Yugoslavia return strongly from wilderness

It was all the more painful for the Yugoslavs as they had a generation of outstanding players reaching their peak, robbed of a chance to fulfil their potential.

Yugoslavia reached the last eight of the 1990 World Cup finals in Italy before falling to Argentina and the country’s top club side, Red Star Belgrade, won the European Cup in 1991.

But that Red Star side, and that of rivals partisan Belgrade, was decimated by a mass exodus of players to western countries, following the outbreak of war.

When the sports sanctions were lifted in December 1994, newly-appointed managerSlobodan Santrac had to start from scratch.

Just days after Santac took over, his side, made up entirely of players based abroad, lost friendlies to Brazil and Argentina.

But the reclusive and soft-spoken Santrac stuck to his guns. Despite the difficulties, Santrac’s side finished second behind Spain in one of the toughest qualifying groups. The campaign began with a 3-1 home win over Faroe Islands in April 1996, followed by a 6-0 home win over Malta, and an 8-1 win in the Faroes.

The first real test was passed with a 1-0 home victory over Euro ’96 runners-up, the Czech Republic. The winner came from Real Madrid’s Predrag Mijatovic with inspired assistance from Dragan Stojkovic. A 2-0 away defeat to Spain effectively ended all hopes of finishing top of the group, but a 2-1 win over the Czechs in Prague in April 1997, thanks to a late goal from substitute Savo Milosevic, gave Santrac’s side a great chance of making the play-off spot.

A 2-0 home win over a tough Slovakia side was followed by ahard-earned 1-1 draw in Bratislava, clinching second place.

It was in the play-offs when Yugoslavia displayed their great firepower, sending out a 12-goal warning to the rest of the world.

Hungary were hammered 7-1 in Budapest, with strikers Mijatovic and Dejan Savicevic in stunning form. The return game in Belgrade was won 5-0 and Yugslavia were back in soccer’s elite. The bright side of that situation is that Santrac has been able to test the talent of emerging stars, such as Red Star’s outstanding teenage mid-fielder Dejan Stankovic.

A second-string side lost 3-1 to Argentina in February, while stronger line-ups defeated Tunisia 3-0 in January and drew 0-0 with Colombia in March. In April, Stankovic showed his talent with two headed goals in a 3-1 win over South Korea.

Prior to qualification, critics claimed the side was weak in defence, but the performances of Sampdoria’s Sinisa Mihajlovic, Celta Vigo’s Goran Djorovic and Valencia’s Miroslav Djukic have refuted that charge.

The creativemid-field is ably controlled by Stojkovic, the influential playmaker who played in Italia ’90, together with Savicevic.

Alongside Stojkovic is one of Serie A’s most consistent performers, Lazio mid-fielder Vladimir Jugovic, with Espanyol’s Branko Brnovic and Tenerife’s Slavisa Jokanovic providing the width.

The strike force is headed by Mijatovic and Aston Villa’s Savo Milosevic, top scorer in the team until Mijatovic overtook him with seven in the two games against Hungary.

Yugsolvia will play in Group F with Germany, Iran and the United States. Germany has always been the bane of Yugoslavs, who have only beaten them once in finals, in Chile in 1962.

With the Germans looking uncharacteristically vulnerable, France could be the perfect occasion for the Yugoslavs to set the record straight.