SreÄŤko Katanec
history
| cityofbirth = Ljubljana
| countryofbirth = SFR Yugoslavia
| height =
| position = Defensive midfielder / Centre-back
| youthyears = 1970-1981
| youthclubs = NK Ljubljana
| years = 1981–1984
1985–1986
1986–1988
1988–1989
1989–1994
| clubs = NK Olimpija Ljubljana
Dinamo Zagreb
Partizan Belgrade
VfB Stuttgart
Sampdoria
| caps(goals) = 81 (10)
21 (3)
56 (10)
26 (1)
87 (12)
| currenclub = United Arab Emirates Head Coach
| nationalyears = 1983-1990
1994
| nationalteam = Yugoslavia
Slovenia
| nationalcaps(goals) = 31 (5)
5 (1)
| manageryears = 1998
1998–2002
2003
2006–2009
2009–
| managerclubs = NK Gorica
Slovenia
Olympiacos CFP
Macedonia
United Arab Emirates
}}
}}
SreÄŤko Katanec (; born 16 July 1963 in Ljubljana), is a Slovenian and Yugoslavian former football player and currently the coach of the United Arab Emirates national football team.
Career
SreÄŤko started playing football at the age of seven at NK Ljubljana. In 1981 he went to NK Olimpija Ljubljana, in 1985 to Dinamo Zagreb and next year to Partizan Belgrade and was a Yugoslav champion in 1987. In 1988 he joined VfB Stuttgart. This team reached UEFA Cup finals in 1989 and lost against Diego Maradona's Napoli. He stayed in Germany only one season. In 1989 he signed for Italian Sampdoria and already at his first season there he won European Cup Winners' Cup. In 1991 his Sampdoria won a "Scudetto", next year it reached Champions League finals and lost against FC Barcelona. In 1994 he also won the Coppa Italia with Sampdoria under manager Sven Goran Eriksson.
He was already selected into Yugoslav national team at 1984 European Championship in France, but he has fonder memories of 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles where Yugoslavia team won a bronze medal. He was playing successfully in the qualifying round for 1990 World Cup in Italy so he became the third Slovenian to play at a World Cup where he played three matches of five. Those were the last three caps for Yugoslavia, in altogether 31 matches he scored five goals.
Then he played five more matches (and scored a goal) for Slovenian national team but only one official match. That was a qualifying round for the 1996 European Championship in England, it took place on 7 September 1994 in Maribor against Italy. Soon after this match his contract with Sampdoria expired and he finished his football playing career.
Coaching career
Since 1996 he co-coached Slovenian U-21 team with Drago Kostajnšek. Meanwhile he successfully finished a school for trainers and in 1998 he became a coach of HIT Gorica. But not for a long time as on July 1 of that year he was chosen a Slovenian national team selector.
He led his team very successfully through the qualifying round and managed to qualify to the 2000 European Championship in Belgium and the Netherlands and thus started a football mania in Slovenia. There Slovenia played well, earning draws against FR Yugoslavia and Norway and losing to Spain, which was considered quite successful. Slovenia also managed to qualify to the 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan but this time the team played worse, losing all three matches against Spain, South Africa and Paraguay, but most disappointing was Katanec's huge argument with the team's star player Zlatko ZahoviÄŤ. Because of this he resigned immediately after the World Cup and on 2 November in the same year he was chosen a coach at Olympiakos Pireaus. It is believed that his argument with ZahoviÄŤ played a crucial role as the club also had arguments with ZahoviÄŤ 3 years before. But under Katanec's command Olympiakos played worse than expected and on 7 February 2003 the club's management took a chance and fired him immediately after his criticism of the relations inside the club.
In 2004 he was a serious candidate to become a national team coach of Croatia with a support of Croatian Football Federation. But a lobby of influential coaches and managers strongly opposed him so SreÄŤko decided to quit the candidate procedure and Zlatko KranjÄŤar was chosen instead of him.
On 17 February 2006, Katanec was appointed as Republic of Macedonia's head coach for a two year contract. Following a mixed set of results in the qualifying campaign for World Cup 2010 including a 1-0 win against Scotland and a 4-0 loss to the Netherlands, Katenec resigned from the position on 6 April 2009. A dispute with influential player Goran Pandev was cited by Katanec as the reason for his departure. On 21 June 2009 he was presented as a new head coach of the United Arab Emirates football national team.»Pandev causes Katanec to quit -Channel 4
- Yugoslav First League: 1986-87
- Uefa Cup:
- Serie A: 1990-91
- Coppa Italia: 1993-94
- Supercoppa Italiana: 1991
- Cup Winners' Cup: 1989-90
- European Cup:
|- |1980–81||rowspan="4"|NK Olimpija Ljubljana||rowspan="4"|First League||2||0|||||||||||||||| |- |1981–82||17||0|||||||||||||||| |- |1982–83||29||4|||||||||||||||| |- |1983–84||33||6|||||||||||||||| |- |1984–85||rowspan="2"|Dinamo Zagreb||rowspan="2"|First League||0||0|||||||||||||||| |- |1985–86||21||3|||||||||||||||| |- |1986–87||rowspan="2"|Partizan||rowspan="2"|First League||28||4|||||||||||||||| |- |1987–88||28||6||||||||||||||||
|- |1988–89||Stuttgart||Bundesliga||26||1||||||||||||||||
|- |1989–90||rowspan="5"|Sampdoria||rowspan="5"|Serie A||27||5|||||||||||||||| |- |1990–91||26||2|||||||||||||||| |- |1991–92||26||4|||||||||||||||| |- |1992–93||4||0|||||||||||||||| |- |1993–94||4||1|||||||||||||||| 130||19|||||||||||||||| 26||1|||||||||||||||| 87||12|||||||||||||||| 243||32|||||||||||||||| |}
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