The legendary Dragoslav “Seki” Sekularac speaks about himself, Tito and Dzajic, the lamb Arkan, Rajko Mitic without pants and about the qualities and selfishness of those who we knew but didn’t recognize.
Originally published in the May 2006 issue of Mi magazin in the Serbian. This interview lasted 4 hours and 47 minutes and is the longest ever interview with the world famous soccer player Dragoslav Sekularac. This was confirmed by the legendary Canadian soccer player of Serbian descent Milovan “Mike” Bakic who was present during the interview.
Originally published in the May 2006 issue of Mi magazin in the Serbian. This interview lasted 4 hours and 47 minutes and is the longest ever interview with the world famous soccer player Dragoslav Sekularac. This was confirmed by the legendary Canadian soccer player of Serbian descent Milovan “Mike” Bakic who was present during the interview.
GET OUT OF HERE, I AM SEKULARAC
Prvoslav Vujcic: Mr. Sekularac, even today you are, as always, full of some sort of fiery adrenaline and youthful energy on the coaching bench of Toronto’s Serbian White Eagles and off of it. Is this because you don’t like being in one spot at a time or do you try to escape from people in a way?
Dragoslav Sekularac: If I were born again and if someone were to ask me if I would live differently or as Sekularac, I would live as Sekularac. I played soccer, was popular, did what I enjoyed. I never had a surplus of money but I always had enough. Enough to visit the sea, travel and I think that my life was completely successful. The fact that I didn’t become some director is in fact because I don’t like to be held to one spot at a time. You could offer me however many dollars you want to be the President of the Republic and for me to sit with a fake smile on my face all day long and I still couldn’t do it.
I do try to escape from people, you noticed that well. I was very popular and they always tried to drag me everywhere. Today, I mostly enjoy walking at a slow pace to places. I go to the Woodbine Racetrack, have a seat, order a Coca-Cola and that’s my life.
Sometimes I’ll sit in a café with friends although I don’t drink. But even the café I try to avoid. Especially when I’m filling out my betting ticket and my friends think one thing while I think another. I like to die for my mistakes and stupidities whether as a soccer coach or as a prognostic.
Prvoslav Vujcic: Due to your integrity and honesty, shown through your stormy temperament, suspensions and fines have followed you throughout your career as a coach and director. You were suspended while coach of OFK Mladenovac, as director of Napredak Krusevac and then there was that famous suspension in Cologne when you were head coach of Red Star Belgrade?
Dragoslav Sekularac: I started my coaching career in Mladenovac. I can be as honest as I want but I’m not able to deal with injustice. The referee in Cologne in 1989 destroyed me. I didn’t even reach the referee because Security stopped me so I tussled with them. We beat Cologne in Belgrade by a score of 2-0. We had an amazing team then. We had ten shots on goal in Cologne. For one goal that we allowed, the ball was half a metre out of the line, the other goal they scored on an offside and the third goal they scored when the referee whistled some baloney call and we were eliminated. It was as if they bribed the referee.
After that, I won the double with Red Star in that old and spatially big Yugoslavia. Winning the double back then meant five times as much as it does now because our league was incomparably stronger than it is now. After that, Miodrag Belodedic came to me from Romania and the championship team was complete.
Prvoslav Vujcic: What can we expect in Toronto from Serbian White Eagles FC, the first Serbian professional team in the diaspora? Every year it’s necessary to spend $20,000 along with countless other fees. Only in this founding year $160,000 was paid. Can this team last financially and can the importance of this project enter the collective consciousness of our Serbian community in Canada?
Dragoslav Sekularac: In my time, earlier in my coaching career, I took charge of an Australian team called Footscray JUST which was a small and similar football club to that of today’s White Eagles. I made JUST into the strongest team. We won the Australian Cup and I led them to the final of the playoff. You know what that means when you take a small club to the top like that!? I brought Vlada Stosic from Belgrade then I brought in a goalkeeper, centre-half, young players from Australia and I made the meat of the team. After that we achieved everything with good work. I made a name for myself down there so Red Star couldn’t avoid bringing me in as coach.
That’s how I’m working with the Eagles and success won’t be out of reach. Here they pay better but use less while in the former Yugoslavia they used for 24 hours but paid for half an hour. The audience is the most important for us. It’s important to us that they come in numbers. Against the Croats I expect a few thousand supporters because of the old rivalry. If we have an audience, and I honestly hope that support from the stands will be there, then of course the club will last. The Eagles management has a serious and honest approach to everything in and around the club. We have a nice stadium and I would like to call on the public to come and help our Serbian White Eagles to become champion of the Canadian Soccer League for the first time. We signed five good players from Serbia. I brought Stevan Mojsilovic to be assistant coach. He was my assistant at Obilic, after that I got him a job in Red Star as well. Mojsilovic is great, he has the knowledge and he works hard. We’re a great tandem, he and I.
Prvoslav Vujcic: You made a championship team at Red Star which won the double with you at the helm. Why did you resign and allow the team that you created and put together for years become European champion right after your departure?
Dragoslav Sekularac: Firstly, I was suspended for nine matches. Secondly, I had pressure on me because I was against selling Dragan “Piksi” Stojkovic. Dragan Dzajic and Vladimir Cvetkovic wanted to sell Piksi but I was categorically against it because I believed that if we’re creating a big Red Star then I can’t just sell the main player. They were smarter than me because they wanted to sell him and take the money for themselves and for Red Star and I bothered them in that plan.
Red Star with Miodrag Slijepcevic, Branko Otasevic and Dragoslav Sekularac at the helm made a European team while Dzaja and Cvele picked up the kajmak and wrote the history books the way they wanted, not us. Even today there’s no one to mention who took part in creating that championship team.
Prvoslav Vujcic: Why don’t they mention you at the Marakana at the 15th anniversary of Red Star winning the European Cup? Everyone who follows the game of soccer and the game around the game even a bit knows that you are the ideological, technical and practical creator of that team. Could it be that some Stars of Red Star are stealing glory from one another?
