A heartfelt conversation with Srečko Katanec

Former head coach of the national team, Srečko Katanec, met with journalist Abdulvosit Bektemirov. During the conversation with Srečko Katanec, we talked for about two hours on many topics – tactics in football, the coach’s emotions, phenomena in sports, and interesting events from his career. Katanec may appear serious and reserved in front of the media, but our conversation turned out to be very interesting and open.

Now, let’s go back a little and return to the main topic. Uzbekistan's national team has qualified for the World Cup. The national team officially secured the World Cup ticket on June 5 after the match against the UAE, but this journey actually began much earlier. Srečko Katanec took charge of the national team in August 2021 and led it until January 2025. His health did not allow him to continue working. Timur Kapadze replaced Katanec, and thanks to the efforts of both coaches, a historic result was achieved.

How did it all begin?

Returning to the match in Abu Dhabi. After the final whistle blown by the Australian referee, a real celebration erupted in the media tribune. Journalists' joy and even tears of happiness. You know what happened during the post-match press conference. As I was leaving the stadium, I remembered that I needed to congratulate Katanec and ask for his thoughts about today’s match. I sent him a congratulatory message through Messenger, and he shared his thoughts.

After that, we continued celebrating the victory, and I forgot about Katanec. Two days later, when I returned to Tashkent and attended the national team’s training session at “Jar”, I found out that the UFA had invited Srečko Katanec to the match against Qatar. Then I immediately invited him for an interview, but he didn’t respond. As I didn’t receive a reply to my request, I completely forgot about it. Two days later, I received a personal message on Telegram. I opened the app and saw a message from Katanec:

“Hello. I am in Tashkent. If you want, we can meet somewhere for coffee and have a chat.”

So we arranged a convenient time and location. Finally, we met.

– Hello. How are you?
– Hello, Mr. Katanec. I’m very happy to see you again. Congratulations on qualifying for the World Cup. Uzbekistan will now participate in the Mundial.

– Yes, we made it to the World Cup. So how do you feel now?
– It’s just incredible. I’m still in euphoria. Honestly, I still can’t fully grasp what happened, I think.

– Why? (laughs)
– We qualified for the World Cup for the first time. Everyone is happy. The emotions and everything else are wonderful. A dream of many years has finally come true.

About qualifying for the World Cup:

– The joy is great, but we need to get used to it. We had been approaching this result step by step, and it finally came true. When I qualified for the World Cup with Slovenia, there was a similar joy in the country. Now, we should simply enjoy the process and live in the moment.

Then Katanec laughed and said, “Today I’ll be the journalist,” and began asking me questions.

– What do you think, how was the final round of the qualifiers? I’m curious about your thoughts on the opponents…
– Honestly, I think our group was quite good. We didn’t play against strong teams like Japan or Korea. True, Iran is also strong, but we’ve been getting good results against them lately. We play Qatar frequently. I think we were lucky when it came to our opponents.

– Yes, you’re right. We didn’t have to travel far to countries like Japan or Australia. We only traveled to Laos once. Overall, everything went well.


Source: championat.asia Read 'Zamin' on Telegram!