P24 1.70 P.MARKA HR. SPORT ĆIRO BLAŽEVIĆ

Miroslav Ćiro Blažević Croatia had many brilliant football experts, and Miroslav Blažević is definitely amongst the most prominent. Ćiro was and is the one and only, outstanding, coach who was much more. Always friendly towards everybody, he was and is a man of the people who, even at his very top, never turned anybody down. With Ćiro Blažević nothing was ordinary, and it all started with the day of his birth. Even though he was born on 9 February 1935 in Dolac na Lašvi in the municipality Travnik in today's Bosnia and Herzegovina, his father Mato only managed to get to the registry office a day later, so his birthday is registered on 10 February. He was a talented football player, he played for the Zagreb clubs Dinamo and Lokomotiva, and then for Sarajevo and Rijeka, in 1963 he transferred to the Swiss club Sion. His transfer abroad was crucial because he mastered the coaching craft in Switzerland which granted him his prominent career. He came back to his homeland in 1979 in the club Rijeka, and his return to Maksimir to the club Dinamo in 1980 marked a crucial moment in his career. He made his mark two years later when he had risen the fallen Zagreb giant all the way to the top and won the 1982 Yugoslav Cup – for the first time after long 24 years of waiting. Ćiro Blažević led the games with a white scarf around his neck and this fashion accessory will remain as an eternal symbol of Dinamo's great title. After that, his active coaching career lasted more than three decades and wherever he worked, he made his mark. But the period between 1994 and 2000, when he led the Croatian national team, is Blažević's life's work. The first coach who led the chosen Croatian team in a grand tournament of the European Championship and in 1996 reached the quarter-finals in England. Two years later, in the France World Cup, he managed to achieve something that nobody in Croatia thought could be done. Under his leadership the Croatian team made the miracle of all miracles – they won third place in the World Cup, and he became the coach of all coaches. Under his leadership, Croatia became a renowned football giant that, two decades later, led by his student Zlatko Dalić, went even a step further in the 2018 Mundial in Russia and won silver. To that generation, Ćiro and his boys from the France Cup of '98 were their idols and proved that even a tiny Croatia is capable of achieving greatness. Ćiro Blažević left us on 8 March 2023 after numerous successful battles, but his last, the one with the illness, he lost. He left a great void in the hearts of those who knew him, but also in the hearts of many others who for decades could enjoy his uniqueness. A football great whose memory will never fade. Damir Dobrinić, editor and journalist of Sportske novosti (Sports News)