Dusan Tadic’s skybox was packed last Tuesday, during the Champions League match against Benfica. The sleek room with a small bar, wooden dining table and framed Tadic shirt on the wall can accommodate ten people, but it became twelve. Among them a former coach, a Serbian friend, a number of relatives who flew over and his agent. When a few friends from his time at FC Twente and FC Groningen also knocked on the door for a spot, Tadic couldn’t say ‘no’. Then just buy a few grandstand tickets.
It is typical Tadic, says friend Bobby Mileski, owner of the Groningen restaurant Macedonia. “I know a lot of rich people,” he says, “but I’ve never met anyone as generous as Dusan. Do you need sixteen match tickets? He arranges it. Would a few strangers like to eat in the restaurant? No problem. Dusan pays.”
The two know each other from the time the Ajax player played for Groningen, between 2010 and 2012. Milesky showed the Serb and his then girlfriend – they are now married, live near Vondelpark and have three children – their way around a new country. with strange customs. Installing the cable TV, getting family from Schiphol – Mileski did it with love.
“Perhaps a pitfall,” Jan Dirk Zwerver calls Tadic’s generosity. “Sometimes I see people sitting in his skybox of whom I think: how did you get there? It turns out that a waiter in a restaurant wanted to go to Ajax one day, because he was such a fan of Dusan.” Zwerver is one of the first Dutchmen with whom Tadic became friends after his switch from the Serbian FK Vojvodina to Groningen. His wife worked at the bank that arranged money matters for foreign players of the club. It clicked right away.
Captain Tadic has been the linchpin at Ajax for years, which has to recover for the Classic against Feyenoord on Sunday after the lost game (0-1) against Benfica. He enables teammates to score, scores goals himself, can play in multiple positions, keeps everyone on their toes during the game, urges players to eat healthy and get enough to the gym to go. An exemplary professional, experts call him.
Although Tadic (33) is old for a football player, he plays pretty much everything and is almost never injured. His stats this season – 12 goals and 18 assists in 36 games – are impressive, even if they are slightly behind previous years. Coach Erik ten Hag sees him as his extension on the field. “Coaching is in his nature,” he said. “He is very committed to the team and the way of playing.”
At the same time, Tadic irritates opponents, the public and friends with his theatrical behavior during duels. “That rolls on after a little while, and two minutes later it runs like a lapwing again,” says friend Patrick Smit, who arranges practical matters for Tadic, such as housing and travel. “Then I think: why are you doing that now?”
But even more striking is how the Ajax player can compromise with moral issues. While fellow captains played several matches with a band in the colors of the Ukrainian flag, he was the only one to do so only once. When other Eredivisie captains played with a rainbow band to draw attention to diversity, the Serb opted for a less flashy example. Asked for an opinion on former technical director Marc Overmars, who was fired for sexually transgressive behaviour, he told NOS: “I do not want to judge anyone.”
In the conversations that NRC about him, the image emerges of a man from a conservative country who feels at home in a liberal, western environment. Someone who wants to be everyone’s friend and who unwittingly stirs controversy with that attitude. In addition, his immodesty can be heard above all. Whether it’s his generosity, his loyalty to confidants, his competitive mentality or training work: Tadic knows no boundaries. This arouses admiration, but also resentment.
bomb shelter
Dusan Tadic was born into a family with three children in Backa Topola, an agricultural village in the former Yugoslavia. His father Petar worked for many years as a supervisor in the meat industry, his mother Marija had a job as a bookkeeper at an agricultural company. Older sisters Jelena and Dragana played basketball at a fairly high level.
Tadic was ten years old when NATO bombed Serbia. The high inflation, the sprinting to the bomb shelter, the empty store shelves – the family endured it unperturbed, according to a rare interview with his parents by a VI-journalist. “When the alarm went off, we went to the basement,” Petar recalls. “But after a while we believed it and went on with normal life. Dusan was never really afraid, nor did he always want to hide. After a while […] football continued both indoors and outdoors.”
It soon became clear that he could play football well, says Branislav Novakovic, Tadic’s first trainer at FK Vojvodina. As a fifteen-year-old he was already able to improvise and “touched the ball like an artist on a canvas”. But what stands out most for Novakovic are the teenager’s good manners. He said hello politely, smiled kindly, was helpful. Tadic has come this far, in part because of his upbringing, Novakovic thinks.
Several people call the Ajax player “attentive” and “substantially interested”. Former coach Novakovic gets an app every week asking “if everything is ok”. Tadic brings shirts for his friends’ children. Inquires about the well-being of a recently widowed mother-in-law. Even if he has just played a fabulous game, such as the one in 2019 against Real Madrid in the Champions League. Zwerver: “There were throngs of journalists waiting, but he was the first to go to his friends, and took all the time for them.”
