Yugoslavia at Euro 92: how the Balkan Wars meant the end of an era for the best team never to win the Euros
 
Prosinecki, Suker, Mijatovic & Co had been fearsome Euro 92 contenders, but civil war in the Balkans meant Yugoslavia were banned before they had the chance to prove it. Many thousands of lives were lost, along with a footballing dynasty
 
Just 19 days before Yugoslavia were due to face England in their opening Euro 92 game, their Sarajevo-born manager resigned. Osim stated, “My country doesn’t deserve to play in the European Championship.”
 
The squad’s Bosnian players departed, too. “It was a very difficult thing to do, but it was inevitable,” concedes Hadzibegic, the team’s captain until then. “As soon as the first armed conflicts started, I spoke to the manager and a couple of officials, and we agreed that it would be almost impossible for us to play at the tournament.
 
“I didn’t think about the consequences for my football career. There was war starting in our country – people were dying, fleeing their homes, and women were being raped. We all hoped that this thing would end in a matter of weeks or months. We couldn’t comprehend that the world would allow a war to happen in the middle of Europe.”
 
It proved a painful end to the 34-year-old’s international career. Pancev also pulled out, as Yugoslavia played a warm-up match in Italy against Fiorentina shortly before flying to Sweden for the Euros.
 
They wouldn’t stay for long. When Serbian general Ratko Mladic ordered more shelling of Sarajevo, the UN acted by placing sanctions on Yugoslavia. FIFA and UEFA responded by banning the national team from international football, on May 31. They would be replaced at the Euros by Denmark, who went on to win the whole thing.
 
“It felt like everything had been taken away from me – everything I worked for, everything I hoped for,” Bazdarevic remembers of that awful spell. “I was playing great football, and maybe would have signed for Barcelona after that tournament. Who knows? It felt worse when Denmark won it, because I knew we should have been there in their place. It was dramatic for all of us, but nothing compared with what was happening at home. People were getting killed.”
 
Banned from both the 1994 World Cup and Euro 96, Yugoslavia wouldn’t make a major finals until 1998, by which time it consisted of only Serbia and Montenegro. All Yugoslav League clubs were removed from European competitions until 1995. Red Star’s remaining heroes headed to Italy in the summer of ’92 – Pancev to Inter, Jugovic to Sampdoria, Sinisa Mihajlovic to Roma and Savicevic to Milan, where he starred two years later in winning another European Cup. Mijatovic left Partizan for Valencia in 1993, and later conjured up Real Madrid’s winner in the 1998 Champions League Final against Juventus.
 
Croatia would finish third at France 98, with Suker picking up the Golden Boot.
In June 1992, the last thing any of that Yugoslav generation wanted to do was watch the tournament they had just missed out on. 
 
“More important things were on my mind,” says Hadzibegic. “I can tell you one thing: if we’d all stayed together, if we’d played that tournament in normal circumstances, if we’d had a chance to compete, I’m sure we would have won it. We would have won Euro 92.”