SLOBODAN PAVKOVIĆ

My entry into the world of football was a modest one: as a very young boy I began playing the sport on the streets of my hometown and in the yard of my elementary school. Excelling quickly and becoming the best at that foundational level enabled me to eventually move into playing at the club level - success at one level provided me the ticket to enter the next. In this way, I progressed from playing in my schoolyard to playing in some of the best teams of ex-Yugoslavija - FK Vojvodina and FK Partizan - and eventually playing for the U-19 and U-21 national teams of Yugoslavija (our U-21 national team was the European champion in 1978, with me as captain). 

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My coaching career developed in very much the same way - it began in 1984 when I coached the youth categories at Degerfors IF in Sweden. I would eventually move into two senior national-level positions: the role of technical Director at the Football Association of Singapore (from 2008-2015) and the role of Analyst and First Assistant Coach with the Serbian National Team (2016-2018) (which qualified for the FIFA World Cup 2018 in Russia).

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The two key elements that have fueled my 40+ years of working in the field have been ambition and energy. I am always striving to discover my 'maximum,' to discover the greatest capacity that I can reach with each new project. Winning is, of course, incredibly important in the world of football, and knowing what the success of the win feels like has always propelled me forward. So has showcasing my knowledge and always striving to add on to it and expand its limits. And finally, the energy which I bring to my work has always been clearly visible to anyone who has ever worked with me, and can be seen in the many training videos of my YouTube channel. 

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I have, so far,  worked as a coach in 6 different countries and on 3 different continents - Sweden, Serbia, Kuwait, Oman, Egypt and Singapore. Working with so many different mentalities, cultures and abilities has been a true privilege for me, because it has brought me unique insights and diverse experiences that I wouldn't have been able to get in any other way. This has been invaluable to me on both the personal and professional level.