Miroslav 'Ciro' Blazevic 1935-2023
The coach of coaches passes on
A permanent part of the 2022 World Cup for me was going through articles from multiple outlets a day throughout Croatia and more on my part and see people attempt to grab a quote from Ciro Blazevic and, without fail, they would get a quite amazingly prickly quote from him about how he was very ill, that he’s not really paying attention to stuff and to leave him alone. When I think of Qatar, Blazevic telling every media outlet about how he’s “full of f**king metastases” is a pretty major part of it for me. Even up to the very end, Blazevic had a quote for all occasions and a turn of phrase that would stick with you.
Blazevic had been diagnosed with prostate cancer for some time (and this was not his first time with it as this article that is entirely about his prostate and his sex life shows in great detail) and, as his quotes from Qatar show, it was a fight against medicine’s greatest antagonist that would eventually get the better of him. With Blazevic goes perhaps an entire era - he is one of the last major figures of his generation to pass away and, of the legendary coaches of the Yugoslav era, is the last of those to pass after the likes of Tomislav Ivic, Milan Miljanic, Branko Stankovic, Ivica Osim, Vujadin Boskov and many more. Blazevic may have not been as outright good as some of those names, but his achievements and his personality outshone many if not all of his contemporaries to become one of football’s immortal personalities.
Miroslav Blazevic died two days before his 88th birthday, being born to a Bosnian Croat family in Travnik in 1935. Two of his brothers fought in World War Two on the side of Ustase forces and were killed in battles with Partisans. Miroslav fought battles himself against local children who nicknamed him Ciro on the basis that he shared a speech impediment with a ventriloquist’s puppet called Cira the local children saw in a travelling show. Blazevic would even make an attempt to get called Blaz but was successful enough to be seen in Zagreb by locals from Travnik who spread the name Ciro to everyone - he was stuck with it.
In his youth, Blazevic was a talented cross-country skier becoming national youth champion in the 10k in 1952 as part of the local region’s selection (after a career in the church didn’t pan out) and while part of the youth team of local club NK Bratstvo, who had fudged his date of birth on documents to allow him to play football sooner (adding an extra two years to his age). His playing career was low key - being good enough to be picked up by Dinamo Zagreb but mainly making his name as a player bouncing between the lower end of the First League and higher end of the Second League at Lokomotiva, Sarajevo and, for his longest association, Rijeka. Hitting 27 and having suffered a cruciate injury that made clubs in Yugoslavia wary of him (spending part of his recovery shadowing legendary player and coach Aleksandar Tirnanic), he would move to Switzerland and join Sion before retiring at 31 having already begun the process of starting his coaching career at Vevey.
When taking them over, he began as a player coach in the fourth tier of Swiss football. When he left, they were on the brink of promotion to the second and this brought to national attention and brought him to the attention of FC Sion.
Sion had already had a Yugoslav coach with player-manager Lav Mantula, who was part of the 1954 Yugoslavian World Cup squad. Mantula had recommended Blazevic come to Switzerland as a player in the first place, telling him to shave two years from his age to get more interest at that point. Blazevic took Sion over after a period of flux after the club dropped into the second tier and stayed for five years, taking the club back into the top flight and to their second major trophy winning the 1974 Swiss Cup. This would lead to an interim spell as Swiss coach after Rene Hussy left the role before Blazevic took over at Lausanne for a creditable period at a fading side. Departing Lausanne, he would return to Yugoslavia and, for many, that is where his journey really began - taking over at Rijeka.
The Heroes of 1982
In one season at Rijeka, Blazevic did enough to get attention in cup competitions - while only finishing tenth in the First League, Rijeka reached the Balkans Cup final and also the Quarter-Final stage of the Cup Winners Cup. It brought attention and a bit of a saga from another club - Dinamo Zagreb. Rijeka took it badly and even went to claim that they actually fired Blazevic for poor and unprofessional performance but Dinamo did things the right way.
As wild as it may seem now with them having been so dominant domestically for so long, Dinamo were in the doldrums. Their last league win was in the Fifties and the generation that had won European honours in the Fairs Cup had never quite made it in the league. For most of the time, Dinamo were a side who flirted with success but were nearly men. At the end of 1980, they weren’t in a great state with key players about to depart for their mandatory military service and Blazevic turning over the offer from the club in his head. His opening speech to players on arriving detailed this but stated there were only two reasons he would take the job - either he didn’t have one or he believed in the players. The first was impossible to happen so it must be the latter.
In a way, that perfectly encapsulates Blazevic - in spite of his own claims that he invented 3-5-2 or was revolutionary in one way or another (he also claimed that he invented Total Football at Sion before the Dutch started it), the only really revolutionary thing Blazevic had was his man-management and charisma. His Dinamo would play 3-5-2 but he was hardly wedded to it and changed formation to fit the squad - it would work in Yugoslavia not because it was refined and perfected but because no-one else did it, because no other manager was flexible enough to combat it and because no-one could make people believe like Blazevic.