Dragoslav Sekularac: Why did Tito not mention Draza? They can’t and won’t mention me because they don’t want the glory to belong to anyone else. They want to keep all the glory just for themselves. I’m not the type to criticize and bark. In the end, I’m at fault the most for going to the World Cup and leaving Red Star because they couldn’t have got rid of me after all that success.
Prvoslav Vujcic: You have stated in the past that the first generation of Red Star played for a salary of a glass of lemonade. Your generation with you at the helm didn’t earn much either. APOEL FC from Cyprus during the time of sanctions offered you the position of head coach and (for that time) a fantastic offer of 300,000 DM per season. Then someone from Serbia called the management of the Cypriot club and asked them “why they want that drunkard on their bench” and everything fell apart?
Dragoslav Sekularac: Classic Serbian stuff. I’ve never drank anything in my life. They also said that Arkan hits the Obilic players but he was so good towards them that they loved him as a father. There’s also talk that Dzaja is gay but we’ve never seen him with a man.
Even here in Toronto, a man approaches me and says, “Imagine, we gathered $18,000 for that Sekularac guy and he drank and gambled it all away!” I ask him, “Do you know Sekularac?” To which he says, “Of course, I’m with him every day!” So I tell him, “Get out of here, I am Sekularac!” Ljuba Dimic was there and he’s a living witness.
Rajko Mitic is the biggest Red Star legend because everything in his time was honest. He was the first, with his generation, to bring the public to the stands with good play. He didn’t get anything, the same way I didn’t get anything. I had to go around the world and deeply try so that I would have something. Today’s generation is something different. One Mateja Kezman can’t compare with Bernard Vukas or Stjepan Bobek in any element of the game of soccer. Just so Kezman or anyone doesn’t get mad, that’s as if you’re comparing an Opel with a Mercedes. An Opel is good but a Mercedes is a Mercedes. Vukas, Rajko Mitic and Milos Milutinovic were a Mercedes and these today are Opels. How can we talk about Kezman or criticize him about his qualities when he has 40 million euros. I ask you then how funny people we are. Meanwhile Rajko Mitic doesn’t even have enough for pants.
Prvoslav Vujcic: Last year, when Dragan Dzajic didn’t say anything to the media for almost a year, you let him have it through the media in your style. You called him out to stop hiding and to say whether he’s staying as Red Star president or not. Believing that the club can’t be anyone’s property, you said that, “Maybe people can’t see something but God sees all!” On what terms are you with Dzajic?
Dragoslav Sekularac: Everything used to be just fine. He spent time with us colleagues. Dzaja, ever since he became a director and got married, he’s become a one-man show. Feel free to write that, in twenty years, I haven’t even got a lemonade from him.
My operation that was paid by him wasn’t paid from his pocket but from Red Star’s budget which I deserved from my colleagues. I thank him for not wasting time, maybe I would have died. As president of Red Star at that time he could have waited to make an agreement with the Executive Board. The Yugoslav FA also financed it and I was operated on by the best doctor in the world named Colombo in the best clinic in the world. This was in Milan in 2002. When it comes to the heart, you never know, it’s like a motor. When it stops, that’s the end. With the operation, my life was extended only a little bit. I look great and feel good but the outer look is tricky with the heart. With Toma Kaloperovic I was laughing and then after that he went to do a TV interview and I heard that he died. With the heart, you never know.
But to get back to the question, Dzaja looks after his interests only. I’m not saying that he’s not supposed to look after himself, every person looks after themselves. But he didn’t want to, for so many years of his tenure, to bring together all the people who contributed to Red Star and who love the club. For instance and for truth’s sake, he called me only once to give me a watch. It’s not all about a watch, I apologize, but f*ck the watch. The watch isn’t in question, in question is attention. Dzaja was like Tito, while he was in power he only thought about himself. It all depends on which era you vote in. If the election was today, Dzaja wouldn’t get even two votes just like Tito wouldn’t.
I would like for you to mention Rajko Mitic and that some legends of Red Star are struggling even though Red Star is a big club and institution. Dzajic could have as much money as he wanted for himself but he had to think that one Rajko Mitic doesn’t die in his 83rd year without getting the respect he deserves. The best example is the Englishman, George Best, who was an amazing footballer in his day but at the same time he was a bum and a drunk – a bohemian. Because of his soccer art though, he had a royal funeral. One Rajko Mitic deserves that. He was the first to bring Red Star up to the skies. Red Star didn’t become big because Walter Zenga was there. Injustice hurts. Red Star is such a big club that it must act accordingly towards today’s players and towards former players. So it doesn’t remain that one Srboljub Krivokuca dies while not having anything to eat. Novak “Krca” Tomic dies in Los Angeles and no one remembers. There are countless examples. There needs to be more respect and love in Red Star for the ones that lived for the club.
I even think that our Serbs here that live in the diaspora, whether in Austria, Canada, the United States or Australia, are sixty times more sincere than those Serbs that live in Serbia. Here there is still something, to go to Church and gather somewhere. I get the feeling that over there, in Serbia, they just look how to sell you out or to steal from you.
Prvoslav Vujcic: Partizan Belgrade and world soccer legend Milutin Soskic is the goalkeeper coach in the US national team. Are you in contact now that you’re in the neighborhood?
Dragoslav Sekularac: I’m on great terms with him. He’s a Partizan fan but we get along great. We played together in the national team. He made five or six phenomenal goalkeepers for the Americans. He’s been there for so long. He made a name for himself on a high level. He has two beautiful, good sons. They played for me when I was in Los Angeles two years ago in a church. I coached that team of theirs in Los Angeles. His children are fine and Sole is a true gentleman.
Prvoslav Vujcic: As a player, since you were a child until the peak of your career (which was filled with unsurpassable, eternal fame) it was more important for you what your friends from your neighborhood say than what your coaches say. You were known for your creativity, hardheadedness and inventiveness.
