Bundesliga - Player Profile: Ivica Olic
Olic is a Croatian born professional footballer, who played in last season’s UEFA Champions League final for Bayern Munich. Ivica was born in a small village in Croatia, named Davor. This village is located near Nova Gradiska. Olic’s youth football club was NK Marsonia, where he played in 1996. The veteran Croatian striker played at Marsonia for two seasons before German giants, Hertha BSC’s scouts spotted him in 1998.
Olic did sign for Hertha but due to a lack of first team spot at the club he opted to come back to Marsonia after just spending a single year in Germany. In the 2000-2001 season at Marsonia, Olic scored seventeen goals in twenty nine appearances for the Croatian club. At the end of the season in the summer transfer window in 2001, NK Zagreb were successful in acquiring the talented Croatians signature. At Zagreb, Olic showed his proficiency in front of the goal as he scored twenty one times in twenty eight matches. These goals helped Zagreb to win the league title in Croatia.
Despite Zagreb’s triumph and the glory that followed, Olic again shifted clubs and this time, he moved to Dinamo Zagreb, where he scored sixteen goals in twenty seven appearances, in doing so he became the best striker in Croatian football’s first division. In 2003, CSKA Moscow signed Olic, after average first two seasons at the Russian club, the experienced target man hit a high in the 2005 season where he contributed ten goals in twenty league appearances for the Russian giants.
At CSKA Moscow, Olic won the UEFA Cup in 2005; he also won the Russian Premier League for three consecutive seasons namely, 2003, 2005 and 2006. Another addition to these honors was the Russian Cup triumph that Moscow recorded twice in two seasons. These wins came in 2005 and 2006. They also won the Russian Super Cup in 2004 and then again in 2006 with Olic in their ranks.
After winning most of the trophies that were available to him as a footballer in the Russian football league, Olic moved to Hamburger SV in Germany in the winter of 2007. His first Bundesliga game for Hamburg was against Energie Cottbus on 31st of January, 2007. With Olic in their squad, Hamburg finished the season in seventh place, which meant that they would play Intertoto Cup in the 2007-2008 season.
While at Hamburg, Olic also earned a place in the club’s history as became the first player to score three successive goals in one half. This hatrick of goals in a single half came against Stuttgart in a Bundesliga match. Ivica Olic also won the Emirates Cup with Hamburg in 2008, when he scored two injury time goals against Italian behemoths Juventus F.C in the final match of the tournament.
Regardless of all the success that Olic achieved with Hamburg, he knew quite well that they were never going to challenge for the Bundesliga title, therefore he signed a three year contract with Bayern Munich on 3rd of January 2009. Initially, Olic was seen as a backup striker in case of injuries to Munich’s first team strikers namely Klose and Gomez. However, due to fitness and form issues that plagued both the German strikers, Olic saw more first team football than he expected.
His most crucial goals for Bayern came in their UEFA Champions League quarter final match against Manchester United. Ivica scored late in the first leg’s injury time to make the score 2-1 in favor of Bayern Munich. In the second leg which was played away in England at Old Trafford, Olic scored Bayern’s first goal of the match, which eventually ended 3-2. This score line was sufficient enough for Bayern to progress through on the away goals rule to the semi finals of the Champions League.
Olic’s first hatrick for Munich came in the second leg of the semi-final match against Lyon in the UEFA Champions League, however disappointingly in the final match of the competition Olic appeared to be helpless as Bayern were defeated by Italian Champions Inter Milan.
Ivica will be looking to go one better in the coming season as Bayern Munich look to start the Bundesliga season strongly. The German league season gets under way in the month of August.
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