Ivica Osim

Ivan Osim (6 May 1941 – 1 May 2022), best known as Ivica Osim, was a Bosnian professional footballer and football manager.

He is widely regarded as one of the greatest Bosnian football managers of all time and as one of the most influential football managers in the former Yugoslavia.

Osim began his professional career with hometown club Željezničar in 1959.

He is considered one of the best Bosnians to step on a football pitch and was known as a ruthless dribbler.

As a player, Osim was in the Yugoslavia national team and played at the 1964 Summer Olympics.

Osim made his debut for Yugoslavia in an October 1964 Olympic Games match against Morocco, and has earned a total of 16 caps, scoring eight goals.

He also represented Yugoslavia at UEFA Euro 1968, where he won a silver medal and was voted into the Team of the Tournament.

Osim stayed in Yugoslavia until the end of 1968, as transfers abroad were prohibited for players under 28 at the time.

In December 1968, he went to the Netherlands, to play for Zwolsche Boys.

This stay lasted only three months, due to a knee injury.

He also played at UEFA Euro 1968 where Yugoslavia reached the final, losing to Italy.

Osim's final international game was an April 1969 World Cup qualification match away against Spain.

In 1970, Osim signed with Strasbourg and played the rest of his career in France, playing also for Valenciennes, Sedan and again at Strasbourg.

When his playing career ended in 1978, Osim took the managing job at the club where he began playing, Željezničar.

As a manager, Osim won a bronze medal with Yugoslavia at the 1984 Summer Olympics as an assistant, and reached the quarter-finals of the 1990 FIFA World Cup as head coach of the Yugoslavia national team.

He also reached the 1984–85 UEFA Cup semi-finals as manager of his hometown club Željezničar.

Osim assisted Ivan Toplak, head coach of the Yugoslav Olympic team, at the 1984 Summer Olympics where Yugoslavia won the bronze medal.

He managed the club until 1986, and finished third in the Yugoslav championship once, reached the Yugoslav Cup final once and the UEFA Cup semi-finals once.

In 1986, he took over the Yugoslavia national team.

The first qualifying cycle for UEFA Euro 1988 ended in failure with an embarrassing 1–4 home loss against England.

Contrary to expectations and custom considering the fate of Yugoslav head coaches who presided over prior failed qualifying campaigns, Osim was not fired by the Yugoslav FA largely thanks to personal authority of FA president Miljan Miljanić who wanted Osim to be given another chance.

Osim's Yugoslavia rebounded in the 1990 FIFA World Cup qualification, finishing ahead of France and Scotland.

At the 1990 FIFA World Cup, Yugoslavia reached the quarter-finals by eliminating Spain 2–1 in the round of 16, and proceeded to face Diego Maradona's Argentina in the quarter-finals.

Despite losing a defender, Refik Šabanadžović, to a red card at the half an hour mark, Osim's team held on through the entire game and extra time, only to lose on penalties.

Yugoslavia qualified for UEFA Euro 1992, but Osim resigned on 23 May 1992; as his family in Sarajevo faced bombardment during the Bosnian War.

"My country doesn't deserve to play in the European Championship," said Osim, "On the scale of human suffering, I cannot reconcile events at home with my position as national manager."

Yugoslavia was banned from the event, and its newly independent states have since competed as separate nations.

Since 1994, Osim had lived with his wife mostly in Graz, Austria.

Discontinuities only occurred when he lived in Japan during his managerial career there and when he visited Sarajevo in his function as advisor for the Football Association of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Osim was head coach of the Japan national team, before suffering a stroke in November 2007 and subsequently leaving the post.

In April 2011, FIFA announced that he had become president of the interim committee to run the Football Association of Bosnia and Herzegovina after the country was suspended from all international competitions.

He served until December 2012.

Osim died in May 2022, after years of health issues following his stroke.

Osim was born during World War II in Sarajevo, precisely one month after the Nazi German invasion of Yugoslavia, to Slovene-German father Mihail "Puba" Osim, who worked as a machinist at the railways, and Polish-Czech mother Karolina.

Both of his parents were also born in Sarajevo.

Following the end of the war, he started playing football in the Željezničar youth system.

He studied mathematics at the University of Sarajevo.

Osim was married to Asima and they had three children, two sons, Selmir and Amar, and daughter Irma.

His son Amar was a football player himself, who afterward also became a successful football manager.

Osim's home national team, Bosnia and Herzegovina, had to wait further 23 years to qualify for their first major football competition, having done so for the 2014 FIFA World Cup held in Brazil.