Dragoslav Sekularac: I was born in Stip in 1937. My father was a practitioner there, fell in love with a Macedonian woman and made me. In a small place by the Hungarian border, I learned to play soccer and I was lucky that we arrived in Belgrade in 1949 so I could start playing organized soccer. When I started playing for Red Star and when I became famous, it was more important what my colleagues from my team say than anyone else. Game-wise and otherwise. I was the first to bring in knots and tongues on cleats so after two-three years everyone copied me. That’s the biggest award when the guy next to you and even opposing players respect you and copy you.
Prvoslav Vujcic: The Yugoslav national football team with you won a fantastic fourth place at the 1962 FIFA World Cup in Chile. You were unofficially voted the best player on the planet in that you were given an 11/10 which is a sort of curiosity in world terms. Not long ago even the renowned Pelé said that, in his opinion, you are the greatest player of all times. Even with all the kudos about your play, you were still unsatisfied because you thought we had missed out on a never-to-come-again chance to become world champs?
Dragoslav Sekularac: If in Chile we had passed the Czechoslovaks in the semifinal, we would have played with the Brazilians in the final. In the pre-competition against Colombia, with the powerful Uruguay of that time, I played great and got a rank of 11 from France Football and I was the only player that journalists chose to be in the World Team of the World Cup. Tito was holding some speech in Split, he wasn’t interested in soccer, and our management because of that couldn’t promise us even symbolical bonuses of fifty dollars.
Prvoslav Vujcic: Milan Galic said, “When I was captain in 1962 in Chile, I went to the president of the Yugoslav FA and asked for our bonuses. I got the reply of, “While you guys over there are dancing and playing, our hardworking miners are mining in the mine yards.” Demagoguery was always visible in our areas but nobody was able to be as demagogic as the Communists.
Dragoslav Sekularac: Yes and then the Partizan players, who had a larger democracy than us in Red Star, boycotted the meeting and went to discos. After that there was a sort of nervousness that destroyed the atmosphere which is always the most important part of a team. That’s why Petko (Ilija Petkovic) had success in the qualifiers for the World Cup with the national team. He had three years of leadership without an incident. That’s like in a family when you have peace in the house, everything else is OK.
Prvoslav Vujcic: Before the 2006 World Cup which just passed, the president of Red Star Belgrade Dragan “Piksi” Stojkovic indirectly ruined the atmosphere in our team when he said that it is an embarrassment and a disgrace that the Serbia and Montenegro head coach Ilija Petkovic called up his son Dusan to the team. Piksi in a sophisticated manner, whether he was aware of it or not, gave a signal to some media outlets to attack Petko whom I know as a humble, honest and hardworking person. Was this done by mistake or on purpose?
Dragoslav Sekularac: I think Piksi gave that statement without thinking and it’s possible that journalists interpreted that a bit differently. I never forced my son and nobody ever thanked me for not forcing him. I regret that today because he didn’t make it as a soccer player with me. Why should Petko not call up his son, why should he call up someone else if that boy (his son) already played two years before for the national team. Classic Serbian stuff. Some incandescent heads used that moment to talk about something and to ruin the atmosphere, just so that they could say – this happened because Petko called up his son! But why should he not call up his son and have his son tell him one day: Dad, you brought someone else whose a worse player just like how my son tells me, “Dad, you destroyed me.”
Prvoslav Vujcic: When you became head coach of Obilic, you stated that Obilic is the most organized football club in the area. Even more organized than the great Partizan and Red Star. Is it because that, from the first day you entered the club headquarters, there were seven suits with an Obilic crest waiting for you, you were good friends with Obilic president Zeljko “Arkan” Raznatovic or was it actually like that when you arrived at the club?
Dragoslav Sekularac: First off, I wasn’t good friends with him. Zeljko Raznatovic was a huge fan of Red Star. He knew me while I was Red Star head coach. He needed a big name at Obilic. With him, probably because he was a soldier, it was all about precision. Everything was calculated. He had that organization on a high level because he knew how to make concepts. He had authority. It’s not seven suits in question. He didn’t buy Sekularac seven suits so I can have fun in them but rather he gave me them with an Obilic crest so that his director looks nice and looks presentable.
If I were to go unshaven to Arkan the way I arrived today – although I can’t remember the last time I happened to go around unshaven – he would tell me without regard to my age to get home and shave! He was a man who knew his job, who didn’t know money. I didn’t know, nor did I see, what he did in other countries of the world. Afterwards, he told me that he was in jail here, that he jumped past this and that. You know how, like every young man. After that, the wars started and he affirmed himself as a warrior. I looked at him as a Red Star supporter. As the leader of the supporters. When he went to Obilic, he was looking for a big name.
There is one interesting detail which convinced me to come to Obilic. I currently have 1000 EUR in Red Star to not do anything, as a Red Star legend. Piksi gave me that. In that time when I resigned from the post of Red Star head coach, they held me on the payroll until I found something else. There was a terrible devaluation of money back then. A cleaning lady entered the treasurer's office while I butted in front of the line as a Red Star legend. They give me a huge envelope, a person would think there’s a ton of money in it, and she as a cleaning lady got her envelope. Now she is leaving and another cleaning lady approaches and since she doesn’t see me behind her, she tells her, “Wow, did you see that Sekularac how much money he got for not doing anything!?” So I tap her on the shoulder and tell her, “You weren’t even born to see how much I worked and how many people I brought to the stands. While you weren’t here, they didn’t pay me anything back then!” So that hurt me a bit. During that exact time, Arkan was looking for a big-time name and in that moment he made me an offer by saying, “Come, you’ll get 130,000 DM, only if you come to me.” And 130,000 DM in that time, the time of the huge devaluation of the dinar, was a fortune. And I say, let me go to Obilic. Cvetkovic told me that even he would go for that money. And that’s how I got in touch with Arkan and got a 3000 DM monthly pay plus the 130 grand. After I call him and ask, “Arkan, where is that what you promised?” “I’ll call you in three days,” he says. In three days, he calls me and says, “You have to wait three more days, something got complicated, I can’t wait to see you.” “OK, commander,” I say and I add, “I can’t wait to see you either,” ha ha ha. After three days, by our agreement, we see each other and he gives me, not 130 but 150,000 DM and says, “Here’s 20,000 more for waiting.”
