Eddie Krncevic

Eduvard "Eddie" Krncevic ( KRENCH-ə-vik; Croatian: Edi Krnčević; born 14 August 1960) is an Australian retired football player and manager who played as a forward.

Club career

After playing his first four years of professional football in Australia, Krncevic moved to the land of his parents in 1981, joining Croatian side NK Dinamo Zagreb, where he had relative individual success, besides helping the side win one league and one cup.

Krnčević then played four months in the German second division with MSV Duisburg, after which he embarked on his most successful spell, ten and a half years in Belgium – with one season in France with FC Mulhouse in between – where he represented Cercle Brugge KSV, Royal Charleroi, R.S.C. Anderlecht, R.F.C. de Liège and K.S.C. Eendracht Aalst; he became the first Australian-born player to be crowned top scorer in a European league.

Even though silverware was hard to come even at Anderlecht, in 1988–89 Krnčević was crowned the league's top scorer at 23 goals, and helped the capital side to the domestic cup – in that competition, he scored in all three finals he won, the first being with Cercle.

In 1996, aged 36, Krncevic returned to Australia and played one final season with the Gippsland Falcons. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he had a coaching career, with all the clubs hailing from his homeland, in the National Soccer League. Internationally, he opted to represent his birth country, scoring every other match in 35 caps, and helping the country to win the 1980 OFC Nations Cup.

International career

Krncevic was captain of the Australia team that won the 1980 Oceania Cup, of which only one match, an 11–2 defeat of Papua New Guinea, counted as a full international match.