Where other foreign players were satisfied with what the club offers them, says Pieter Huistra, former FC Groningen coach, Tadic made an effort to get to know his environment. He was quite independent for his young age. “His girlfriend and family had not come to the Netherlands, but he soon organized his life. Cooked for herself, invited friends.”
Stubborn
That independence also characterizes him as a football player. Tadic was 21 when he came to Groningen. Hans Nijland, then general manager of FC Groningen, “has rarely seen someone with such a professional attitude”. Nijland: „He was incredibly disciplined in his training work, his nutrition. He reminded me of Arjen Robben.”
Whoever you talk to about Tadic, everyone starts talking about his mentality, discipline, persistence. Always half an hour before training the gym in order to ‘activate’ his body, practice on corners, passes, free kicks after training. He goes his own way, needs little guidance from the club. At odds sometimes. He knows what is best for him, even if specialists from the club think otherwise.
His fitness gave him the benefit of the doubt in those cases, says Alfred Schreuder, who experienced him as a trainer at FC Twente. The Serb ended up there after two years in Groningen. Schreuder remembers that Tadic got injured and insisted on being treated by his physical trainer in Serbia. “I’ll be fit in two weeks, he said, while it takes six weeks.” The club feared setting a precedent; soon everyone wanted to be treated by their own physio. “He started the discussion and convinced us. And he proved he was right. That gave him a special status in the group of players.”
As fit as Tadic was when he came to the Netherlands, he was not in Vojvodina’s youth. In 2007 he came into contact with physical trainer Andreja Milutinovic. Milutinovic was friends with his agent, who asked him if he wanted to hold the striker up to the light. How fit was he? Who knows, there may have been some form of collaboration. “I pointed out a number of points for improvement to Dusan”, Milutinovic grins. “I said it had to be a lot better conditionally. He couldn’t handle that well. Dusan is normally praised to heaven. Who was I anyway? He said to my agent: I cannot work with him.”
A few days passed. And then Tadic changed his mind. “You’re right,” he said to Milutinovic. The two have been working together ever since. Milutinovic, who also assists Croatian Luka Modric of Real Madrid and Serbian Aleksandar Kolarov of Internazionale, explained to Tadic: if you do nothing, you lose everything. “I said I wanted to draw up a multi-year plan. He had to focus entirely on football. Watch his diet. Train more than the others. “You will see that you will become a leader,” I said. He didn’t want to believe the latter, but not so long ago he acknowledged that my prediction has come true.” The two still call each other every day.
Motivate and correct
As demanding as Tadic is to himself, so is he to his fellow players. Trainers and supervisors like to use him as an example to motivate others, says fitness coach Jan Kluitenberg, who worked with Tadic at Twente and later at Premier League club Southampton. Virgil van Dijk, teammate in England, had to, according to Kluitenberg pushed to take good care of themselves. “Tadic helped with that. Then we said: Dusan will be back in the in half an hour gym† We expect you there too. That worked.”
Tadic’s fanaticism sometimes leads to clashes. Well-known are the images of a young Sergiño Dest who is scolded by his captain during an away game at sc Heerenveen because he did not run free, heads against each other. Journalist Sander Zeldenrijk, who is writing a book about Tadic, spoke in his research with a young player (he would not say who) who felt intimidated by the Serb. He was so demanding that his teammate was afraid to make mistakes, says Zeldenrijk.
Motivate, correct, be an example; those sides of the captaincy go to Tadic of course. †The glue in the dressing room”, calls him former Twente coach Steve McClaren. He is not surprised that the Serb is both captain of the national team of his country and of Ajax. “He appeals to everyone, regardless of nationality.”
It becomes uncomfortable when Tadic has to take a position on social issues. Gay acceptance, an expression of support for Ukraine: then he starts to haggle. He is not against it, nor is he for it. He wore the Ukraine band once, almost perfunctorily. Later he sent Evgeniy Levchenko, Ukrainian and chairman of the players’ union VVCS, an app: “Lev, I hope everything will be fine with Ukraine.” He didn’t have to do that, so I’m glad he reacted that way, Levchenko says.
According to his environment, Tadic’s vacillating stance is related to his homeland, where homosexuality is sensitive and Russia is still regarded as a great ally. His support for Overmars, who was dismissed as mysogyny on social media, stems from loyalty, his friends say. He holds van Overmars, but he also likes women. “I have two sisters, a mother and two daughters,” he said, according to his Groningen friend Dirk Jan Zwerver, shortly after the incident. “I can’t imagine something like that happening to them.”
Zwerver says Tadic has become an open-minded man in the more than 12 years he has played in Western Europe. He loves living in Amsterdam Oud-Zuid. The zoo is a favorite place and he regularly goes fishing with his son, just outside the city. Others think he will continue to live there after his football career. “I think it would be ideal if he gets a role at Ajax,” says Patrick Smit. “Certainly now that Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, a good friend, is also going to work there.”
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