Blazevic immediately got to work swapping players roles around and, in doing so, bringing new heights out of Marko Mlinaric, as a creator, and the likes of Stjepan Deveric, Snjesko Cerin and Velimir Zajec. With Blazevic as a lightning rod, cutting about on the touchline with a cigarette in hand wearing a white scarf (an affectation he stated he borrowed from actor Charles Boyer), Dinamo turned it around in his first half season from finishing the Autumn in 14th to reaching 5th by the end of the season.
What Dinamo achieved as Blazevic broke the club’s title drought in 81/82 is, along with the achievements of Hajduk’s golden team of the early 1950s, the crowning achievement of Croatian domestic football. Hajduk’s generations of the 70s may have won more, but this Dinamo generation is remembered with far more in the way of affection and reverence. This was a side that had come close before, full of gifted players and Blazevic was simply the man who brought them from being a group that could to a group that did. Players moved around the pitch to fit - Bracun was a striker and Blazevic made him a right winger, Ismet Hadzic went from full-back to midfielder, Marko Mlinaric went from right footed to left footed. Players came in and out - Marijan Vlak was promoted to the side as was Zvjezdan Cvetkovic. The missing piece was Cico Kranjcar who came back to the side after his military service for the second half of the 81/82 season. Blazevic created a relaxed atmosphere where everyone knew their role and where they were given accountabilities for their behaviours to keep to it.
When the events came where Dinamo could have folded, such as a trip to Skopje in the spring that turned into a contest of who could kick Kranjcar the hardest, they adapted and gritted out a 3-0 win over a smaller side where they would have previously folded against. They secured the title after a loss in Nis where Osijek beat Zvezda at the same time to secure Dinamo’s title for them - Blazevic would later say the celebrations for this were the first time he ever got drunk. His Dinamo side would go on to win the cup the following season before he returned to Switzerland and to Grasshopper Zurich and picking up a league title with them also but departing after results fell away in his second term.
This would be followed by a short but eventful stay at FK Prishtina. At that point, they had a fabulously talented side that had just reached the top flight, most notably led by internationals Fadil Vokrri and Zoran Batrovic, but were struggling to stay in the league. 13 points in 9 games later, and Prishtina were well clear. Blazevic would depart the club and rejoin Dinamo Zagreb.
The Decision
Undoubtedly the most famous thing that happened in that second spell at Dinamo was not on the pitch but relating to the future of youth prospect Robert Prosinecki. When Prosinecki was beginning to break through at Dinamo, his father went up to Blazevic and asked for a full contract. Blazevic refused, stating he would eat his coaching diplomas were Prosinecki ever to make it as a player and Prosinecki promptly turned up in Crvena Zvezda’s hotel on an away day, asked for a trial, moved to Belgrade on a free and the rest is history. Relations between Prosinecki and Blazevic would ebb and flow throughout Prosinecki’s career, making up for much of the time Blazevic would manage the national team but it’s fair to note the trust was never quite there, as the 98 semi-final would suggest.
Similar happened to Sinisa Mihajlovic - brought into the club on trial and even playing a friendly but Blazevic just not seeing enough in him to want to sign him joking after signing Radmilo Mihajlovic from Zeljeznicar (no relation) that two Mihajlovic’s would be too much for Dinamo and castigating Sinisa for refusing to cut his hair (and Sinisa Mihajlovic’s late 80s hair was frankly quite magnificent).
When one’s reign at a club is defined by players you don’t sign (and, to be fair to Blazevic here, his preferred options over both of Boban and Haris Skoro were hardly bad), it is fair to assume that that spell at the club was not especially notable and that was very much the case in Blazevic’s second spell at the club before departing for Nantes.
France 88 to France 98
Blazevic’s time at Nantes was, much like his time at Grasshopper, initially creditable before falling away a bit. Perhaps the most notable outcome for it was that he would find himself accused of match fixing after being caught up in Affaire VA-OM (Marseille’s fixes). In 1995, he would spend 17 days in the Luyines prison while being questioned. He would eventually be released on bail and the accusations eventually disappeared as aspects of them didn’t stand up to scrutiny, but this was not before Blazevic began throwing a few accusations himself in various directions - stating that he played a part in diverting money towards FK Sarajevo as part of Marseille’s purchase of Dragan Stojkovic and stating that Hajduk had taken a dive in a UEFA Cup tie against Bordeaux in the early 1980s.
After Nantes would come a single season at PAOK after rejecting the offer to become minister of sport for Franjo Tudjman’s new government but would become close with Tudjman through the full process of independence, joining the HDZ and building that relationship through a third period managing Dinamo (then Croatia Zagreb) winning a title and then a Cup before seeking to leave due to a European ban and finding himself appointed as national team manager to replace Vlatko Markovic.
He initially dual-roled Dinamo and Croatia before taking the Vatreni on full-time as competitive games began. Blazevic himself would miss their third Euro 96 qualifier serving a UEFA touchline ban stemming from the incident that led to Dinamo’s European ban, with Tomislav Ivic stepping in as a replacement for the night.
