Dejan Stankovic remembers Sinisa Mihajlovic: “My reference point.”

Dejan Stankovic remembers Sinisa Mihajlovic: “My reference point.”

Sampdoria coach Dejan Stankovic indulged in a lengthy interview with Dazn in which he also spoke about his friend and “brother” Sinisa Mihajlovic, who passed away last December.

“I always talked with Sinisa, about everything. He was my starting point, my reference point, someone who told me, ‘Go easy, everything will be fine,'” Stankovic stressed. Just that. I would talk to him about everything, then I would make the choices, but he would give you advice, he would pull your ears when things were not going well. That’s the brother, not the one who only tells you when things are going well, but who scolds you when you make mistakes.”

“Sinisa took away all my words, the immense pain and that of Arianna, the children, her brother, her mom…. I pray every night to God to give them the strength to move on,” the Blucerchiati coach continued. “I keep everything inside and I am proud to have been part of his life. How much? I don’t know, but I was part of it. And I’m proud that he knows what I thought. And how much I respected him, how much I loved him. A phrase that reminds me of him? There are many, like this one: ‘You must never regret what you did, only what you didn’t do.’ This is Sinisa’s phrase, which you can use in any context, in life and in soccer.”