Admir Smajić

Admir Smajić (born 7 September 1963) is a Bosnian professional football manager and former player.

He played in the Yugoslavia national team and the Bosnia and Herzegovina national team.

Club career Partizan Born in Bijeljina, SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, Smajić began his career in his local town with FK Radnik Bijeljina. In 1979 Radnik reached the 1/8 finals of the Yugoslav Cup with Smajić being part of the team and that sealed him a move to Belgrade to play in FK Partizan. He scored his first goal for the club in the away game on 3 April. It was the second goal of the match as Basel won 4–1 against Locarno. However the team failed in their bid for promotion, losing precious points against the promotion rivals during the last few games of the season. Frédéric Chassot was, however, the team's top goal scorer in this stage with 9 goals and Smajić gave the most assists.

During Basel's 1993–94 season, under head-coach Claude Andrey, Smajić's teammates were the likes of Swiss international goalkeeper Stefan Huber, defenders Massimo Ceccaroni, Marco Walker and Samir Tabakovic, the midfielders Mario Cantaluppi, Martin Jeitziner and Ørjan Berg and the Swiss international strikers Dario Zuffi and Philippe Hertig. Together they won the promotion/relegation group and became Nationalliga B champions thus won promotion to the top flight of Swiss football After six seasons in the second tier.

After their promotion, Smajić stayed with Basel for another two and a half season. During his time with the club Smajić played a total of 159 games for Basel scoring a total of 30 goals. 101 of these games were in the Nationalliga B and Nationalliga A, 13 in the Swiss Cup, six in the UEFA Intertoto Cup and 29 were friendly games. He scored 12 goals in the domestic league, 5 in the Swiss Cup, one in the UIC and the other 12 were scored during the test games.

During the winter break of the 1997–98 Nationalliga A season Smajić moved to BSC Young Boys and helped them win promotion as well. Smajić was given an emotional farewell in what was likely his last appearance for the Bosnian national team on 25 April 2000 in Sarajevo, a 0–1 result in a friendly against FIFA All Stars (Thomas Häßler, Roberto Baggio, Mustapha Hadji, Bernard Lama and Dunga, among others that made up the All Stars team).

Managerial career Throughout his managerial career, Smajić didn't manage many teams. From 1998 to 1999 he was the player-manager of BSC Young Boys, from 2001 to 2002 head coach of the Bosnia and Herzegovina U21 national team, from 2003 to 2004 manager of Yverdon-Sport FC and for a short time in 2004, from April to June, manager of FC Sion.

It wasn't until 2011 that Smajić got his next managerial duty, being the Yverdon-Sport assistant manager to Italian manager Vittorio Bevilacqua. In 2014 he came back to Sion, becoming an assistant to German manager Jochen Dries. After Dries got sacked in December 2014, Smajić took over as new manager of the Sion II team. He managed the II team until September 2015.

In June 2018, Smajić was named as the new team manager of Bosnian Premier League club Sloboda Tuzla, while Milenko Bošnjaković became the new manager of Sloboda. On 13 July 2018, only eight games before the start of the season, Smajić decided to leave Sloboda, stating that because of his back issues he needed to get a back surgery in Switzerland.

On 10 June 2019, one year after leaving Sloboda, he came back to the club and became its new team manager, signing a one-year contract. Shortly after, Mile Lazarević was announced as the new manager of Sloboda and worked alongside Smajić. On 1 October 2019, a few days after Lazarević resigned from his managerial position, Smajić also decided to resign from his position and leave Sloboda for a second time.

Managerial statistics

Honours Player Partizan Yugoslav First League: 1982–83, 1985–86, 1986–87 Neuchâtel Xamax Swiss Super Cup: 1988

Yugoslavia Summer Olympics Third place: 1984