The crème of Yugoslavian football of course was more interesting. Let’s begin with the novelty of advertising – no system was detectable. Some clubs from Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina used shirt adds – but others did not and most curiously it was the strongest clubs which played with plain shirts.
NK Osijek, the most modest of the Croatian clubs playing in first division, used shirt adds. They finished 13th.
A bit better was Borac (Banja Luka) from Bosnia and Herzegovina – 12th. They had better days earlier in the decade, but in general were mid-table club, so it was not really going into decline. Yet, the bigger clubs of the federal republic seemingly did not fancy adds this season.
Standing, from left: Sime Miocic, Slobodan Karalic, Zvonko Vudacak, Berislav Bukovic, Zlatan Arnautovic, Fuad Dulic, Abid Kovacevic, ?.
First row: Zoran Smilevski, Dragan Marjanovic, Nenad Lazic, Hikmet Kusmic, Dzevad Kreso, Fahrudin Zejnilovic, Slobodan Kuljanin, Misad Sejdic.
The Slovenian representative – Olimpija (Ljubljana) – also displayed adds. It was may be the most consistent of the Yugoslavian clubs in that, but just like the clubs shown already, the sponsor’s logo did not help. Olimpija finished 10th – like Borac, generally a mid-table club, so no surprising season.
Olimpija (Ljubljana) – if anything, they did not have enough shirts with sponsor’s logo for everyone. Quite typical for the 1970s – the same often happened in the West too. Consistency was relative – the goalkeepers had no adds on their shirts – but there were clubs at that time showing the opposite: goalkeeper with adds, but the rest of the team using plain shirts. Innocent years…
No innocence in the championship – relative parity of the most teams made for competitive championship. Quite normal for Yugoslavia, but at the end it was largely a race for escaping relegation. Every club bellow 8th place was involved in that – 10 clubs in total. The 9th and the 17th placed were divided by mere 4 points at the end. Some clubs normally unconcerned with relegation were endangered this season – Vojvodina (Novi Sad), 8th with 32 points, and FK Sarajevo, 9th, also with 32 points – but they were not exactly in big decline. The club steadily going down for some time was OFK Beograd – they barely escaped relegation the previous season and did not play better this one either. The third in strength, but first in history Belgrade club survived… but they finished 16th and, with 28 points and exactly the same goal-difference as their direct competitor, survival depended on… hard to tell on what precisely. OFK Beograd had one more win than Celik (Zenica) – 10 vs 9. They also scored more goals – 38 vs Celik’s 34. Most likely either the number of wins or the better scoring record was the decisive factor – survival by a split hair.
A place above OFK Beograd thanks to one point difference finished NK Zagreb.
A club similar to OFK Beograd – existing in the shadow of big neighbour, in their case Dinamo (Zagreb). NK Zagreb were just lucky to play in first division and hardly able to keep good players in their squad. Whoever was young and talented was unlikely to last. Bakota and Cop, for instance. Solid players eventually came from the big neighbour, but, as a rule, older players in decline and no longer needed in the ‘real’ club – Cercek and Kafka were the examples here. No wonder NK Zagreb was generally fighting for survival. At the end, the only interesting point about this team is once again the ‘innocence’ of the 1970s: the club used Puma, but… one of their goalies, Simunic, is dressed in Adidas kit, and the other, Bozic, has something else, neither Puma, nor Adidas.
Slightly better – or luckier – than NK Zagreb were Radnicki (Nis). They took the 14th place with 30 points. A point better than the Croatians, a record they shared with NK Osijek and Borac, but the Serbian club had the worst goal-difference of the three. Not by much, but still the worst.
One more club just lucky to survive and stay in top flight for another year. And one more club lacking fashionable Adidas shirts for every member of the squad – three shirts short here…
Similar fate for Buducnost (Titograd)… the best club of Montenegro, hailing from the capital city named after ‘the great leader’. Today the name of the club remains, but the city has its original name – Podgorica. In the great Yugoslavian scheme, Buducnost was small fry, and the name of the club , meaning ‘Future’ was a bit ironic. They had to think constantly of the future alright… may be in the future they would have a team at least not concerned only with escaping relegation. Which was not by much this season – they finished with 31 points.
Naturally, one more team about which nothing can be said… except that they were in line with the 1970s… Adidas kit for the field players and something different for the goalkeeper.
So was the bigger part of the league, holding its breath to the end. Two unlucky clubs took the short stick inevitably. The absolute beginners, predictably to a point, finished last.
Trepca (Kosovska Mitrovica) debuted in the first division this season and since the club was dwarfed by practically everybody else, they were not expected to last – even if only Kosovo is taken into account, Trepca were at best the second club there: Pristina was the top club historically and they did not rank high in Yugoslavian football, usually meandering between second and first division. Trepca had no chance to impress – after all, using simultaneously Adidas and Puma was hardly a news and the name of their home city was only confusing at the time: sometime Kosovska Mitrovica, sometime Titovska Mitrovica. The world was largely unaware of this city until the 1990s – when it became known, it was unfortunately not because of football. Back in 1977-78 Trepca fought bravely and lost the fight pretty much at the end of the championship – they were lowly, but not a hopeless outsider. Yet, 24 points were 4 less than the nearest competition and Trepca went down.
The second relegated club was also expected – Celik (Zenica) were more accustomed to playing in second division. When they appeared in the first league, they were not expected to last. May be two, three seasons the most, finishing at the bottom of the table, until they sink again. Another club with ironic name… ‘Celik’ roughly means ‘strong as rock’ or ‘hard as rock’. Winners they were not…
Enough Puma shirts for the whole squad, but nothing else. Yes, they were true to their name – they fought, they tried hard, they did not give up, but lost… by very little, but lost. Celik was unlucky, yet, tiny difference was still a difference. 17th and relegated. Escape was so close, too bad. Yes, they were obvious candidate for relegation, but hardly the weak outsider – bad luck is perhaps more appropriate expression.