Arkan was a unique personality in the soccer world. When you would see how much the players loved Arkan, how he helped the poor, that’s a lamb. Reading about him, we get completely different information, but the one from the soccer world, the one I know, is a completely different Arkan. We didn’t talk at all about criminal activities or war but rather we spoke about rewarding the players and creating a winning atmosphere. Arkan made a nice stadium. He made a small club into a big one. If you only saw how nice the club property and offices were and even the office he made for me. To see the stands and the field Arkan made and how he took care of them with love.
Prvoslav Vujcic: Why did Svetlana “Ceca” Raznatovic allow FK Obilic to fall out of the first division?
Dragoslav Sekularac: Ceca is a woman. Ceca, after her husband’s death, had a lot of her own worries around the children and everything else. I can’t now enter the life of a woman and what her thoughts were like. While Arkan was alive, she was always by his side and we had to respect her. He loved her greatly. Greatly. I think that Arkan even loved Ceca pathologically. He held her there more as a type of symbol.
Ceca isn’t a soccer type. Arkan understood soccer. He was a great organizer. He plied his trade as a Red Star supporter. He was most likely in contact with the management. I know Arkan as a sports worker and I can say only the best about him as a sports worker.
Prvoslav Vujcic: You acted in two films in a big time gap. In 1962, you acted in Seki snima, pazi se and thirty-six years later (1998) in Povratak lopova. You were always trendy.
Dragoslav Sekularac: After the World Cup in Chile they got a hold of me quickly, I didn’t get any fees. I was very popular and they probably used that. This other movie I don’t know. There’s only my LP record Seki twist and the movie Seki snima, pazi se – that I positively know because I went to watch it. My friends brought me there fast. So today when I watch that, I’m happy that I starred in a movie. I even think that I wasn’t bad as an actor, ha ha ha. That’s funny now. I was some director then I danced, played.
Soccer-wise however I didn’t have any competition. I was in the top ten. Let’s not talk about who was better, who was worse. I had charm in soccer so people liked me. I always liked to satisfy the fans, to juggle the ball with my heel, pass the ball through the legs of the opposing player and all that attractive flashy stuff. Today, coaches would go crazy if they had me on their team.
The most important thing is to recognize the trends of the time. For example, my daughter’s hair was falling out and she shaved her head. In that time there was a well-known model who shaved her head. Everyone thought that my daughter was copying her so my child didn’t have a complex. Now she has hair.
It’s most important to be trendy. Take for example David Beckham who is a fifty times weaker soccer player than ten players from my generation. But you see how nice he looks on TV and those little earrings. But the man is in style. Real Madrid earns more on his shirts and his earrings than on Beckham as a player.
Prvoslav Vujcic: It is said that you love women more than the sports betting house. Did you chase after women or women after you?
Dragoslav Sekularac: Well it’s logical that women chase after us when we’re popular, isn’t it! From that chasing I have a son Marko and lovely daughters Sanja, Ivana and Katja. From two marriages I have two children each. I have a granddaughter as well. Marko is a good looking boy who’s always running after women.
Ha ha ha, joke on the side, if you believe me, I’ve had five women in my life. With all five I’m a great friend even today. The first one is about 60, one is 40. My last wife Sofija with whom I’m in Toronto today is 34.
Even today when it’s the Slava of my first wife, I go to her house and wish her well. I believe that the level of a person is that they shouldn’t fight after parting ways and I believe that we can respect each other during the departure and after it.
In regards to women, I always sought to fall in love and I’m a long-distance kind of guy. My shortest relationship was seven years and there’s always some small detail that ruins everything. For example, the father and mother say I’m too old for her but they didn’t mention anything while she was studying. Then I was good enough. There’s always some little thing that makes it difficult but I always go forward and never turn back.
Prvoslav Vujcic: As a big Partizan fan, I can’t resist but to ask you. My late father Jefrem always believed that Milos Milutinovic and you are our best players of all time and the coolest guys in soccer. He often told me as a kid that if we had you in the legendary team of Partizan babies – when Partizan played in the final of the European Cup with Real Madrid – that it would have been a dream team. What are your thoughts on Milos Milutinovic?
Dragoslav Sekularac: Milos Milutinovic as a player was a 9/10 and as a man was a 29/10. He was so strong as a player and so good of a person that you can’t even imagine how true that is. If only half the people in Serbia were like him, I think Serbia would flourish. That’s a man who you can’t buy. You could tell him that he’d get 10 million euros to talk badly about the Serbian White Eagles president Bakic for only five minutes. There’s no way he would take that money. That means he was an amazing character.
As a pal, a friend, Milos Milutinovic is without comparison a man of my time. If there’s some sort of way of weighing how good of a man someone is, the best compliment would be: he’s the same as Milos Milutinovic! All of us, his colleagues, say in one voice: an amazing player and a great man!
Prvoslav Vujcic: These are some of the nicest man to man words that I’ve ever heard. It’s a pleasure when you, the most celebrated person from Red Star, respect celebrated people from Partizan. It’s no wonder that you’ve succeeded to, from the bench of our Serbian White Eagles, become the first person in the world to unite the Delije and the Grobari.
Dragoslav Sekularac: There you go. Two countries cheered for Petko while for me Delije and Grobari. I like that you remembered that. Write that Seki is a unifier.
I not only admire Milos Milutinovic as a player and a person, I admire his whole family. Bora Milutinovic is one of the biggest coaches in the world today. He is the only one who led five different national teams at five different World Cups.
Prvoslav Vujcic: Mr. Sekularac, to finish off, could you please tell us for our readers an anecdote from your interesting and successful life?
Dragoslav Sekularac: In my time, while I played for Red Star, there was no TV. The radio called the matches and brought me to the stars. Red Star was popular as a club and I as a player. We go on a trip to Titograd (today’s Podgorica). In the room enters the masseuse and says: Sekularac, come upstairs, a People’s Hero wants to see you. Now imagine before about fifty years, me in a baseball cap, t-shirt, Bermuda shorts, those Swedish sandals and I approach the People’s Hero, me all young and skinny like a snake. The People’s Hero levels me up and says, “Look, look, I was expecting a mountain of a man meanwhile he’s a little tike!”
