Wednesday, December 23, 2020 at
Mario Mandzukic has been without a club for almost six months since his departure from the Qatari Al-Duhail. It looks like the 34-year-old striker will soon be back to work, in an extremely surprising place. The Croatian tportal knows to report that Mandzukic is approaching a switch to NK Osijek and is therefore about to return to the league of his home country after more than ten years.
The medium writes that the rumor about Mandzukic initially sounded like ‘science fiction’, but that a return of the striker in Croatia now appears to be serious, according to multiple sources. For a long time it seemed unthinkable that a Croatian club apart from Dinamo Zagreb could afford Mandzukic’s salary. However, NK Osijek is owned by Lorinc Meszaros, Hungary’s richest man and the right-hand man of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The club, which was on the brink of bankruptcy before the arrival of Maszaros and surprisingly eliminated PSV in the preliminary round of the Europa League in 2017, is therefore brimming with ambitions and wants to put Dinamo Zagreb on fire quickly.
To support these ambitions, Meszaros has started building a brand new stadium (for sixty million euros) and training complex in Osijek. Now that the facilities are in order, the club management plans to invest in the selection. Nenad Bjelica works at NK Osijek as a kind of English manager, so as a coach and sports director, and is given a free hand by Meszaros to put his team together. The 49-year-old coach worked as a trainer at Dinamo Zagreb until April and is keen on revenge after his departure from the champion of Croatia.
The current stadium of Osijek, which will soon be exchanged for new accommodation.
Bjelica would have convinced Mandzukic to choose NK Osijek. The striker will have to settle for a lower salary than he has earned in recent years, but the club is ready to offer him the highest salary in the history of the Croatian league. Mandzukic has a contract for two and a half years, with an annual salary of one and a half million euros. The transfer would also have an emotional charge for Mandzukic, as he was born near Osijek, near the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Mandzukic started his career with NK Marsonia Slavonski Brod and NK Zeljeznicar Slavonski Brod before moving to NK Zagreb. Dinamo Zagreb took him away from the fellow townsman and via VfL Wolfsburg, Bayern Munich, Atlético Madrid and Juventus, the 89-time Croatian international ended up with Al-Duhail in January. After six months and only seven matches, his stay in Qatar already came to an end, so that he is now without a club for six months.
After the winter break, Mandzukic is expected to contribute to NK Osijek’s hunt for the Croatian national title, which was conquered no less than fourteen times by Dinamo Zagreb in the past fifteen years. In addition to Mandzukic, the rented Ramón Miérez must be taken over from Alavés for 2.5 million euros in January. In the next two seasons, Meszaros wants to invest a total of fifteen million euros in the selection, which must also pay back by making it to the Champions League. Dinamo Zagreb and NK Osijek are currently leading the Croatian league with 33 points, although Feyenoord’s opponent played two games less in the group stage of the Europa League.