Personal information | |||
---|---|---|---|
Full name | Ivan Golac | ||
Date of birth | 15 June 1950 | ||
Place of birth | Koprivnica, FPR Yugoslavia | ||
Height | 5 ft 10 in (1.78 m) | ||
Playing position | Fullback | ||
Youth career | |||
1962–1968 | Partizan Belgrade | ||
Senior career* | |||
Years | Team | Apps | (Gls) |
1968–1978 | Partizan Belgrade | 120 | (3) |
1978–1983 | Southampton | 144 | (4) |
1982 | → Bournemouth (loan) | 9 | (0) |
1983 | → Manchester City (loan) | 2 | (0) |
1983–1984 | Belasica | 1 | (0) |
1984–1986 | Southampton | 24 | (0) |
1985 | → Portsmouth (loan) | 8 | (0) |
National team | |||
1976 | Yugoslavia | 1 | (0) |
Teams managed | |||
1989–1990 | Partizan Belgrade | ||
1992 | Torquay United | ||
1993–1995 | Dundee United | ||
1997 | ÍA Akranes | ||
1999 | Sartid Smederevo | ||
2002–2003 | Karpaty Lviv | ||
* Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only. |
Ivan Golac (Cyrillic: Иван Голац; born 15 June 1950) is a former Yugoslav football player and manager.
A Yugoslav international right back, he is best known as a player and manager of FK Partizan, of Belgrade. In the United Kingdom he is remembered as one of Southampton's first foreign imports and as a Scottish Cup-winning manager with Dundee United.
Golac was born in Koprivnica in PR Croatia then part of FPR Yugoslavia, to father Ivan who was a soldier in President Tito's guard. He moved to Belgrade where he joined the youth section of FK Partizan aged 12 and eventually graduated to the first team. He made over 350 appearances for the club and won League championship medals in 1976 and 1978. During this era, he also made his debut for the national team, but that match against Algeria in 1976 proved to be his only one at international level.
"The Yugoslavian League was one of the best in the world; every game was really tough. It was a kind of war because there was a lot of talent and ambition. We had a very good crowd for all the games and more or less all the clubs, especially Partizan Belgrade, Red Star Belgrade and Dinamo Zagreb. You could put them among the ten biggest derbies in the world ... we would play in front of crowds of 90–100,000"
The year of 1978 would prove to be a watershed in Golac's career. He had reached the age of 28, when Yugoslavia's Communist authorities would allow players to move abroad; it was also the year in which English football's restrictions on foreign players were lifted.