Dragoslav Sekularac: If I were born again and if someone were to ask me if I would live differently or as Sekularac, I would live as Sekularac. I played soccer, was popular, did what I enjoyed. I never had a surplus of money but I always had enough. Enough to visit the sea, travel and I think that my life was completely successful. The fact that I didn’t become some director is in fact because I don’t like to be held to one spot at a time. You could offer me however many dollars you want to be the President of the Republic and for me to sit with a fake smile on my face all day long and I still couldn’t do it.
I do try to escape from people, you noticed that well. I was very popular and they always tried to drag me everywhere. Today, I mostly enjoy walking at a slow pace to places. I go to the Woodbine Racetrack, have a seat, order a Coca-Cola and that’s my life.
Sometimes I’ll sit in a café with friends although I don’t drink. But even the café I try to avoid. Especially when I’m filling out my betting ticket and my friends think one thing while I think another. I like to die for my mistakes and stupidities whether as a soccer coach or as a prognostic.
Prvoslav Vujcic: Due to your integrity and honesty, shown through your stormy temperament, suspensions and fines have followed you throughout your career as a coach and director. You were suspended while coach of OFK Mladenovac, as director of Napredak Krusevac and then there was that famous suspension in Cologne when you were head coach of Red Star Belgrade?
Dragoslav Sekularac: I started my coaching career in Mladenovac. I can be as honest as I want but I’m not able to deal with injustice. The referee in Cologne in 1989 destroyed me. I didn’t even reach the referee because Security stopped me so I tussled with them. We beat Cologne in Belgrade by a score of 2-0. We had an amazing team then. We had ten shots on goal in Cologne. For one goal that we allowed, the ball was half a metre out of the line, the other goal they scored on an offside and the third goal they scored when the referee whistled some baloney call and we were eliminated. It was as if they bribed the referee.
After that, I won the double with Red Star in that old and spatially big Yugoslavia. Winning the double back then meant five times as much as it does now because our league was incomparably stronger than it is now. After that, Miodrag Belodedic came to me from Romania and the championship team was complete.
Prvoslav Vujcic: What can we expect in Toronto from Serbian White Eagles FC, the first Serbian professional team in the diaspora? Every year it’s necessary to spend $20,000 along with countless other fees. Only in this founding year $160,000 was paid. Can this team last financially and can the importance of this project enter the collective consciousness of our Serbian community in Canada?
Dragoslav Sekularac: In my time, earlier in my coaching career, I took charge of an Australian team called Footscray JUST which was a small and similar football club to that of today’s White Eagles. I made JUST into the strongest team. We won the Australian Cup and I led them to the final of the playoff. You know what that means when you take a small club to the top like that!? I brought Vlada Stosic from Belgrade then I brought in a goalkeeper, centre-half, young players from Australia and I made the meat of the team. After that we achieved everything with good work. I made a name for myself down there so Red Star couldn’t avoid bringing me in as coach.
That’s how I’m working with the Eagles and success won’t be out of reach. Here they pay better but use less while in the former Yugoslavia they used for 24 hours but paid for half an hour. The audience is the most important for us. It’s important to us that they come in numbers. Against the Croats I expect a few thousand supporters because of the old rivalry. If we have an audience, and I honestly hope that support from the stands will be there, then of course the club will last. The Eagles management has a serious and honest approach to everything in and around the club. We have a nice stadium and I would like to call on the public to come and help our Serbian White Eagles to become champion of the Canadian Soccer League for the first time. We signed five good players from Serbia. I brought Stevan Mojsilovic to be assistant coach. He was my assistant at Obilic, after that I got him a job in Red Star as well. Mojsilovic is great, he has the knowledge and he works hard. We’re a great tandem, he and I.
Prvoslav Vujcic: You made a championship team at Red Star which won the double with you at the helm. Why did you resign and allow the team that you created and put together for years become European champion right after your departure?
Dragoslav Sekularac: Firstly, I was suspended for nine matches. Secondly, I had pressure on me because I was against selling Dragan “Piksi” Stojkovic. Dragan Dzajic and Vladimir Cvetkovic wanted to sell Piksi but I was categorically against it because I believed that if we’re creating a big Red Star then I can’t just sell the main player. They were smarter than me because they wanted to sell him and take the money for themselves and for Red Star and I bothered them in that plan.
Red Star with Miodrag Slijepcevic, Branko Otasevic and Dragoslav Sekularac at the helm made a European team while Dzaja and Cvele picked up the kajmak and wrote the history books the way they wanted, not us. Even today there’s no one to mention who took part in creating that championship team.
Prvoslav Vujcic: Why don’t they mention you at the Marakana at the 15th anniversary of Red Star winning the European Cup? Everyone who follows the game of soccer and the game around the game even a bit knows that you are the ideological, technical and practical creator of that team. Could it be that some Stars of Red Star are stealing glory from one another?
Dragoslav Sekularac: Why did Tito not mention Draza? They can’t and won’t mention me because they don’t want the glory to belong to anyone else. They want to keep all the glory just for themselves. I’m not the type to criticize and bark. In the end, I’m at fault the most for going to the World Cup and leaving Red Star because they couldn’t have got rid of me after all that success.
Prvoslav Vujcic: You have stated in the past that the first generation of Red Star played for a salary of a glass of lemonade. Your generation with you at the helm didn’t earn much either. APOEL FC from Cyprus during the time of sanctions offered you the position of head coach and (for that time) a fantastic offer of 300,000 DM per season. Then someone from Serbia called the management of the Cypriot club and asked them “why they want that drunkard on their bench” and everything fell apart?
Dragoslav Sekularac: Classic Serbian stuff. I’ve never drank anything in my life. They also said that Arkan hits the Obilic players but he was so good towards them that they loved him as a father. There’s also talk that Dzaja is gay but we’ve never seen him with a man.
