football+ interview with edin dzeko
DESCRIPTION
Manchester City's mid season signing Edin Dzeko talks to Jonathan Wilson about his tough journey to the topTRANSCRIPT
DIN DŽEKO was six when the war
began in Bosnia, his homeland. As
Sarajevo was besieged by Serbian
troops, his parents’ house was
destroyed, so he went to live with
his grandparents, the whole family – a dozen people,
sometimes more – living in an area of around 35
metres square, the equivalent of two small rooms.
During the four-year siege, football provided a
release, but it also brought life-threatening dangers.
At least 1000 – some estimates say as many as 3000
– children were killed in the conflict.
Hajro Bojadži was a coach who used to take teams
to compete in futsal tournaments. “Džeko was one of
a small group of kids I’d take to play in tournaments
held in school gyms during the war,” he recalls. “We’d
walk many kilometres, going from houses to other
places under cover to avoid snipers. It was a very
dangerous time, but though the boys were always
hungry they played with huge smiles on their faces.”
Džeko’s mother, Belma, hated letting her son out
of her sight, and recalls how close he once came to
death. “Every time Edin went out I felt afraid,” she
says. “I know it was crazy, but I couldn’t forbid him to
play. He was just a kid. There was one time when he
begged to go out, but I had a strange feeling and said
no. A few minutes later a bomb hit the playground. A
lot of kids died that day. We were often hungry and
thirsty, but that never stopped him playing.”
Inevitably, the war left its mark on Džeko. “It was
awful,” he said. “As a kid for four years I lived in fear of
losing my life or of a member of my family or a friend
being killed. But that was 15 years ago and we have
to look to the future. War made my everyday problems
seem much smaller and when it is hard sometimes,
I just remember that it could be much worse. But, I
have to say, I’m trying not to think about war.”
It hardly compares to life under the siege, of
course, but Džeko’s early days in football weren’t
easy either, and perhaps the sense of perspective
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61 FOOTBALL+
Edin Džeko
came up the hard way,
surviving the war in Sarajevo
to become a big-money
signing with Manchester
City. Jonathan Wilson
meets the humble
Bosnian striker
Edin Džeko interview
A tale of two cities“As a kid I
lived in fear of losing my life or a family member being killed. War made my everyday problems seem smaller . . . when it is hard sometimes, I remember it could be much worse”
62 63 FOOTBALL+FOOTBALL+
he’d developed helped him through those first years.
His father took him to Želježnicar, one of the two big
Sarajevo clubs. Its stadium stands in Grbavica, which
lay on the frontline during the war, and the first thing
players and officials had to do when the siege was
lifted was to clear the pitch of mines.
His first coach was Jusuf Šehovic. “Edin was 10
years old when I started working with him,” Šehovic
says. “We worked in a half-destroyed stadium, in
terrible conditions, but those kids had a great will to
work. I never forced Edin to attack, but he decided to
try, and with his skills and height it was his destiny. He
was serious at every practice, and he stood out in his
generation. That is what opened the doors of the first
team, and later got him to the Czech Republic.”
At the time, that move from Želježnicar to Teplice
seemed a baffling one. He had made his first-team
debut as a 17-year-old, but his style of play was alien
to a football culture that prized technical over physical
attributes and fans nicknamed him ‘Kloc’, the local
slang for a lamp post. “When I put Džeko in the squad
for a first time, some colleagues called me crazy,”
remembers Nikola Niki, who was Bosnia’s Under 19
coach at the time. “They asked me why I’d called up
this useless guy, and I said that he had the capacity to
become great player. Nobody believed it.”
When Teplice offered €25,000 (A$33,000) for
him, one of Želježnicar’s directors admitted “we
thought we’d won the lottery”. Two years later he
joined Wolfsburg for €4m (A$5.3m). He was still raw,
but, in Germany, Felix Magath moulded him into the
devastating forward he became in the Bundesliga.
“The secret? Hard work,” says Džeko, who turns
25 this March. “And more hard work. When I got to
Wolfsburg, in my first season, I didn’t score with my
head. Magath decided to work with me on that for
whole summer. And of course I was much better.”
