Darko Pančev

After retiring from playing football, Pančev worked with the Football Federation of Macedonia. In July 2006, Pančev was named the sporting director of Vardar.

Vardar

His playing career started in 1983 at Vardar where he quickly developed into one of the most feared strikers in the Yugoslav League, becoming league top scorer in the 1983–84 season. The skill and seeming ease of his goal scoring exploits in Skopje made him a target for bigger clubs.

Red Star Belgrade

During summer 1988, Pančev was snapped up by Red Star Belgrade, which beat cross-town rivals FK Partizan to the twenty-two-year-old's signature. Another talented youngster, 21-year-old Dejan Savićević, also arrived to the club during the same transfer window, but both promptly got sent to serve the mandatory Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) stint that kept them off the pitch for the entire league season. Pančev debuted for his new club in 1989 and played three full seasons for crveno-beli, scoring an incredible 84 goals from 91 league appearances, and winning the European Cup and the Intercontinental Cup in 1991. Due to his phenomenal strike rate, during the early 1990s, he was widely recognized as one of the best strikers in the world. Displaying great goalscoring instincts and predatory skills, he got nicknamed Kobra by the Serbian sports media. Red Star fans remember him as the player who scored the winning penalty in the 1991 European Cup final, bringing Red Star the most prestigious trophy in European football for the first time in its 50-year existence. Pančev was the highest scorer in top-division European football in the 1990–91 season with 34…

Pančev played in the 1990 World Cup for Yugoslavia and scored two goals in their 4–1 win over the United Arab Emirates in the group stage. It proved to be the only international tournament he played in; he was later called to UEFA Euro 1992, but he then renounced a place in the squad on 23 May, claiming physical reasons, although this statement was believable for just a few people in Belgrade, who saw political views as the true cause of the withdrawal of the Macedonian forward - who had been the top marksman on qualifying group stages, with ten goals. He was replaced on the same day by Dragan Jakovljević, but in 31 May the national team was banned due to the Yugoslav Wars, just ten days before the tournament opening. Pančev later played in the Macedonian national team's first ever official match, on 13 October 1993, against Slovenia. His final international was a June 1995 European Championship qualification match against Belgium. In November 2003, to celebrate UEFA's jubilee, he was selected as the Golden Player of Macedonia by the Football Federation of the Republic of Macedonia as their most outstanding player of the past 50 years.

Pančev is married to singer Maja Grozdanovska-Pančeva. They have two daughters. He owns a cafe called Devetka (Number Nine) in Skopje.