Miloš Kostić new head coach of FK Željezničar

FK Željezničar informs fans, members, sponsors and friends of the Club that the Management Board has selected Slovenian expert, Miloš Kostić, as the new head coach, reports the BH News Agency Patria.

Miloš Kostić was born on November 23, 1971, in Ljubljana. He also began his football career there. His first club was local Svoboda, and in the continuation of his career, he also played for Gorica, Primorje, and Olimpija. With Gorica, he won the Slovenian championship title in 1996. He was a defender. Unfortunately, due to a serious knee injury, he had to end his playing career at the age of 28 and immediately after that dedicated himself to coaching. Through education and continuous improvement, he specialized in working with young players, which is one of the main reasons for our Club's interest. In addition, his and our Club's wishes align in other aspects, given that our goal is to build teams in the model of successful European examples, and Kostić was responsible for such activities at the Football Association of Slovenia (NZS). Therefore, he now wants to use his many years of experience working with young players as the head coach of the first team. Kostić graduated from the Faculty of Sports and holds a UEFA Pro coaching license. He has collaborated with well-known coaching names such as Matjaž Kek and Srečko Katanec, as well as numerous other experts during his visits to European clubs.

He began his coaching career in his country's cadet national team, which he led to the European Championship in 1999. He also participated in the "Euro" in 2002 with the Slovenian junior national team, as well as in 2012, again with the cadet team. In the meantime, he worked as a coach in football schools in his country and Japan, improved his skills at clubs such as Ajax, PSV, Olympiakos, and Werder, but also retained his role as a scout for the national association. He is also the author of a manual used in Slovenia in the coach education process. When it comes to senior football, this will be only his second independent engagement, which is not surprising, as he only decided on that step in 2012. He first worked as an assistant coach at Crvena zvezda when the Belgrade team was led by Slaviša Stojanović, after which he went with the same coach to Belgian Lierse. Before the start of last season, he was offered to lead Olimpija, which he refused due to a lack of freedom in his work. His only engagement as head coach of a club so far was this spring when he took over Krka eight rounds before the end of the season, which at that time had already been "written off" from the top tier. The management's goal was to try to build a young team for the next season with Kostić, and he repaid them with an unexpected nine points. However, his ambitions are greater, and he comes to Željezničar aware that trophies are expected of him here. As he himself points out, the main motive for coming to our country and to Željezničar is precisely the desire to continue his successful work with younger categories with victories in senior football.

Kostić is also bringing his first assistant. That is Marko Lešnik. He was born on 10/15/1978 in Maribor. He started his career in his hometown playing for NK Maribor. Later he played for Železničar from Maribor, Elan from Novo Mesto, and Pohorje, but he also stopped playing actively very early at the age of 25. He turned to coaching education. As a coach, he worked as the head of the NK Maribor youth academy, then as a member of the coaching staff in various Slovenian youth selections, he led the B team of Maribor, and for a time he was also an assistant to the head coach of this successful club. Also, Lešnik is one of the NZS lecturers in the coach education process.

We wish Miloš Kostić and Marko Lešnik a warm welcome to Željezničar and much luck in the coming period on the bench of the Blues.