Even here in Toronto, a man approaches me and says, “Imagine, we gathered $18,000 for that Sekularac guy and he drank and gambled it all away!” I ask him, “Do you know Sekularac?” To which he says, “Of course, I’m with him every day!” So I tell him, “Get out of here, I am Sekularac!” Ljuba Dimic was there and he’s a living witness.
Rajko Mitic is the biggest Red Star legend because everything in his time was honest. He was the first, with his generation, to bring the public to the stands with good play. He didn’t get anything, the same way I didn’t get anything. I had to go around the world and deeply try so that I would have something. Today’s generation is something different. One Mateja Kezman can’t compare with Bernard Vukas or Stjepan Bobek in any element of the game of soccer. Just so Kezman or anyone doesn’t get mad, that’s as if you’re comparing an Opel with a Mercedes. An Opel is good but a Mercedes is a Mercedes. Vukas, Rajko Mitic and Milos Milutinovic were a Mercedes and these today are Opels. How can we talk about Kezman or criticize him about his qualities when he has 40 million euros. I ask you then how funny people we are. Meanwhile Rajko Mitic doesn’t even have enough for pants.
Prvoslav Vujcic: Last year, when Dragan Dzajic didn’t say anything to the media for almost a year, you let him have it through the media in your style. You called him out to stop hiding and to say whether he’s staying as Red Star president or not. Believing that the club can’t be anyone’s property, you said that, “Maybe people can’t see something but God sees all!” On what terms are you with Dzajic?
Dragoslav Sekularac: Everything used to be just fine. He spent time with us colleagues. Dzaja, ever since he became a director and got married, he’s become a one-man show. Feel free to write that, in twenty years, I haven’t even got a lemonade from him.
My operation that was paid by him wasn’t paid from his pocket but from Red Star’s budget which I deserved from my colleagues. I thank him for not wasting time, maybe I would have died. As president of Red Star at that time he could have waited to make an agreement with the Executive Board. The Yugoslav FA also financed it and I was operated on by the best doctor in the world named Colombo in the best clinic in the world. This was in Milan in 2002. When it comes to the heart, you never know, it’s like a motor. When it stops, that’s the end. With the operation, my life was extended only a little bit. I look great and feel good but the outer look is tricky with the heart. With Toma Kaloperovic I was laughing and then after that he went to do a TV interview and I heard that he died. With the heart, you never know.
But to get back to the question, Dzaja looks after his interests only. I’m not saying that he’s not supposed to look after himself, every person looks after themselves. But he didn’t want to, for so many years of his tenure, to bring together all the people who contributed to Red Star and who love the club. For instance and for truth’s sake, he called me only once to give me a watch. It’s not all about a watch, I apologize, but f*ck the watch. The watch isn’t in question, in question is attention. Dzaja was like Tito, while he was in power he only thought about himself. It all depends on which era you vote in. If the election was today, Dzaja wouldn’t get even two votes just like Tito wouldn’t.
I would like for you to mention Rajko Mitic and that some legends of Red Star are struggling even though Red Star is a big club and institution. Dzajic could have as much money as he wanted for himself but he had to think that one Rajko Mitic doesn’t die in his 83rd year without getting the respect he deserves. The best example is the Englishman, George Best, who was an amazing footballer in his day but at the same time he was a bum and a drunk – a bohemian. Because of his soccer art though, he had a royal funeral. One Rajko Mitic deserves that. He was the first to bring Red Star up to the skies. Red Star didn’t become big because Walter Zenga was there. Injustice hurts. Red Star is such a big club that it must act accordingly towards today’s players and towards former players. So it doesn’t remain that one Srboljub Krivokuca dies while not having anything to eat. Novak “Krca” Tomic dies in Los Angeles and no one remembers. There are countless examples. There needs to be more respect and love in Red Star for the ones that lived for the club.
I even think that our Serbs here that live in the diaspora, whether in Austria, Canada, the United States or Australia, are sixty times more sincere than those Serbs that live in Serbia. Here there is still something, to go to Church and gather somewhere. I get the feeling that over there, in Serbia, they just look how to sell you out or to steal from you.
Prvoslav Vujcic: Partizan Belgrade and world soccer legend Milutin Soskic is the goalkeeper coach in the US national team. Are you in contact now that you’re in the neighborhood?
Dragoslav Sekularac: I’m on great terms with him. He’s a Partizan fan but we get along great. We played together in the national team. He made five or six phenomenal goalkeepers for the Americans. He’s been there for so long. He made a name for himself on a high level. He has two beautiful, good sons. They played for me when I was in Los Angeles two years ago in a church. I coached that team of theirs in Los Angeles. His children are fine and Sole is a true gentleman.
Prvoslav Vujcic: As a player, since you were a child until the peak of your career (which was filled with unsurpassable, eternal fame) it was more important for you what your friends from your neighborhood say than what your coaches say. You were known for your creativity, hardheadedness and inventiveness.
Dragoslav Sekularac: I was born in Stip in 1937. My father was a practitioner there, fell in love with a Macedonian woman and made me. In a small place by the Hungarian border, I learned to play soccer and I was lucky that we arrived in Belgrade in 1949 so I could start playing organized soccer. When I started playing for Red Star and when I became famous, it was more important what my colleagues from my team say than anyone else. Game-wise and otherwise. I was the first to bring in knots and tongues on cleats so after two-three years everyone copied me. That’s the biggest award when the guy next to you and even opposing players respect you and copy you.
Prvoslav Vujcic: The Yugoslav national football team with you won a fantastic fourth place at the 1962 FIFA World Cup in Chile. You were unofficially voted the best player on the planet in that you were given an 11/10 which is a sort of curiosity in world terms. Not long ago even the renowned Pelé said that, in his opinion, you are the greatest player of all times. Even with all the kudos about your play, you were still unsatisfied because you thought we had missed out on a never-to-come-again chance to become world champs?