Euro 96 would end with Croatia having qualified past Italy before being knocked out by Germany in the Quarter Finals stage, a resumption of the annoying German habit of always being responsible for Balkan knockouts that happened throughout the Yugoslav era. Blazevic resigned at the end of the tournament before Tudjman intervened to convince him to stay. Tudjman’s faith in Blazevic would be vindicated as Blazevic crafted the squad into the Bronze Generation of France 98, a story covered many times before but the second crowning achievement of his career - Dinamo 82 and France 98.
After the legend
Given the sheer scale of Blazevic’s achievements, it’s easy to look at the remainder of his career as perhaps little more than a post-script. His time at Croatia ended in 2000 after his friendship for Tudjman deepened and, with Tudjman’s death, Blazevic fell out of love with the HDZ and began being caught up in more political concerns. His career after this would broadly fall into two buckets - extended spells and very short ones. He would spend two years managing Iran, missing the World Cup in the intercontinental playoff after losing to Iran.
He returned to Croatia for a short spell at Osijek to get them out of trouble, another season at Dinamo where he would win a title before butting heads with the new man setting the direction at Maksimir in Zdravko Mamic, spending a couple of months at NK Mura in Slovenia that would be beset by financial issues at the club and a falling out with players and then an extended one at Varteks Varazdin, where he would help a young Zlatko Dalic in his early coaching career.
He would leave there to fulfil a long held ambition in taking over at Hajduk. Fans were unhappy given Blazevic’s association with Dinamo among other controversies. It would go even worse than any predictions could have thought - an 8-0 aggregate European loss to Debrecen would be the icing on the cake of consistently poor domestic results and would be gone within two months. He would go back to Switzerland to try and fail to save Neuchatel Xamax from relegation before two seasons at NK Zagreb - the first a great success, the second far less so after the club sold a large cohort of players.
This would lead to his last prominent role - managing Bosnia. He took over from Meho Kodro, who had basically gone on strike after the FA arranged post-season friendlies without his knowledge or approval (a trend of troubling NFSBIH decisions around friendlies - and other things! - that continues to this day). Blazevic, simply, had to get everyone back on side and willing to play for the side in spite of the large amount of water under the bridge.
It would be a spell far better in hindsight than at the time - Blazevic was given an impossible task, not least because fans were well aware of his political sympathies that were understandably controversial in Bosnia. Bosnia were in an unenviable group - put in with European Champions Spain along with Turkey and Belgium - yet Blazevic was able to charm the press right up to the point that Bosnia lost their eventual playoff against Portugal. Much like with Prosinecki, Blazevic fell out with the creative force of the side in Zvjezdan Misimovic - Blazevic would openly accuse Misimovic of faking injury to sabotage Bosnia on the direct instructions of Milorad Dodik, then Prime Minister of the Republika Srpska (Bosnia’s Serbian region). However, take away the nonsense and Blazevic’s spell had seen Edin Dzeko become a mainstay of the squad along with Miralem Pjanic and would also convince Asmir Begovic to choose to represent the nation - putting in place the foundations of qualification for the 2014 World Cup, although few knew it in the heat of the emotions after the bust up with Misimovic.
His career would round off with a season in China at Shanghai Shenhua, a few months in Iran at Mes Kerman, a failed effort to save NK Zagreb from relegation, a successful short role for a promotion tilt at Sloboda Tuzla before his career would end with his last role aged 81 at a near bankrupt Zadar.
The legacy
Blazevic was not one of football’s great managers. He was not a revolutionary. He would probably tell you very differently but with tongue firmly in cheek.
But as a pragmatist, a gambler and a motivator, there have been few better. His work at Dinamo Zagreb in his first incredible achievement showed it to it’s very peak - taking over a team of nearly-men, taking chances on moving players into new roles to get what he felt would be their best and talking them up to make them believe they could.
And they did.
He would find himself in a similar situation at Croatia - taking a group of undeniably talented players deep into the Euros and the World Cup on the first time they had ever had a chance to play in either. With the extra time to do the research club management didn’t offer, he made his side ultra-prepared with a heady mix of research and bluffing to get his side in the right state of mind to run through walls for him.
And they did.
Blazevic wasn’t one of football’s best managers. But twice in his career, he showed an incredible ability to pick the situation where he was the best manager for that job, for that group of players and for that point in time. That was the incredible talent he had. Allied with a natural flair and quotability that gave him a deserved high profile, he created two of the defining moments of Croatian footballing history, which is at least one more memory than most managers, even those more revolutionary or talented, ever are able to achieve. He picked his situations - situations where players could deliver magical memories for fans (after all, how many managers have picked so many short runs as he did at Osijek or Prishtina), situations of great pressure, situations against the odds, situations where the players could deliver it all if they gave it all.
And they did. That was Ciro Blazevic’s greatest talent.