World Cup, Serbia-Brazil: Piksi Stojkovic and the curse of penalties

Dragan “Piksi” Stojkovic is no longer in the mood for penalties. Now, in Qatar, he leads one of the most promising Serbian selections of the last twenty years. The Belgrade national team boasts a sensational colony in our Serie A: eleven players called up, among which obviously the Milinkovic-Savic brothers and the two Juventus players Kostic and Vlahovic stand out. In a non-easy group (Brazil, Cameroon and Switzerland) it can make progress if it doesn’t implode on itself, as has happened several times: and if it doesn’t drag the matches to penalties, where the balance is not the best. And coach Stojkovic knows it very well. He has always seen the winning lottery ticket from others. Piksi was the name of a little mouse from a cartoon that young Dragan was said to resemble. On the pitch, more than a little mouse, he alternates between genius games at the lamp and listless afternoons of ectoplasm, strictly Yugoslavian style.

BANKS OF FOG

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Soul of Red Star Belgrade, number 10 of enormous talent, Stojkovic earns the nickname “Maradona of the East”. Of course, he is not the only one to be saddled with the uncomfortable (often not auspicious) comparison, but if you ask a Balkan, even after 30 years, he does not consider it heresy. In 1988 the only way to stop him and Savicevic in the Champions Cup was a divine intervention: and in effect the sky provided, causing the fog to fall on Belgrade while the Slavs were showing the green mice to Sacchi’s Milan. Match interrupted and repeated the following day: this time the Rossoneri found the crux of the matter. And they prevail on penalties, where Dragan’s would do it too. But that’s not enough: Milan passes.

WINDS OF WAR

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Patience, there is the beloved national team: at the end of the 80s Yugoslavia is a concentrate of class and can really win the World Cup in Italy ’90. Protagonist of the tournament, for better or for worse, Piksi: in the cauldron of Bentegodi in Verona, his Yugoslavia meets Spain in the round of 16. People wait for Butragueno, and instead find Dragan: lethal brace, framed by the second goal in extra time, a free-kick that ironically contains the whole parabola of fatal Yugoslavia. Wonderful and sparkling, but only for a moment: then, buried under the intersection. And in fact, four days later, on 30 June in Florence, the story of the “Plavi” ended: defeated on penalties by Argentina. Maradona misses from eleven meters, a more unique than rare occasion. But the other Diego also failed previously, the one with the surname in “-ic”: full crossbar. The decisive one, kicked by Hadzibegic, ends up against Goycoechea’s gloves: Argentina ahead, Yugoslavia is left with the winds of war.

CHEAT

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Dragan is sad: at home we start talking about Serbs and Croats, Muslims and Orthodox. He chooses to go to Marseille to get back into the game and try to win the Champions Cup, reflecting from a distance on what is happening at home. But the penalties… Cursed penalties. In 1991 he reached the final, here was finally the chance to touch the Big Ears: it was played in Bari, you can’t go wrong. But in front there is the Red Star: Piksi goes into extra time, he is only asked to kick (and well) his penalty in the final “lottery”. But he refuses to go eleven meters: “I don’t shoot the penalty against them”. Red Star thanks and wins.

WENGER

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Yugoslavia fell apart, Dragan relegated with Verona and won (but as a follower) the Champions League with Marseille at the second attempt, in ’93. But he has lost stimulus and desire: only bad news comes from home, it’s anguish. So he chooses to go to the other side of the world, to the Nagoya Grampus in Japan. At the time, choosing the Far East was not yet fashionable and it was more a leap in the dark than an opportunity, but fate partially gives Piksi back what he lost in the “lottery”: the Japanese coach is Arsene Wenger. It’s love at first sight: an Emperor’s Cup and a Super Cup land in Nagoya. Then Dragan falls again with the national team: the World Cup in France ’98, what remains of the Belgrade selection leaves the scene in the second round against the Netherlands. A penalty is involved again: Mijatovic misses it this time.

HEIR

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Better to think about the bench: Stojkovic ceases to be a player and begins to see in Wenger his ideal type of coach: “We have the same football philosophy” he confessed in an interview, “we want to play the ball in the same way. I want to convey to my players his own tranquillity. When I took my coaching exam, I prepared myself for a week at the Arsenal sports centre: I just wanted to meet Wenger.” And the Gunners manager reciprocates the esteem: “I would like my heir to be Stojkovic, he is a legend for Serbia and Yugoslavia. We have the same concept of football”. But something goes wrong: Piksi will go to Arsenal only for a few courtesy visits to his former coach. Then he begins to coach Nagoya, with whom he wins the championship in 2010.

DESERT

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For a year and a half, Maradona dell’Est has been the coach of his favorite national team. It’s not a gifted team like the one they had thirty years ago preparing for the Italian World Cup. But he has forgotten the dark times: there are so many young hopefuls and the usual touch of typically Balkan madness. Even Serbia, in Belgrade, saw ghosts from eleven meters: in November two years ago they lost access to Euro 2021 against Scotland on penalties. Stojkovic was not yet on the bench, but three months later, when he became coach, he received this first mission: “Make us forget that match and take us to the World Cup”. Executed: Qatar is an exotic land, almost like Japan when Wenger was there. Piksi and Serbia are playing for the future in the desert of the emirs. As long as it doesn’t go to penalties there either.