Dragoslav Sekularac: If in Chile we had passed the Czechoslovaks in the semifinal, we would have played with the Brazilians in the final. In the pre-competition against Colombia, with the powerful Uruguay of that time, I played great and got a rank of 11 from France Football and I was the only player that journalists chose to be in the World Team of the World Cup. Tito was holding some speech in Split, he wasn’t interested in soccer, and our management because of that couldn’t promise us even symbolical bonuses of fifty dollars.
Prvoslav Vujcic: Milan Galic said, “When I was captain in 1962 in Chile, I went to the president of the Yugoslav FA and asked for our bonuses. I got the reply of, “While you guys over there are dancing and playing, our hardworking miners are mining in the mine yards.” Demagoguery was always visible in our areas but nobody was able to be as demagogic as the Communists.
Dragoslav Sekularac: Yes and then the Partizan players, who had a larger democracy than us in Red Star, boycotted the meeting and went to discos. After that there was a sort of nervousness that destroyed the atmosphere which is always the most important part of a team. That’s why Petko (Ilija Petkovic) had success in the qualifiers for the World Cup with the national team. He had three years of leadership without an incident. That’s like in a family when you have peace in the house, everything else is OK.
Prvoslav Vujcic: Before the 2006 World Cup which just passed, the president of Red Star Belgrade Dragan “Piksi” Stojkovic indirectly ruined the atmosphere in our team when he said that it is an embarrassment and a disgrace that the Serbia and Montenegro head coach Ilija Petkovic called up his son Dusan to the team. Piksi in a sophisticated manner, whether he was aware of it or not, gave a signal to some media outlets to attack Petko whom I know as a humble, honest and hardworking person. Was this done by mistake or on purpose?
Dragoslav Sekularac: I think Piksi gave that statement without thinking and it’s possible that journalists interpreted that a bit differently. I never forced my son and nobody ever thanked me for not forcing him. I regret that today because he didn’t make it as a soccer player with me. Why should Petko not call up his son, why should he call up someone else if that boy (his son) already played two years before for the national team. Classic Serbian stuff. Some incandescent heads used that moment to talk about something and to ruin the atmosphere, just so that they could say – this happened because Petko called up his son! But why should he not call up his son and have his son tell him one day: Dad, you brought someone else whose a worse player just like how my son tells me, “Dad, you destroyed me.”
Prvoslav Vujcic: When you became head coach of Obilic, you stated that Obilic is the most organized football club in the area. Even more organized than the great Partizan and Red Star. Is it because that, from the first day you entered the club headquarters, there were seven suits with an Obilic crest waiting for you, you were good friends with Obilic president Zeljko “Arkan” Raznatovic or was it actually like that when you arrived at the club?
Dragoslav Sekularac: First off, I wasn’t good friends with him. Zeljko Raznatovic was a huge fan of Red Star. He knew me while I was Red Star head coach. He needed a big name at Obilic. With him, probably because he was a soldier, it was all about precision. Everything was calculated. He had that organization on a high level because he knew how to make concepts. He had authority. It’s not seven suits in question. He didn’t buy Sekularac seven suits so I can have fun in them but rather he gave me them with an Obilic crest so that his director looks nice and looks presentable.
If I were to go unshaven to Arkan the way I arrived today – although I can’t remember the last time I happened to go around unshaven – he would tell me without regard to my age to get home and shave! He was a man who knew his job, who didn’t know money. I didn’t know, nor did I see, what he did in other countries of the world. Afterwards, he told me that he was in jail here, that he jumped past this and that. You know how, like every young man. After that, the wars started and he affirmed himself as a warrior. I looked at him as a Red Star supporter. As the leader of the supporters. When he went to Obilic, he was looking for a big name.
There is one interesting detail which convinced me to come to Obilic. I currently have 1000 EUR in Red Star to not do anything, as a Red Star legend. Piksi gave me that. In that time when I resigned from the post of Red Star head coach, they held me on the payroll until I found something else. There was a terrible devaluation of money back then. A cleaning lady entered the treasurer's office while I butted in front of the line as a Red Star legend. They give me a huge envelope, a person would think there’s a ton of money in it, and she as a cleaning lady got her envelope. Now she is leaving and another cleaning lady approaches and since she doesn’t see me behind her, she tells her, “Wow, did you see that Sekularac how much money he got for not doing anything!?” So I tap her on the shoulder and tell her, “You weren’t even born to see how much I worked and how many people I brought to the stands. While you weren’t here, they didn’t pay me anything back then!” So that hurt me a bit. During that exact time, Arkan was looking for a big-time name and in that moment he made me an offer by saying, “Come, you’ll get 130,000 DM, only if you come to me.” And 130,000 DM in that time, the time of the huge devaluation of the dinar, was a fortune. And I say, let me go to Obilic. Cvetkovic told me that even he would go for that money. And that’s how I got in touch with Arkan and got a 3000 DM monthly pay plus the 130 grand. After I call him and ask, “Arkan, where is that what you promised?” “I’ll call you in three days,” he says. In three days, he calls me and says, “You have to wait three more days, something got complicated, I can’t wait to see you.” “OK, commander,” I say and I add, “I can’t wait to see you either,” ha ha ha. After three days, by our agreement, we see each other and he gives me, not 130 but 150,000 DM and says, “Here’s 20,000 more for waiting.”
Arkan was a unique personality in the soccer world. When you would see how much the players loved Arkan, how he helped the poor, that’s a lamb. Reading about him, we get completely different information, but the one from the soccer world, the one I know, is a completely different Arkan. We didn’t talk at all about criminal activities or war but rather we spoke about rewarding the players and creating a winning atmosphere. Arkan made a nice stadium. He made a small club into a big one. If you only saw how nice the club property and offices were and even the office he made for me. To see the stands and the field Arkan made and how he took care of them with love.
Prvoslav Vujcic: Why did Svetlana “Ceca” Raznatovic allow FK Obilic to fall out of the first division?
Dragoslav Sekularac: Ceca is a woman. Ceca, after her husband’s death, had a lot of her own worries around the children and everything else. I can’t now enter the life of a woman and what her thoughts were like. While Arkan was alive, she was always by his side and we had to respect her. He loved her greatly. Greatly. I think that Arkan even loved Ceca pathologically. He held her there more as a type of symbol.
