Josip Kuže

He was a professional football player with Dinamo Zagreb, winning 11 Yugoslavian U-21 caps. He played a minor role among the great players who still have their huge amount of respect today. During his playing years with Dinamo as a defender from 1971 to 1981 he played in 384 games scoring 14 goals. Kuže scored only 1 goal in 1975/1976 season. During his career he played alongside Balkan footballing greats such as Zlatko Kranjčar, Snješko Cerin, Srećko Bogdan, Velimir Zajec, Ivica Senzen, Marko Mlinarić, Ismet Hadžić, Boro Cvetković and Stjepan Deverić.

After his playing career finished he started as coach of Sydney Croatia (1982–84) then he coached clubs such as BSK Slavonski Brod (1985–86), Dinamo Zagreb youth (1986–88), Borac Banja Luka (1988–89) before he became Dinamo Zagreb's coach in (1989–91). In 1991, he started coaching in Germany with FC Rot-Weiß Erfurt (1991–92) and later accepted the job from league-competition FSV Mainz 05, and stayed there until 1994. From 1995 to 1998, he coached Japanese side Gamba Osaka. Kuže came back to Croatia to coach NK Zagreb (1998–99) and had a short stint with FC Chemnitz in 2000 and proceeded to coach Gamba Osaka again from 2000 to 2002. He then went to manage Inter Zaprešić from 2003 to 2004 and in 2005 he took over coaching of Dinamo Zagreb again, winning the league title in his first year as coach.

Dinamo Zagreb coach

He took over the team after they suffered a poor year, finishing down in seventh place. With some new players, he enjoyed early success in the next championship (2005/2006) with 18-2-2 61:11 record in first part of the league, and the final record, after playoffs, was 24-4-4 78:21. After the first ten games, Dinamo's goal-difference was 32:3, which gave them the highest goal-difference for any professional club in Europe. During this time Dinamo were accredited with playing attractive football. In the new season, 2006–07, some high-class players arrived, and Dinamo, beat French side Auxerre 2–1 during a pre-season friendly. Gameplay went worse in the new…