Tadic on Stojkovic: he tried to turn the team against me
Dusan Tadic speaks for the first time about his split with national team coach Dragan Stojkovic, the bench against England at the Euros, and why he refused a recall.
- Tadic claims the coach tried to turn the group against him, which he says hurt him the most.
- The first year of working with Stojkovic was, in his words, perfect.
- At the Euros he ended up on the bench against England, and that is when he made up his mind.
- He turned down Stojkovic's recall for the qualifiers and does not regret the decision.
He had stayed quiet for a long time. Dusan Tadic, the man who wore the captain’s armband in Serbia’s biggest matches, finally sat in front of a microphone and put into words something many in the dressing room probably already sensed but had never heard out loud. The subject was a single one: how it broke down between him and Dragan Stojkovic.
The story does not begin with an argument. It begins, as Tadic tells it, with a good working relationship. The first year under Stojkovic was, by his account, almost ideal. The arrangement worked, the roles were clear, and the captain felt he was playing in a system that suited him. Then came the change of approach.
Where did the captain and the coach fall out?
The turning point, Tadic says, was the shift to a more defensive style of play. A player who had built his entire career on possession, on the final pass and on the freedom to set the tempo was suddenly handed a different job. That alone need not have been the end. Tactical calls like that are part of any coach’s work. The problem, in Tadic’s telling, came when the disagreement over style spilled over into relationships within the group.
“He tried to turn the group against me, and that hurt me the most,” Tadic said, a sentence worth reading twice. He did not complain about minutes. He did not complain about his position. He was talking about trust in the dressing room, about that invisible web of relationships that holds a national team together when results go against it. A captain who senses the group turning its back on him stops being a captain, armband or not.
It came to a head at the European Championship. Against England, in a match that should have been his, Tadic sat on the bench. And that, he says, is when he made up his mind. If a player is declared the most important man in the squad and then ends up benched in a game of that magnitude, something in the equation does not add up. There was no visible row on the pitch, just a quiet moment on the substitutes’ bench that decided much of what followed.
What comes next after the rejected recall?
When Stojkovic later called Tadic back for the qualifying campaign, the answer was no. No hedging. A captain who believed the group had been turned against him saw no reason to walk back into the same atmosphere, however much an international call-up means to any Serbian footballer. Tadic says he does not regret the decision, which is perhaps the clearest signal of how far things have gone.
For the national team that leaves a gap that is not easy to fill. For years Tadic was the player the game was built around, the man for set pieces, for the final ball, for the moment when someone has to take responsibility. The coach is now building a side without him, and supporters will decide for themselves whose side they understand. Because this is not a story about one man. It is about how trust in a dressing room is built and how it falls apart.
Do you believe a captain of this stature deserves the last word, or does the coach have the right to draw a line and move on without him?