Ceca isn’t a soccer type. Arkan understood soccer. He was a great organizer. He plied his trade as a Red Star supporter. He was most likely in contact with the management. I know Arkan as a sports worker and I can say only the best about him as a sports worker.
Prvoslav Vujcic: You acted in two films in a big time gap. In 1962, you acted in Seki snima, pazi se and thirty-six years later (1998) in Povratak lopova. You were always trendy.
Dragoslav Sekularac: After the World Cup in Chile they got a hold of me quickly, I didn’t get any fees. I was very popular and they probably used that. This other movie I don’t know. There’s only my LP record Seki twist and the movie Seki snima, pazi se – that I positively know because I went to watch it. My friends brought me there fast. So today when I watch that, I’m happy that I starred in a movie. I even think that I wasn’t bad as an actor, ha ha ha. That’s funny now. I was some director then I danced, played.
Soccer-wise however I didn’t have any competition. I was in the top ten. Let’s not talk about who was better, who was worse. I had charm in soccer so people liked me. I always liked to satisfy the fans, to juggle the ball with my heel, pass the ball through the legs of the opposing player and all that attractive flashy stuff. Today, coaches would go crazy if they had me on their team.
The most important thing is to recognize the trends of the time. For example, my daughter’s hair was falling out and she shaved her head. In that time there was a well-known model who shaved her head. Everyone thought that my daughter was copying her so my child didn’t have a complex. Now she has hair.
It’s most important to be trendy. Take for example David Beckham who is a fifty times weaker soccer player than ten players from my generation. But you see how nice he looks on TV and those little earrings. But the man is in style. Real Madrid earns more on his shirts and his earrings than on Beckham as a player.
Prvoslav Vujcic: It is said that you love women more than the sports betting house. Did you chase after women or women after you?
Dragoslav Sekularac: Well it’s logical that women chase after us when we’re popular, isn’t it! From that chasing I have a son Marko and lovely daughters Sanja, Ivana and Katja. From two marriages I have two children each. I have a granddaughter as well. Marko is a good looking boy who’s always running after women.
Ha ha ha, joke on the side, if you believe me, I’ve had five women in my life. With all five I’m a great friend even today. The first one is about 60, one is 40. My last wife Sofija with whom I’m in Toronto today is 34.
Even today when it’s the Slava of my first wife, I go to her house and wish her well. I believe that the level of a person is that they shouldn’t fight after parting ways and I believe that we can respect each other during the departure and after it.
In regards to women, I always sought to fall in love and I’m a long-distance kind of guy. My shortest relationship was seven years and there’s always some small detail that ruins everything. For example, the father and mother say I’m too old for her but they didn’t mention anything while she was studying. Then I was good enough. There’s always some little thing that makes it difficult but I always go forward and never turn back.
Prvoslav Vujcic: As a big Partizan fan, I can’t resist but to ask you. My late father Jefrem always believed that Milos Milutinovic and you are our best players of all time and the coolest guys in soccer. He often told me as a kid that if we had you in the legendary team of Partizan babies – when Partizan played in the final of the European Cup with Real Madrid – that it would have been a dream team. What are your thoughts on Milos Milutinovic?
Dragoslav Sekularac: Milos Milutinovic as a player was a 9/10 and as a man was a 29/10. He was so strong as a player and so good of a person that you can’t even imagine how true that is. If only half the people in Serbia were like him, I think Serbia would flourish. That’s a man who you can’t buy. You could tell him that he’d get 10 million euros to talk badly about the Serbian White Eagles president Bakic for only five minutes. There’s no way he would take that money. That means he was an amazing character.
As a pal, a friend, Milos Milutinovic is without comparison a man of my time. If there’s some sort of way of weighing how good of a man someone is, the best compliment would be: he’s the same as Milos Milutinovic! All of us, his colleagues, say in one voice: an amazing player and a great man!
Prvoslav Vujcic: These are some of the nicest man to man words that I’ve ever heard. It’s a pleasure when you, the most celebrated person from Red Star, respect celebrated people from Partizan. It’s no wonder that you’ve succeeded to, from the bench of our Serbian White Eagles, become the first person in the world to unite the Delije and the Grobari.
Dragoslav Sekularac: There you go. Two countries cheered for Petko while for me Delije and Grobari. I like that you remembered that. Write that Seki is a unifier.
I not only admire Milos Milutinovic as a player and a person, I admire his whole family. Bora Milutinovic is one of the biggest coaches in the world today. He is the only one who led five different national teams at five different World Cups.
Prvoslav Vujcic: Mr. Sekularac, to finish off, could you please tell us for our readers an anecdote from your interesting and successful life?
Dragoslav Sekularac: In my time, while I played for Red Star, there was no TV. The radio called the matches and brought me to the stars. Red Star was popular as a club and I as a player. We go on a trip to Titograd (today’s Podgorica). In the room enters the masseuse and says: Sekularac, come upstairs, a People’s Hero wants to see you. Now imagine before about fifty years, me in a baseball cap, t-shirt, Bermuda shorts, those Swedish sandals and I approach the People’s Hero, me all young and skinny like a snake. The People’s Hero levels me up and says, “Look, look, I was expecting a mountain of a man meanwhile he’s a little tike!”
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Urban Book Circle® (UBC)
Urban Book Circle® (UBC)
Prvoslav Vujcic (left) interviewing Dragoslav Sekularac
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Words: Prvoslav Vujcic
All rights reserved 2006. Copyright © Prvoslav Vujcic
Translation and Photographs: Djuradj Vujcic
All rights reserved 2013. Copyright © Djuradj Vujcic
C O N T A C T
Published by Urban Book Circle on October 27, 2013
Urban Book Circle® (UBC)
Words: Prvoslav Vujcic
All rights reserved 2006. Copyright © Prvoslav Vujcic
Translation and Photographs: Djuradj Vujcic
All rights reserved 2013. Copyright © Djuradj Vujcic
C O N T A C T
Published by Urban Book Circle on October 27, 2013
Urban Book Circle® (UBC)
