The latest episode of the A-Leagues’ new podcast My Football Passport, hosted by James Dodd, welcomes special guest Milos Ninkovic, who discusses growing up in a war-torn country, realising his two childhood dreams of representing Serbia and Red Star Belgrade, and how Newcastle Jets almost beat Sydney FC to his signature.
“When I signed for Red Star (Belgrade), my first dinner in the city at one restaurant the owner came to me and said: ‘Look, whenever you want, you can come here and you can eat for free’.
“And really, every time – because it was close to my home – every time we went there for dinner, I never paid the bill.
“He said: ‘If you win the league, you don’t need to pay. If you don’t win the league, then you have to pay for all of it’.
As a child growing up in Belgrade, Serbia, Milos Ninkovic had two dreams: play for the national team, and play for Red Star Belgrade.
He accomplished the former in 2009, going on to start in his country’s historic 1-0 win over Germany at the 2010 World Cup.
Ninkovic achieved the latter in 2013, signing for the club that inspired his footballing aspirations by winning the 1990-91 European Cup final against Marseille – a fairytale story he watched every step of the way alongside his father as a child.
Ninkovic signed for Red Star in 2013, with crosstown rivals Partizan Belgrade chasing a seventh-consecutive Serbian SuperLiga title.
“When I look at it now, it was a really brave move for me,” Ninkovic said. “I remember all my friends, they were all Red Star fans. They all said: ‘You are crazy, don’t go there, you’re going to finish your career there’.”
But Ninkovic didn’t heed the words of warning; he had a life-long aspiration to turn into reality.
Ninkovic did spend only one season at the club. He hasn’t paid for a meal in Belgrade since.
“I said (to my friends): ‘Look, I am going to come here for one year, I want to win the league and that’s it’. And we won the league.
He added: “Every time I went to have coffee or at restaurants, I can’t remember the last time I paid. The owners are all big Red Star fans and never let me pay the bill.”
For Red Star fans it was the end of Partizan’s stranglehold on Serbian silverware. For Ninkovic, it was a dream fulfilled.
“My dream was only to play for the national team and to play for Red Star. I never had dreams of playing for Barcelona or Real Madrid, that was only my two dreams that I had as a kid.”
‘‘Should I play football or basketball?’ Ninkovic’s early dilemma decided by frank conversation
Milos Ninkovic the basketballer?
There was a time he gave both basketball and football equal attention in his young life.
But it was a conversation with his father, which centred around his scepticism about his son growing to any substantial height, which put him on the path toward a career in football for good.
“From the beginning, in Serbia football is sport number one,” Ninkovic said. “Football and basketball when I was young, now obviously tennis is there because of (Novak) Djokovic and other tennis players.
“But back then all kids, we all played football and basketball. My dad, he also played, he was a football player. He didn’t have that great (of) a career, back then it was much harder. But the interesting thing was, I played football and basketball at the same time. I started football when I was six, and then I started to play basketball when I was eight.
“When I was 11 years old the coach said: ‘Look, you need to pick a sport, you can’t play both. Now it’s time, you need to choose. Which one do you want?’
“I remember I came home and my dad said: ‘No, no, not basketball’… because my parents are not quite big, he said: ‘I think you would have more success as a football player’.
“I’ve always loved football more than basketball but as a kid there were some times that I really was like: ‘should I play football or basketball?’ After that chat with my dad I definitely decided to play football.”
Skipping school to ‘train twice a day’
It was the crafty scheme designed by a young Ninkovic to fool both his parents and teachers simultaneously: dressed for school, bag packed with what his parents assumed was a pencil case, text books and lunch, Ninkovic would head off with his boots concealed, ready to take advantage of a quirk in the Serbian school schedule.
“That time in Serbia, and I think still now, the kids one week (are) going to school in the morning, and then you have training in the afternoon,” he said.
“But the next week you’re going to school (in the) afternoon, and you have training in the morning.
“I remember, every time I had school in the afternoon, I would pretend I’m going to school, I’d take my school bag but I’d put my boots in, and my parents didn’t know that basically every day I trained twice a day.
“Then they had a meeting at the school, and the teacher said I’m not coming to school. I had a lot of problems back then.
“(I was) not a great (student). Good, not bad, not great, somewhere in the middle.
“But to be honest, I never liked school. I remember we had English and Russian, and I was like: ‘Look, (why) do I need English or Russian? I’m going to live in Serbia for all my life’.
“Then all of a sudden (I’d) spent nine years at Dynamo Kyiv where they speak Russian, and now this is my seventh year in Australia, and they speak English.”
’Oh my god’: Ninkovic’s reaction to call-up for historic World Cup win
After sitting on the bench for Serbia’s 1-0 loss to Ghana at the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Ninkovic felt the scrutiny of the local media go up a gear in anticipation for what was to come next: a meeting with the might of Germany, who hadn’t lost a group stage fixture since 1986.
“…The first game I was on the bench, I didn’t play and we lost against Ghana,” Ninkovic said. “The media in Serbia are really hard, when you lose they are really hard. They start to (say) we are not good enough, we are going to lose to Germany four or five nil, or something like that.
“(Head coach Radomir Antic) came to me before the game, and he (said): ‘You’re going to start’.” Ninković let out a nervous sigh. “I remember I said: ‘Oh my god’.
“Can you imagine the scenario if we lose four or five nil? Then they’re going to smash Antic because he put me in.
“I played in Ukraine, I played in the Champions League, but people in Serbia, because I left my country when I was 18 and played in Ukraine, they didn’t really know Milos Ninkovic as a player and what (I) can do.
“It was hard for me, really, but I remember Nemanja Vidic and Dejan Stankovic – Wikipedia helped me a lot, and I played really well. I played 70 minutes. I couldn’t play more because I gave everything I had. I left everything on the pitch and we won 1-0.
“That was amazing not just for us, but for all fans across Serbia, they celebrated all day after the game.”
Those celebrations were to be short lived, as Ninkovic went on to start Serbia’s third and final group game against a certain team in green and gold…
The Newcastle move that never was
In the aftermath of his sacking as Newcastle Jets head coach in May, 2015, Phil Stubbins said: “I certainly wanted to make some changes… we were well on the way to putting a very competitive squad together.”
One of those changes was the proposed acquisition of Ninkovic from Evian.
The departure of Stubbins stopped that move in its tracks, opening the door for Sydney FC to swoop in and secure the signature of the player who many consider the best player in Sky Blues history – and one of the best to do it in the Isuzu UTE A-League.
“No one knows – well, maybe some people know – but before Sydney FC I got the offer from Newcastle,” Ninkovic said.
“The coach was Phil (Stubbins), and we had a good chat. He was like: ‘Look, you’re going to play as a 10’.
“We had a really good chat, and I was definitely (thinking) I’m going there. Then they started to have some problems… and they sacked him.”
He added: “I had an offer from China as well, one-and-a-half years, and Sydney was a three-year deal I remember I came home, I spoke with my wife, at that time we had two kids, two daughters, and I was like: ‘For us, China is more money but the lifestyle for kids, for us I think it’s better to live in Sydney’.”
