As one of the world's most sought-after specialists in youth soccer development, Romeo Jozak has had his share of solid job offers since he returned to his home in Croatia.
Too bad Prince George couldn't afford to keep him.
Since he left the city in 2006 to return to his home in Zagreb, Jozak has helped Croatia maintain its status as one of the world's male soccer powers. Despite the country's small population, with only 4.5 million people, Croatia's men's national program ranks 18th in the world and continues to qualify national teams for World Cup competitions at the senior, under-21 and under-17 levels while producing top-quality players for Europe's professional leagues.
Now entering his third year as technical director for the Croatian Football Federation, Jozak came to Canada this past week to attend a FIFA soccer symposium at the Women's World Cup in Vancouver and made a brief visit to Prince George on Saturday to renew ties he established with the local soccer community when he served as technical director of the Prince George Youth Soccer Association from 2005 to 2006.
Jozak admits the Croatian women's national program, ranked 59th, has a long way to go to catch up to countries like Germany, Japan, England, the U.S. and Canada. As in many European countries, the women's game has a low profile in Croatia, and nearly half of the women's national team roster is made up of players from college programs in the U.S. and Canada. It's only in the last two decades, due to the exposure of the Women's World Cup, which started in 1991, and its inclusion in the last five Summer Olympics, that the women's game has gained international prominence.
"It's not about changing the game, it's about changing the culture," said Jozak. "Even my own father was surprised that I'm in charge of women's teams as well as the entire development of the Croatian men's national teams. It probably will take a lot of time for us to do anything significant in women's soccer. Men's soccer is what feeds us, literally. It gives us the money."
Jozak is not sure how many female soccer players there are in Croatia, which has 100,000 male players, but said the numbers pale in comparison to Germany, which has 250,000 female players registered.
"In Croatia, when you go out on the street, boys play soccer but girls just don't have that - it's either ballet or swimming and it's not just like that in Croatia," he said. "I was in India two weeks ago and it's even more rigid. Women's soccer is picking up. Fifteen or 10 years ago in Croatian (Football Academy) you couldn't hear a single sentence about women's soccer being spoken but now, out of the eight or 10 hours of a working day, a good three or four hours are about the women's game, so it is changing."
While there's work to be done with Croatia's women's programs, few countries can compare with the recent success of the Croatian men's teams. Croatia is the only European nation to qualify for all three most recent men's FIFA World Cups - the 2013 under-21 World Cup in Turkey, the 2014 senior World Cup in Brazil and the 2015 under-17 World Cup in Chile, which starts Oct. 17. Croatia also qualified for the 2013 under-17 World Cup in the United Arab Emirates.
Since its vote of independence with the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991, Croatia has qualified for four senior World Cups, making it to the semifinals in 1998.
The Croatian federation's primary focus is on its men's national teams, which are consistently strong internationally due to a system that preaches uniformity in teaching technical skills and coaching development and draws from a large base of raw talent in youth players who are religiously dedicated to soccer, much like Canadians love hockey.
"It gets even too much," Jozak said. "If you do succeed you're on a throne, but if you don't succeed you're criticized from a realistic point of view even too much.
"In order for you to succeed there has to be talent within the kids and talent in coaching, there has to be competition within the team the kid plays on, and there has to be equal competition within the league that you compete in," he addded. "There has to be pressure every week."
After Jozak's one-year term expired as the top coach in the PGYSA he wanted to stay in Prince George with his young family. At that time, he requested a two-year contract renewal which would have paid him $60,000 per year, a bargain compared to what he now earns.
But the PGYSA declined the contract proposal. Jozak returned to Croatia and served six years as director of the academy program by Dinamo Zagreb, the country's top professional team.
In 2013, just before he left Dinamo Zagreb to join Croatia's national program, Arsenal F.C. wanted Jozak to take over from former Gunners midfielder Liam Brady as director of its youth academy program, a year after the Irish Football Federation made a similar pitch for Jozak's services.
Last year, Jozak was on a shortlist of two for the job as technical director for the Australian Football Federation and he says he has recently been approached with an offer from another federation.
Since he left Prince George, Jozak had a hand in the development of more than a dozen prominent professional players before they left Croatia to gain international fame and fortune. That list includes Alen Halilovi (FC Barcelona), Luka Modri (Real Madrid), Eduardo da Silva (Shaktar Dometsk), Vedran orluka (Lokomotiv Moscow), Niko Kranjar (Dynamo Kyiv) and Dejan Lovren (Liverpool).
Jozak holds a masters degree in sports psychology from the University of Memphis and he says he enjoyed the learning aspect of his year in Prince George, which exposed him to a much different soccer system than what he was accustomed to.
"I was really grateful for the year I was here, overall, it was the experience of a lifetime," he said. "I met new people and opened my vision a bit and I learned some new things from the psychology point of view. I hope I contributed a bit to the community and maybe left a bit of an impact. It was a nice experience to be here, it was a positive thing for me to be here."
Jozak, 42, lives in Zagreb with his wife Romana, their two sons, Marin, 10, and Matej, eight, and a six-year-old daughter, Marija.
