Dragoslav

In 369 matches for Red Star, he scored 115 goals, won five league titles and three cups. As the coach of our club in the 1989/90 season, he won the double crown by creating a team that already won the Champions Cup and the Intercontinental Cup the following year. The "King of Dribbling", Zvezda's second star, after Rajko Mitić, was a member of the national team when Yugoslavia was the Olympic winner, fourth in the world and second in Europe.

No one before and after Šekularac possessed such a great talent for the ball. Due to his talent and dedication to football, "Šeki" was simply destined to reach a high class and become an ace of the world format. Ambitious and in love with football, he was an incorrigible optimist, and when he first stepped into the junior team of Crvena zvezda, he had the courage to say loudly in front of coach Miša Pavić, who promoted him to the first team at the age of 17: "Today there are only three great footballers on the planet, namely Di Stefano, Puskas and Dragoslav Šekularac".

When Dimitrije Milojević, the popular "Čika Mitke", saw Šekularac in the yard of the Second Male Gymnasium, he immediately sent him to Crvena zvezda. He saw extraordinary giftedness in the mischievous man with crooked legs. From the start, Šeki brought the fans to ecstasy, because he quickly became a football player of bravado, jokes, spirit and imagination. Unique in many ways.

Challenged by his father, who directed him to school and was against football, Dragoslav, like every time in his life, got his way. In Zvezda, much older and more recognized players awaited him, which was only a motive for him to prove himself.

- I remember the game, the ball was near me and I "called out" Branko Stanković, and I passed the ball to the other side and made a mistake. At halftime he came up to me, slapped me hard and I cried. At the next training session, the coach puts us one against the other and he doesn't touch the football at all. Later, when he became a coach, he constantly "advised" me to play against him like I did back then. Who knows if there would have been anything from me if Crvena zvezda had not gone on tour in America to earn money, and we from the other team stayed in Belgrade. I used that chance to the maximum, the whole of Belgrade was talking about a new kid, who plays very well, so for example, in the first match two people watched me, in the second five, and in the third 15000 people - recalled Šeki. balance in the derbies with Partizan, in the games he considered the most important in his career. He possessed virtuoso technique, a great overview of the game and mastery that few could copy, but he always wanted to influence the game and the result. To be the central figure like in the cup final won in 1959 against Partizan. He had a specific temperament, he always fought for truth and justice, he didn't think about the consequences, he reacted with his heart, not with his mind, and as a result, he was suspended after the match in Niš for hitting referee Pavle Tumbas in the fall of 1962. The association did not care that, according to many, Šeki was the first name of the Mundial in Chile in 1962, but removed him from football for two years!

Upon his return, he won his fifth title with Zvezda in 1964, and then injured his spine, so he left for Karlsruhe in 1966. He then played for Saint Louis, then OFK Belgrade, Santa Fe, Atletico Bucaramanga, Milonarios, America de Cali, Paris and in 1975 as a player-coach for the Canadian "White Eagles". He loved life, lived and played outside the rules. That's why he was unique.

He played 41 games for the national team and scored six goals. He made his debut on September 30, 1956, against Czechoslovakia, and played his last match on June 1, 1966, when Bulgaria was visiting Belgrade. He played in two World Cups, in 1958 in Sweden and four years later in Chile, where he achieved the best ranking in history - fourth place - with the Yugoslav team. The chroniclers of that time say that Šeki was above all the stars in terms of his game and that he, and not Garincha and Amarildo, should have received the award for the best player of the World Cup.

He built his coaching career in Canada, and arrived at "Marakana" in 1989 and immediately won the double crown. The team with the first star Dragan Stojković was supplemented by Dejan Savićević, Darko Pančev, Miodrag Belodedić and Ilija Najdoski. Šeki knew that this was the team to win the Champions Cup, but in the second leg of the UEFA Cup against Koln, his nerves worked again, so he earned eight games from UEFA. The team that Ljubomir Petrović started to create led to the greatest achievements the following season. His coaching journey took him to America, Al Nasser, Heidelberg, Marbella, Busan, Obilić, and in the end he reached the beginning of the "White Eagles".
The man who turned football into art died on January 5, 2019.