Jonathan Wilson: Osim recalls what might have been for a brilliant Yugoslavia in 1990

[SRNewsBot]

Interviewing Ivica Osim is a poignant experience. The fire that led him to reduce a translator to tears for failing to reduce his players to tears when manager of Japan has faded, and weakened by the stroke that made him resign the Japan job in 2007, he seems, at 69, an old man. His speech is slow and considered, and he has evidently spent much of the time since his stroke evaluating his life, tallying up his successes and dissecting his regrets. "When I lie in bed not sleeping," he says, "I think of two things. I turned down Real Madrid twice, and that might have meant more people knew me, and I wonder about 1990."

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