited to winning the cup, but whether the win at Wembley, in the worst case, was to be assessed as a blemish. This was both the climax and the end of Velibor Vasović's playing career. The player, who has long suffered from asthma , decided after just eleven years of playing as a professional to hang up his cleats forever. The German Horst Blankenburg should follow him at Ajax in the defense center.

Coach years

Immediately after leaving as a player, Vasović took up his coaching career at his home club Partizan. Over the next two years he was fifth and fourth in the league.

After a year off, he trained for one season from 1974 for the lower-class club Proleter Zrenjanin . Then he moves on to France to Angers SCO and leads the relegated from the previous season back to the first division. He then received an engagement with the Paris Saint-Germain capital club . Vasović does not succeed in his two terms in office until 1979 to improve the situation in the club, which is bobbing in the lower half of the table.

After a further break, he hired briefly in 1984 with the then Greek first division club Ethnikos Piraeus , who once populated the anonymous midfield of the table.

In 1986 he returned to Yugoslavia, where he took over the coaching position at the top club Red Star . He led the club in 1988 with top players like Dragan Stojković and Bora Cvetković to the first championship in four years and was thus instrumental in the development of the team that should win the 1991 European and World Cup.

In 1989 he was still active in Switzerland at AC Bellinzona from January to November and then ended his coaching career.

Later years

In the 1990s he worked as a lawyer in Belgrade, but was also known as a critic of the association. In October 2000, a few days after the fall of the head of state Slobodan Milošević , he and some assistants broke into the offices of the Serbian Football Association. It remained unclear what the purpose was. It was suspected that he was interested in becoming the association president.

Velibor Vasović died of heart failure in 2002. He was married twice and had two sons from his first marriage.

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Commons : Velibor Vasović  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Vasović, Velibor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Yugoslav soccer player and coach
DATE OF BIRTH October 3, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Požarevac , Kingdom of Yugoslavia
DATE OF DEATH March 4, 2002
Place of death Belgrade