Dejan Savićević (,ćević ; born 15 September 1966) is a Montenegrin former footballer who played as an attacking midfielder. Since 2001, he has been the president of the Montenegrin Football Association (FSCG), currently in his fifth term at the post.
Savićević was considered one of the best players in the world during the 1990s, and is regarded as one of the greatest Montenegrin and Yugoslav footballers of all time. During his time in A.C. Milan, he was nicknamed Il Genio (The Genius) by the Italian sports press.
After beginning his professional career with hometown Budućnost Titograd in Yugoslavia, Savićević moved to the more established Yugoslav First League club Red Star Belgrade in 1988 where he became prominent part of the team that won the 1990–91 European Cup—coming second in the 1991 Ballon d’Or voting—before making a big money transfer to Italian champions A.C. Milan in 1992. With Milan, he won three Serie A titles and the 1993–94 UEFA Champions League, among other trophies. He later returned to Red Star for half a season in 1999, before ending his career with Rapid Wien in 2001.
At the international level, he represented Yugoslavia at the 1990 and 1998 FIFA World Cups and, after retiring from playing, coached the Serbia and Montenegro national team from 2001 until 2003.
Following an illustrious professional playing career that lasted 18 seasons, as well as a short and unsuccessful head coaching stint during the early 2000s, he has turned to administrative matters – becoming, during the summer of 2001, the president of the Montenegrin FA.
Early life
Born to father Vladimir Savićević, an employee of the state-owned Titograd railway transport company, and mother Vojislava "Vojka" Đurović, an administrative clerk in the same company, Dejan grew up with a younger brother Goran in the family's apartment located in Titograd's Drač neighbourhood near the Titograd railway station.
From early adolescence, he took up street football as an activity with neighbourhood friends—playing on outdoor surfaces in the vicinity of his apartment building, mostly on a nearby field called Đečevića Livada.
Futsal and youth football
Savićević began playing structured association football during the summer of 1981 in the youth teams of OFK Titograd under youth team coach Vaso Ivanović. Two years prior, in 1979, he had gone through a short three-month episode within FK Budućnost's youth system, quitting as soon as his youth coach got transferred to the club's first team.
Almost fifteen years of age at the time of joining OFK Titograd—considered fairly late to be starting out by professional football standards—his only continual prior involvement with competitive football revolved around outdoor concrete and clay surface futsal tournaments, which he continued to participate in parallel to playing with OFK. Due to the popularity of this five-a-side "scaled-down football" in Titograd at the time (known as "mali fudbal" throughout the Balkans), many tournaments of semi-formal character were being organized in and around town, giving the youngster plenty of opportunities to showcase his skills. Barely a teenager at this point, Savićević played for an informal futsal team—consisting of men from his street—named Tehnohemija after the entire block of apartment buildings in the neighbourhood where they lived. More than able to hold his own with and against men considerably older than him, the youngster quickly marked himself out as a skilled street baller with great ball control and good overall technical ability. During this time, Savićević often played with or against a neighbourhood friend three years his senior, Željko Gašić, who would go on to become widely recognized as the best futsal player in Montenegro and among the best in SFR Yugoslavia.