Nenad Pralija
This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. (December 2011) |
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Personal information | |||
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Date of birth | 11 December 1970 | ||
Place of birth | Split, SFR Yugoslavia | ||
Height | 1.81 m (5 ft 11+1⁄2 in) | ||
Position(s) | Midfielder | ||
Senior career* | |||
Years | Team | Apps | (Gls) |
1990–1993 | RNK Split | ||
1993–1996 | Hajduk Split | 70 | (32) |
1996–1998 | Espanyol | 42 | (4) |
1998–1999 | Hajduk Split | 16 | (4) |
1999–2000 | Reggina | 23 | (0) |
2000–2003 | Maccabi Haifa | 81 | (21) |
2003–2005 | Hajduk Split | 44 | (3) |
2005–2007 | Trogir | 17 | (3) |
Total | 293 | (67) | |
International career | |||
1993 | Croatia U21 | 1 | (0) |
1995–1997 | Croatia | 11 | (1) |
*Club domestic league appearances and goals |
Nenad Pralija[pronunciation?] (born 11 December 1970) is a former Croatian footballer.
Club career
Pralija started his career at his hometown club RNK Split where he spent three years before moving to the local powerhouse Hajduk Split. In his first season at Hajduk, the club had a successful Champions League campaign and Pralija is still dearly remembered by Hajduk fans for his spectacular volley in the group stage game against Anderlecht which was unstoppable for the Belgian side's goalkeeper Filip de Wilde, even though Pralija played the whole game playing as a left back - a position he never played at before. His form kept improving in subsequent seasons, and he finished the 1995–96 season as the club's top scorer with 17 goals in 26 appearances. He instantly became Hajduk fans' favourite player and was awarded the Heart of Hajduk Award two years in a row, in 1995 and 1996.
After three successful years at Hajduk, Pralija moved to La Liga club Espanyol where he started off as a first-team regular under José Antonio Camacho,[1] but soon fell out of the manager's favour so he returned to Hajduk for the second half of the 1998–99 season. After that he spent a year at Serie A club Reggina, before moving to the Israeli outfit Maccabi Haifa. At Maccabi Pralija had a very successful spell, playing alongside fellow Croat Đovani Roso and coached by Avram Grant. During this time he won two Israeli championships and played in the Champions League again, this time scoring against Bayer Leverkusen at BayArena. He is still regarded as one of the best Maccabi players of the early 2000s.
After Maccabi, he returned to Hajduk again in 2003. At first he was a first-team regular and even captained the team for a while, but soon after Niko Kranjčar and Ivan Leko came to the club his increasingly poor performances pushed him out of the squad. During the 2005–06 season winter break he quietly left the club and moved to the lower level minnows NK Trogir where he ended his playing career and six months later took over as the club's sports director. He oversaw the club's promotion to Druga HNL but resigned soon afterwards.
International career
He debuted for Croatia on 11 June 1995 against Ukraine, coming on as a substitute for Aljoša Asanović. He played a total of 11 games for the national side (and scored a single goal in a friendly versus Czech Republic), but failed to leave a deeper mark during Miroslav Blažević's reign. He was quoted as saying that he was "born in a wrong era, since it was impossible to win a place on the team which had the likes of players such as Aljoša Asanović, Zvonimir Boban and Robert Prosinečki."[1] His last appearance for Croatia was on 12 June 1997 in the starting lineup of a friendly against Turkey, and was substituted by Miljenko Mumlek just after the hour mark.[2]
Honours
Club
- Croatian First League (4): 1993–94, 1994–95, 2003–04, 2004–05
- Croatian Cup (1): 1994–95
- Croatian Super Cup (4): 1993, 1994, 2004, 2005
- Israeli Premier League (2): 2000–01, 2001–02
- Toto Cup (1): 2002–03
International
Individual
- Heart of Hajduk Award (2): 1995, 1996
References
- ^ a b "Povratak Hajdučkog srca" (in Croatian). Slobodna Dalmacija. 4 August 2003. Retrieved 10 February 2009.
- ^ "Nenad Pralija - Statistike" (in Croatian). Croatian Football Federation. Retrieved 10 February 2009.
External links
- Nenad Pralija Interview published by Slobodna Dalmacija daily in 2003 (in Croatian)
- Profile of Nenad Pralija on Maccabi Haifa's official website (in Hebrew)
- Profile and statistics of Nenad Pralija on One.co.il (in Hebrew)
- Use dmy dates from November 2010
- 1970 births
- Living people
- Sportspeople from Split, Croatia
- Croatian footballers
- Croatia international footballers
- Association football midfielders
- HNK Hajduk Split players
- Croatian First Football League players
- Israeli Premier League players
- RCD Espanyol footballers
- La Liga players
- Reggina 1914 players
- Serie A players
- Maccabi Haifa F.C. players
- Croatian expatriate footballers
- Expatriate footballers in Israel
- Expatriate footballers in Italy
- Expatriate footballers in Spain
- Croatian expatriate sportspeople in Israel
- Croatian expatriate sportspeople in Italy
- Croatian expatriate sportspeople in Spain
- RNK Split players
- HNK Trogir players
- HNK Hajduk Split non-playing staff