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Otto Baric never quite strayed from Austria, the country where he spent half his life and which he knew like no other. And he probably never wanted that either. Baric was as comfortable in Vienna as in Zagreb, where he closed his eyes forever on Sunday at the age of 87. Born on June 19, 1933 as the son of a guest worker in Eisenkappel on the then Yugoslav border, he was a wanderer between worlds, and had it not been for his distinctive, not to mention his cult accent, many would have considered him a true Austrian. Of course, his heart beat for Croatia, perhaps more than ever since independence in 1991. Here at local clubs NK Metalac Zagreb and Lokomotiva Zagreb, he laid the foundation for a career as a footballer in the 1950s, and this is where the life of the intergenerational icon came to an end.
Baric gained real fame as a coach, a vocation to which he remained faithful from 1964, with stints as club coach (including VfB Stuttgart, Fenerbahce Istanbul, Dinamo Zagreb) and team manager (Croatia, Austria, Albania), until his retirement in 2007. After all, he spent 25 years on the benches of local Bundesliga clubs and became champion with Wacker Innsbruck (1971, 1972), Rapid (1983, 1987, 1988) and SV Austria Salzburg (1994, 1995) . Only with LASK Baric had no luck, both commitments ended with little honor: 1974 President Rudolf Trauner dismissed him, in 1999 he himself pulled the rope after the arrest of club boss Wolfgang Rieger.
The “Córdoba” of 1994
Above all, Salzburg’s breakthrough to the UEFA Cup final against Inter Milan in 1994 remains unforgettable, lost, but at least it gave the long-suffering soul of the home fan a “Cordovan experience”. Baric’s quarter-final and semi-final victories against Eintracht Frankfurt and Karlsruhe were not only accompanied by national enthusiasm and great excitement (penalty shootout), but also ended the “black” series of the Austrian club’s European Cup. against DFB clubs. Of course, older fans will also remember the 1985 European Cup final between Rapid and Everton (1: 3) under Baric’s aegis.
If there is something left of Baric, it is probably his strong mouth, with which he knew how to turn necessity into virtue, his rudimentary knowledge of the German language. Often, like Trappatoni once, he would just rumble away, with every criticism, no matter how armed he was, he somehow appeared in cotton. His demand for “top performance” soon became a household word, which in turn earned him the honorary title of “Otto Máximo,” a title the Croatian probably knew how to market. The fact that his career ended in 2007 – after discriminatory statements about homosexuals – with the maximum uproar was due to Baric himself, although he later admitted that the sentence was “not smart.” This will hardly leave any stains on your monument. Croatian and national fans are likely to agree on this.
