Feint, volley, France...

In the second year of his term as the president of the Crvena zvezda football club, Dragan Stojković was faced with great trials, after the infamous participation in European cups, the sale of the championship team and the flight of coach Bajević, who was supposed to be the basis of the future - again - European Red Star. The credit he earned by playing football in an unrepeatable way from Pasi Poljana in Nis, through Belgrade to the world's biggest stadiums, is crowned with every hint of failure that the Serbian media presents as a disaster of national proportions. In order to stay in the place that has been associated with the name of Dragan Džajić for so long, the fifth "Zvezdina zvezda" will have to repeat some of the best moves from the field that launched him into the orbit of the greatest footballers this country has ever had.

Things didn't always go smoothly for Stojković even when he was on the field, and things suddenly got worse when he moved to the "armchair". His balance at the head of the shaky and semi-virtual football association of the joint state of Serbs and Montenegrins, marked by the never-explained death of general secretary Branko Bulatović, numerous irregularities in the domestic championship ("We failed to deal with irregularities", Stojković will admit at the end of his term), the inability to prevent violence in stadiums in the rare matches where there were spectators, poor results in World Cup qualifiers in Japan and Korea 2002 and EP in Portugal in 2004. Football and the organization that takes care of his health drowned in the general "social greyness", the much-desired recovery and changes did not happen even under the leadership of Pixi Stojković, a man who had all the possible support of the public, if such a thing exists.

STAR ZVEZDA: However, before we dive into the events in the "foramina" that were previously discussed in "Vremen", we will return a decade earlier to the Čair stadium in Niš, where Stojković played, way back in 1981, in the first team of the team that played solid football, so solid that in the UEFA Cup, in the season when Pixi made his debut, the team reached the semi-finals, where they were defeated by the German HSV. One of the greatest football players of all time, Franz Beckenbauer, ended his career in the team from Hamburg, and probably part of that great aura passed on to the super-talented kid Stojković. In order to be great, you have to be in the company of the great, is the motto that has followed Pixie since the beginning of his career. His debut in the Yugoslav national team against France in 1983 will bring him a meeting with another great - Michel Platini. At the beginning of the eighties, the French had a large national team led by ten Juventus players, and Pixi immediately scored a goal in his first appearance and hinted at "great possibilities". His first competition was again related to Platini - the European Championship in France brought the hosts their first title, the Danes exploded, and the Yugoslavian national team in 1984 passed as a "thorn in the side" and returned home first. Stojković will shed tears during the penalty shootout in the game with France (due to the death of the national team's doctor) a few seasons later. In the same year, the young Pixies will lead the SFRY Olympic team at the soccer tournament in Los Angeles, from which they will bring bronze.

At the time when he moved to Crvena zvezda in 1986, at the age of twenty-two, Stojković was the best player in SFRY and the biggest football star in general. The big four fought for him, but Džajić, another football legend, managed to bring him to Ljutice Bogdan for a sum that was never published, but everyone knew it was an absolute record. From the first day at Zvezda, it was clear that Stojković would be the main player, that he had a special position and that after Pižon Petrović, who left for Arsenal three seasons earlier, he would be the new "Star of Zvezda". For four seasons spent at Zvezda, Stojković will establish the status of the greatest football star of the then common country and one of the best players in Europe. What he lacked was more success with the national team and with the club on the international stage, which will lead to his football quality not being embodied in trophies. He will play 120 games for Zvezda in four seasons and will score 48 times. In the red and white jersey, he will be famous for his goals against Milan in the 1988/89 season, which increased his fame, but were not enough for the club to advance. He scored spectacular goals for Partizan: one from a corner and one from half of the pitch, which was disallowed for some reason. A midfielder who looked more towards the opposition's goal than his own, he had a fantastic overview of the game which allowed him to control the space of the football field in a way that only players with a special talent possess. At the same time, most of the goals he scored were spectacular, similar to what David Beckham did in the last decade, for example. Stojković was the embodiment of combativeness and readiness, but at the same time he was fully aware of his qualities. His conflict with coach Branko Stanković, known by the nickname Ambassador, in the season in which Zvezda was relegated from Milan is famous. Stanković insisted that the jersey with number ten should belong to Boško Đurovski, captain of Zvezda, and that Stojković should take the jersey with number seven. After a series of fights and Pixi's refusal to obey the coach's will, Stanković had to give in, but in the middle of the season he left the position of coach, partly because of this conflict, partly because of the club's worst ranking in history. Šekularac arrived as coach and Zvezda, led by the incredible Stojković, was second at the end of the season, although they ended the half-season in a place for relegation from the league.

The arrival of Stojković was, in a way, the beginning of the "European Star project", which will have its peak in the 1990/91 season, when the European and world championship titles were won. What Džajić failed to do, first as a player and later as the first man of the club in the late eighties (with the generation in which Petrović Pižon, Miloš Šestić and Dušan Savić played), happened in the early nineties, but Stojković will not participate directly in that. After his arrival, Robert Prosinečki, the best young player in the world at the time, Dejan Savićević, Darko Pančev and Miodrag Belodedić were brought to the club. That team will in the 1989/90 season. win the title superiorly, and Stojković will go to Olympique from Marseille after his famous performance at the World Cup in Italy in the same summer.

Before that, Pixi scored two goals that will strengthen his status as a great: first in the qualifiers for the WC, again against France, in Belgrade he scored the famous volley goal that will launch Yugoslavia to the championship, and then in the round of 16 of the WC against Spain to score, from the same position, the tying anthological goal after an unrepeatable feint. Just those two moves, and Pixi had quite a few of them in his career, would be enough for someone to take the title of master of football, if one can and should talk about one game in that way. After all, extraordinary moves and combativeness are what marked Pixie's entire activity so far.

