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Miroslav Blazevic: The ‘Coach of All Coaches’ Still Going Strong at Age 79
Published: September 21, 2014
“My son, let me tell you the truth,” Blazevic told Jonathan Wilson for his seminal tactical tome Inverting the Pyramid. “3-5-2 was invented in 1982 by Ciro Blazevic.”
Perhaps he is right, perhaps not; as with many other things he says, you can never be quite sure. Carlos Bilardo with Argentina and Sepp Piontek with Denmark would be among those claiming some intellectual property over the system that sprung up in the 1980s—although Wilson’s book notes that the always strongly opinionated Blazevic would call Bilardo a “prick” for suggesting it was his idea.
But the point is, Blazevic’s tactical novelty—first introduced in Dinamo Zagreb, to whom he brought a league title in 1982 after a 24-year drought—was so influential in the Balkans that teams in the region continued to play with a back three until the mid-2000s, long after almost everyone else had abandoned it.
In Croatia, it took young and dynamic coach Slaven Bilic to break with the tradition when he took over from Zlatko Kranjcar in 2006—both of whom had previously played under Ciro. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ciro himself insisted on the outdated formation as late as 2009, laying the foundations for the team that Safet Susic eventually took to this year’s World Cup.
Meanwhile, football has come full circle and nowadays many teams are playing with some variant of a back three, the system featuring prominently at the World Cup in the summer.
NK Zadar, perhaps best known for being Luka Modric’s childhood team, are a very modest and poor club. They have n...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - International Football
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