Đorđe Vujadinović

Đorđe Vujadinović (Serbian Cyrillic: Ђорђе Вујадиновић; 6 December 1909 – 5 October 1990) was a Yugoslav international football player and manager.

Club career He was born in Kolari, a suburb of Smederevo. While playing football with his friends in a sandy field in the Kalemegdan Park in the center of the city, he was spotted by an "older serious man with hat" who invite him, together with other two boys, to come and make tests in, the biggest club from that period, BSK. He passed, and joined the youth team, in which played with a generation of players, which included Tirnanić, Valjarević, Krčevinac, Zloković and he made the forward line, the team that won many Championships in the 1930s. Those late 1920s were years of great expansion in the Yugoslav Kingdom and football was starting to be extremely popular. In those times, the players started to be professionalized and started to be paid monetarily, but he refused, saying that his earnings as a bank employee were enough for him and that he played football only by pleasure. Until 1940 he played about 400 matches for the club, was national Champion five times and twice a league top-scorer.

He was the only BSK player to win all five national titles.

International career Before the World War II, the Yugoslav team was unimaginable without him in the squad. Between 1929 and 1940 he played 44 international matches, and did not play more because of his duties as a bank functionary. He was one of the main players of the Yugoslavia national football team in the 1930 FIFA World Cup, and scored a total of 18 goals for the national team. His final international was a November 1940 friendly match against Nazi Germany.

International goals Yugoslavia's goal tally first + # Date Venue Opponent Score Result Competition 1 26 January 1930 Leoforos Alexandras Stadium, Athens, Greece 1–0 1–2 1929–31 Balkan Cup 2 13 April 1930 BSK Stadion, Belgrade, Yugoslavia 1–0 6–1 Friendly 3 5–1 4 17 July 1930 Estadio Gran Parque Central, Montevideo, Uruguay 4–0 4–0 1930 FIFA World Cup 5 27 July 1930 Estadio Centenario, Montevideo, Uruguay 1–0 1–6 6 24 April 1932 Estadio Buenavista, Oviedo, Spain 1–2 1–2 Friendly 7 3 May 1932 Estádio do Campo Grande, Lisbon, Portugal 1–1 2–3 Friendly 8 2–3 9 26 June 1932 BSK Stadion, Belgrade, Yugoslavia 5–1 7–1 1932 Balkan Cup 10 3 July 1932 BSK Stadion, Belgrade, Yugoslavia 3–1 3–1 11 10 September 1933 Polish Army Stadium, Warsaw, Poland 1–1 3–4 Friendly 12 2–1 13 16 December 1934 Parc des Princes, Paris, France 2–1 2–3 Friendly 14 20 June 1935 Yunak Stadium, Sofia, Bulgaria 3–1 6–1 1935 Balkan Cup 15 24 June 1935 Yunak Stadium, Sofia, Bulgaria 2–1 3–3 16 3–3 17 10 May 1935 ONEF Stadium, Bucharest, Romania 1–1 2–3 1935 King Carol Cup 18 6 September 1937 BSK Stadion, Belgrade, Yugoslavia 1–1 2–1 Friendly

Managerial career After returning from captivity, in the end of the Second World War, he ended his playing career and dedicates to the work with the younger generations. He starts coaching the youth teams of FK Partizan and latter OFK Beograd, where he also managed the senior team in 1960–61. He was also the manager of the Yugoslavia national under-21 football team and Altay S.K. While in a zenith of his managerial time, he invited Mr. Miljan Miljanić (the latter President of the Yugoslav Football Federation), and with who had already worked before, to substitute him in the job.

Honours BSK Yugoslav First League: 1931, 1933, 1935, 1936, 1938–39 Yugoslav First League top scorer: 1929 (with 10 goals in 8 matches) and 1931 (with 12 goals in 10 matches) Yugoslavia 1930 FIFA World Cup semi-finalist

Trivia He was nicknamed "Leteći fudbaler", translated to English "The flying footballer". This nickname was because during the last years he played with BSK he also worked as an employee in the National Bank of Yugoslavia, so as his work did not allow him to take numerous absences, when the club played away he did not travel earlier with the rest of the team, but he rather departed from Belgrade in last moments by airplane in order to come in time to the match.