Ivica Osim: a Yugoslavian football giant who twice rejected Real Madrid

Ivica Osim was ill, his wife Asima said. Would I mind coming to his Sarajevo flat the following day? But the following day he was little better. Go to the cafe in the square, Asima said, wait there and he would try to come down later. By that point, in all honesty, I wasn’t expecting much. But after an hour or so he shuffled slowly over, sat down and began to talk. His voice was weak, his pale eyes watery, but when we said goodbye three hours later, it was because I had to go to the airport.

That was in 2009 and Osim was still suffering the effects of the stroke two years earlier that ended his career as Japan manager. He had been watching an Arsenal game and when he came round in hospital, his first question was what the final score had been. In truth, he never really recovered and died on Sunday, five days short of his 81st birthday. But he talked, with characteristic eloquence, thoughtfulness and directness.

He talked about playing for Yugoslavia when they beat England in the semi-final of the 1968 European Championship – “they were great runners. You played against Nobby Stiles, Alan Mullery, Bobby Charlton, and you thought they must be playing their twins as well, because it seemed there were such a lot of them” – and about Mullery becoming in that game the first England player sent off: “It was a big surprise, because Englishmen were famous for fair play at that time. In football, in games like that you sometimes forget yourself. Today it has gone too far as a business for fair play to matter. Even fair play is a business today.”

He talked about managing Japan: “They have covered everything with full attention, and they know everything they need, but they simply do not have that. They have an inferiority complex,