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Coach Ivica Osim: "I can't be happy anymore.
After everything that happened in my home country, there is no more joy«
Photo: via www.imago-images.de / imago images/AFLOSPORT
For him it was the best and the most terrible time at the same time, those nineties, in which the fate of Ivica Osim was decided.
Osim had his greatest successes, he was in sporting heaven, at the same time he experienced hell when war raged in his homeland.
Ivica Osim, who died on Sunday at the age of 80, was the last national coach in Yugoslavia, he was a key witness to the collapse of the state in which he grew up, and as a Bosnian he had to watch his homeland being desecrated.
'I can't be happy anymore.
After everything that happened in my homeland, there is no more joy«, Osim once said.
He was born in Sarajevo, he played for the Yugoslav national team, in 1968 he was called up to the all-star team at the European Championships, his nickname was »Zeljo's bouquet«.
Because he danced around the pitch, because he always kept track of things on the pitch.
Not because he stuck his head in the sand.
Appointment in the coaching job
But Osim found his true vocation as a coach, leading the Yugoslav Olympic team to the bronze medal in Los Angeles in 1984.
His team included experts like VfB professional Srecko Katanec and midfield director Dragan Stojkovic.
Some of them accompanied him when he took over as national coach two years later.
Osim had a talented squad at his disposal when he went to Italy for the 1990 World Cup with high expectations.
Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Dejan Savicevic, Alen Boksic, Davor Suker, Robert Prosinecki, Darko Pancev, a star ensemble, saturated with talent.
And yet all illusions seemed to have vanished in the first game, the Yugoslavs were overrun by a German team that demonstrated from the first minute: a team here wants to be world champions.
Lothar Matthäus' solo run before the 1-0 is football history, as is the picture of Ivica Osim burying his face in his hands on the bench.
And yet the journey continued for both teams: Germany lifted the title, while Yugoslavia made it to the quarter-finals before falling to Diego Maradona's Argentina on penalties.
Osim and his Yugoslavs, matured once again by winning the European Cup from Red Star Belgrade in 1991, were looking to make their feat at the 1992 European Championship.
Then came the war, Yugoslavia was initially excluded from the EM and then no longer existed.
And for Ivica Osim the world collapsed.
When his hometown Sarajevo was shelled by Serbian troops, he resigned from office.
He fought with himself whether he should leave his country or not. The decision was made in 1994.
The manager of Sturm Graz, Heinz Schilcher, who had been under contract with Osim as a player at Racing Straßburg, remembered his colleague and hired him as Graz coach.
And while the war in Bosnia was getting worse, while Osim was thinking about his friends, about his family, while speaking out again and again against the war, at the same time he worked to help Sturm Graz enjoy the most successful years of the club's history.
First, the team around the goalscorer Ivica Vastic was twice runners-up, then two-time cup winner, in 1998 Sturm celebrated the first championship title in his club history.
That's not all: Sturm made it into the group stage of the Champions League three times in a row, and rival RB Salzburg can tell you how difficult it is.
In the 2000/2001 season, Graz finished first in the group phase, an Austrian team as group winners in the Champions League, you have to imagine that.
With results typical of Osim's style: 3-0 against Galatasaray, 0-5 at Glasgow Rangers, 2-0 over Monaco, 0-5 in Monaco, 2-0 against Rangers, 2-2 in Istanbul.
Hop or top, flying flags, there was always something going on at the Schwarzenegger Stadium in Graz.
Osim said: "I'd rather lose than play 0-0."
Legendary monologues
In any case, he loved lecturing on football.
His press conferences were great entertainment, journalists loved listening to him.
Osim liked to launch into monologues in which he linked everything and everything, football and life.
That's why they called him a "soccer wise man" in Austria, a philosopher, and his melancholy always resonated with him.
In the middle of the game analysis, he liked to weave in sentences like: "Money is good luck and bad luck.
Too much is dangerous, nobody wants to work for too little.« Or: »Football is practically the only game where the better team can lose.
Football is very easy, and everything that is easy is also difficult.« The Bosnian Johan Cruijff.
After eight years in Graz, the cooperation between club and coach was exhausted, Osim said goodbye to Japan, where he took over the national team.
But that wasn't his world, he fell out with the media, suffered from the pressure, the stress, in 2007 he suffered a stroke in Tokyo.
He returned to Europe, of course he returned to Graz, where he lived until his death.
There, where he was named Coach of the Century in 2009.
Osim died on Sunday.
On May 1st, exactly on the day when Sturm Graz celebrates the founding of its club in 1909 every year.
When news of Osim's death broke, the celebration was immediately cut short.