From behind the iron curtain: how a motley crew of Yugoslav players began the foreign influx into English football

A new book charts an idiosyncratic era of English football when it was sprinkled with Yugoslavs - until players turned 28, the Marshal-Tito led regime insisted they played within the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. 

IRON WILL: Yugoslav statesman and president, Marshal Tito salutes as troops march past at a military parade at Belgrade to mark the 30th anniversary of liberation. 

IN the early ’80s, a raft of Yugoslavs plied their trade in English football. They came in different shapes and sizes and enjoyed varying degrees of success in English football. There was ‘big’ Boško Janković, the balding Middlesbrough striker who became an unlikely cult hero for Aston Villa fans when he scored a brace of goals against Ipswich in a 2–1 victory in the final game of the 1980–81 season, as Bobby Robson’s men conceded the title to Ron Saunders’s team. Gigantic defender Nicola Jovanović, a £300,000 purchase from Red Star Belgrade, became the first non-Brit/Irishman to play for Manchester United. 

A back injury meant that Jovanović was jettisoned by United after just 30 often-underwhelming displays. Midfielder Ante Miročević scored for Sheffield Wednesday in the loss to Brighton in the 1983 FA Cup semi-final. He loved going fishing with manager Jack Charlton near Barnsley and enjoying copious amounts of ale and whisky chasers. ‘I’d drink ten, twenty a night and then we’d train the next day. That’s what England taught me, how to drink and play,’ he told Charlton’s biographer Colin Young.