ZA LIFE STREET I MONUMENT: When in the fall of 1990 he appeared in the white jersey of the Olympic team at the Veledrom stadium, in the city that will be celebrated by Jean-Pierre Paine and later Zinedine Zidane, Stojković was at the very top. He was only 25 years old, he had respectable experience, the status of a European football star, he was rich and he arrived at a club that had a president with the greatest possible ambitions. The start in France was spectacular and Stojković immediately became the team's leading player. At the same time, his Star set out to conquer Europe. Happiness lasted for a few months and then a knee injury occurred, which meant the beginning of Golgotha ​​for Stojković. A few months after the greatest achievements, the continuation of his career was called into question. From the field, Stojković moved to the hospital, under the knife, for therapy and an attempt to return to the stadium as soon as possible. For four seasons in Marseille, which are related to the greatest successes of that team, Stojković will be lost to football. He showed his character in the final of the Champions Cup in which Olympique and Zvezda played when he did not listen to the coach's request to take a penalty against his former team. Zvezda took the title and disbanded after two years, and Marseille celebrated in 1993, finally, but Stojković was not an important part of that team.

At times when his future career was in question, a Frenchman was again important for Stojković. In the summer of 1994, Arsene Wenger, a guest coach in Japan, brought Stojković to Nagoya (Grampus Eight), where one of the European giants, Gary Lineker, was already counting his last football days. That invitation proved to be a lifesaver for Stojković, who would spend seven seasons in Nagoya and become the biggest foreign "legend" in Japan. And again, Pixie became famous with incredible goals, dribbling and passing "over half the field", he left such an impression that he got a street in that Japanese city, a monument was erected to him and one of the entrances to the stadium in Nagoya bears his name. However, Japan is far away, there was a war here, and Stojković somehow disappeared from the public's view, whose favorite he was.

In the second half of the 1992s, after the sanctions, the FR Yugoslavia national team returned to the world football scene, from which it was forcibly expelled before the start of the European Championship in Sweden in 1998. The leader of that generation was Stojković, whose abilities were quite doubtful, but he showed with his authority and skill on the field why he is one of the greatest. With him as captain, the national team qualified for the World Cup in France in 2000 and the European Championship in the Netherlands in 84. In the end, Stojković played 15 games for two Yugoslavias, scoring XNUMX goals. He was one game short of catching up with Dragan Džajić, so the bazaar said that he didn't do it on purpose so as not to offend his "predecessor". If there were no sanctions, Stojković would have far surpassed Džajić and would have at least one more big competition in his legs.

"SOMETHING EUROPEAN": Immediately after the "October changes" in 2000, Stojković became the first man of the football organization, succeeding the eternal Miljan Miljanić in that position. Stojković handled the matter of getting to that position in his own way by pushing Velibor Vasović out of the race, a man who during the time when he led Crvena Zvezda significantly contributed to Stojković's inauguration in "Zvezda Zvezda". The end of the mandate at the head of the football organization coincided with personnel changes in Crvena Zvezda, from which Dragan Džajić retired in the fall of 2004. In the interim period, the club was led by the lawyers of the Hague defendants, Milan Vujin and Miša Marinković. In the summer of 2005, Stojković became the president of FC CZ, formed a new administration and brought the famous Italian Walter Zenga to the position of coach of the first team, which at the beginning of his term brought him new favor from the public. With Stojković and Zenga at the helm, Zvezda is again "in fashion" in the way it was from its foundation until it "collapsed" in the mid-nineties of the last century. Pixi returned his teammates Mrkela, Stojanović, Jugović, Vasilijević, big sponsor Toyota to the management and the club, and in the first season he returned the title and the cup.

The resulting success on the home field did not follow the success in the club's business, partly because of inherited debts, partly because of unconsolidated management. At least two large companies "dropped" from the CZ Board of Directors after "disagreements" with Stojković, which did not bring him support in the public. The media couldn't wait to ask how Pixie runs the club, and when he sold seven first-team players last summer, it seemed that no one could remember who that man was and what he had achieved in his career. Although he is often "in the media", Stojković actually channeled the way information from the club's administration was released, which only opened up a new space for criticism by his opponents. The last bad results and the poor performance of the team, despite the leading place in the championship, which is perhaps more regular than before, but certainly the weakest in the last fifteen years, contributed to increasing the pressure on Stojković, which comes from circles that are interested in reducing his "power" and their representatives get a place in the administration. The public was once again overwhelmed with stories about the "arrival of Delta", about ways of potential privatization of the club and the like. After Bajevic's escape, Zvezda's coaches were Camacho and Hector Cooper.

Stojković once again, with the strength of his character, calmed the rumors. He went to France to play half an hour at a charity match organized by Ronaldo and Zidane, UN Goodwill Ambassadors, and returned to support his former captain Boško Đurovski. He calmed down the fans, defended himself from the local tycoons, the team uses the break in the championship to further consolidate before the finish of the championship. The announcement of the session of the CZ Board of Directors was full of rumors about major changes, but nothing spectacular happened. Two tax collectors and a former judge were brought. The representatives of Mittal, one of the largest steel processing and production companies in the world (present in Macedonia and Bulgaria), were presented with the possibility of investing in the club. Zdravko Čolić will be able to hold a concert at the stadium in July. Perhaps this contributes to the improvement of the overall financial situation, which is said to be finally favorable, that is, the club was operating with a profit.

If the title is defended, Stojković will probably remain at the head of Red Star and his position will be even stronger, so maybe he will buy himself another year to try to make the club something "European". If this does not happen, it is quite possible that he will move to his other homeland, to the land of Gauls and Roosters. It is certain, as football players say, that he will not give up easily and that he is not without several options.

Dribbling, passing, volleying, France...