Mirko Bunjevčević

Mirko Bunjevčević
Personal information
Full name	Mirko Bunjevčević
Date of birth	February 5, 1978 (age 46)
Place of birth	SFR Yugoslavia
Height	1.86 m (6 ft 1 in)
Position(s)	Defender
Youth career
	Hajduk Split
	Dinamo Zagreb
	Grafičar Beograd
	Radnički Beograd
	Petrova Gora Vojnić
Senior career*
Years	Team
1997–1998	IM Rakovica
1998–2001	Rad
2001–2003	Koper
2003	Mura
2004–2006	Arsenal Kyiv
2006	Hajduk Kula
2007–2009	Zorya Luhansk
2009	Čukarički
2010–2011	AZAL
2011–2014	Zemun
2014–2015	Brodarac 1947
	*Club domestic league appearances and goals

Mirko Bunjevčević (Serbian Cyrillic: Мирко Буњевчевић; born February 5, 1978) is Serbian former professional footballer who played as a defender. He is currently a coach in the Red Star youth academy.

Career

Born in

First League of FR Yugoslavia, while Mirko continued playing in youth levels with FK Radnički Beograd

.

After gaining some senior experience by playing one season with lower-league side

IM Rakovica, his career will burst in 1998 when he joined FK Rad, a club that his brother successfully represented for four seasons and that led him to sign with local powerhouse Red Star Belgrade

a year before Mirko arrived. However this period was much harder generally for football in Serbia, as the country experienced the Kosovo war, NATO bombing and major political turmoil during this time.

Thus Mirko, after spending three seasons with Rad, moved for the first time abroad, by joining Slovenian side

Slovenian First League, first two with Koper, and a half season with NK Mura.^[1] He played with Koper in the 2002 UEFA Intertoto Cup where they were defeated by Swedish side Helsingborgs IF

(0–1; 0–0) in the first round.

In early 2004 he signed a contract with FC Arsenal Kyiv starting a period of almost five years spent in the Ukrainian Premier League. He became a standard player in the team gathering 55 league appearances in two and a half years he spent in Kyiv. The club had mid table results, finishing 9th, 9th and 12th respectively in the seasons he spent there. He left Arsenal in summer 2006 and returned to Serbia where he was one of the signings of FK Hajduk Kula for their 2006–07 UEFA Cup campaign. However after a narrow away-goals defeat in their tied matches against Bulgarian PFC CSKA Sofia (1–1; 0–0) their European campaign came to an end. Bunjevčević played the rest of the first half of the season with Hajduk in the Serbian SuperLiga, but during the winter break he moved back to Ukraine reinforcing the newly promoted Premier League side FC Zorya Luhansk. The club surprisingly became a mid table regular mostly by combining domestic players with Bunjevčević and other signings.

In summer 2009 he returned again to the Serbian SuperLiga, this time joining Belgrade-based

AZAL PFC. During the 2009–10 season AZAL finished 7th in the league, however at beginning of the season a new coach Nazim Suleymanov was appointed and he started a revolution in the club, to which Bunjevčević much contributed in archiving the 4th place at the end of the 2010–11 Azerbaijan Premier League, as he was a starter in 31 of 32 league matches that season.^[2] That result led them to the qualifiers for the 2011–12 UEFA Europa League, however their European campaign ended up in disappointment as they lost in the first qualifying round against Belarusian side FC Minsk (1–1; 1–2). As the spirit was high, before the matches had been played coach Suleymanov had promised to resign if the team ended defeated, and as the fortune was not on his side, he kept the promise and so he did. In the following winter break Mirko Bunjevčević also left. During the period he spent with AZAL the club had reached twice the semi-finals of the Azerbaijan Cup

.

Bunjevčević returned to Serbia during the winter break of the 2011–12 season, and he joined a historical side FK Zemun.^[3] They had been going through a major crisis as they had been relegated the summer before to the Serbian League Belgrade, one of four Serbian third level leagues.

References

^ Profile and stats from Slovenia at PrvaLiga
^ Mirko Bunjevčević at Soccerway
^ Mirko Bunjevčević at Srbijafudbal

External links

Stats at Soccerterminal

[1] Profile and stats from Slovenia at PrvaLiga

[2] Mirko Bunjevčević at Soccerway

[3] Mirko Bunjevčević at Srbijafudbal

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