His last two-and-a-half seasons at Wolfsburg
brought 58 goals and 31 assists, a record that
suggests both his effectiveness and his unselfishness,
which might yet prove his greatest strength as he tries
to carve out a career in the Premier League with a club
Stephen Ireland described as “a viper’s nest of egos”.
IN 1972, Rodney Marsh joined a Manchester City
side that was four points clear at the top of the
league. By the end of the season, they had slipped
to fourth. Marsh himself has suggested his style of
play didn’t gel with that of his teammates; some of
his teammates have suggested it was his personality
that was the disruptive factor; but either way, Marsh
has become the byword for a player who, for all his
gifts, unsettles a team that had previously looked on
course for success. Faustino Asprilla followed the
paradigm after he joined Newcastle in 1996-97 and
found his goals insufficient to prevent a 12-point lead
being squandered. And, inevitably, whenever any new
forward arrives at City midway through a season the
question is asked: is he another Rodney Marsh?
Usually the question is fatuous, given City have
rarely been anywhere near glory since 1972, but this
season a title challenge was, for a while, credible.
When Džeko joined them for £27m ($42m) from
Wolfsburg at the end of the first week of January, City
trailed Manchester United by two points. Within a
month that gap had grown to eight as City picked up
just four points from their first three games with Džeko
in the side (although he was named the club’s player
of the month for January).
With Džeko’s arrival came the need for a tactical
realignment within the team. Perhaps it was not the
best moment, coming as City, a club throwing plenty
of money at the challenge in front of them, appeared
to be finding some sort of rhythm after a stuttering
start to the season. Unfortunately the player most
affected by the need for a new system was Carlos
Tevéz, probably City’s stand-out player this season.
The move may make long-term sense, but in the
short term its effect was to knock City out of their stride.
So how did things change? Previously Tevéz had
operated as a false nine, dropping deep and linking
with the midfield three, leaving a vacuum into which
the wide men – two of David Silva, James Milner,
Adam Johnson and Jo – could drift.
Džeko is more of a fixed point; he can pull wide,
and he is certainly not the old-fashioned target man
some portraits have suggested, but he is nowhere
near as mobile or as comfortable linking play as
Tevéz. His inclusion has meant Tevéz playing to his
left, but with the Argentinean’s tendency to go looking
for space – the very quality that made him so effective
as a false nine – City have, on occasion, been left
short of width. In time, an accommodation probably
will be found – particularly given that Tevéz’s drifting
infield should open space for Aleksandar Kolarov, a
naturally attacking left-back. Džeko is gifted, intelligent
and, perhaps most importantly, relatively free from
ego. And that is where he really departs from the
Marsh template: his arrival may have disrupted City’s
tactics but his reputation is as a thoroughly likable
man, decent and helpful, and free from the aloofness
that makes so many footballers such difficult people
to deal with.
Certainly my own experience of him backs that up. I
was interviewing him once on the terrace of a hotel just
outside Sarajevo before a World Cup qualifier between
Bosnia and Turkey when after about 10 minutes he was
called away by the press officer. I thought that would
be the last I saw of him, but he returned apologetically
explaining he’d had to have his photograph taken
with the prime minister. A local journalist told me of
a time he’d popped in unexpectedly to visit Džeko at
Wolfsburg. A big VW conference meant there were no
hotel rooms to be had, so Džeko handed over the keys
of his flat and spent the night at his girlfriend’s.
Plenty of footballers who’ve grown up in crushing
poverty have rapidly sealed themselves inside the
gilded bubble, so it may be that Džeko is just a good
bloke by nature.
“I really don’t need luxury,” he says. “I’m just a
regular guy, I have a lot of friends and love to spend my
time with them. In my time in Teplice there were days
that I didn’t have enough money, but that’s normal for a
young player away from home.
“I think I’m not different than I used to be as a kid,
playing in Sarajevo. I try to have good relationship
with fans, anyone who wants a photo or autograph,
I do my best . . .”
Džeko may or may not be a success at City, but if
he fails, it won’t be because of his ego.
“His arrival may have disrupted City’s
tactics but he is a thoroughly likable
man, decent and helpful, and free
from the aloofness that makes many
footballers difficult to deal with”
Džeko was hugely successful during his time with Wolfsburg
in Germany