Drazan Jerkovic shared the Golden Boot award at the 1962 World Cup in Chile and was the first coach of Croatia's national football team as Yugoslavia broke apart. He was a prolific striker, spending most of his professional playing career with Dinamo Zagreb, scoring 300 goals in 315 matches, before a knee injury forced him into early retirement.

Jerkovic reached the final of UEFA’s first European national championship, then known as the European Nations Cup, in 1960. He scored two goals in Yugoslavia’s pulsating 5-4 semi-final win against France. He failed, however, to collect a winner’s medal when his team lost 2-1 in the final to the Soviet Union after extra time.

At the 1962 World Cup he was one of six players to score four goals in the tournament — the highest individual tally — and was part of the Yugoslavia team that made it to the semi-finals before losing 3-1 to Czechoslovakia. Yugoslavia also lost their third-place match decider 1-0 to Chile. In 21 appearances for Yugoslavia Jerkovic scored 11 goals.

Drazan Jerkovic was born in 1936 in Sibenik, in central Dalmatia, then part of the kingdom of Yugoslavia. In 1954 he joined Dinamo Zagreb where he was to remain for 11 seasons, helping the team to win the league title in 1958, as well as the country’s league cup in 1960 and 1965. At the end of the 1965 season Jerkovic was signed by the Belgian team FC Gantoise but he never played for them due to injury.

He made his return to the international stage when he coached Yugoslavia to take gold at the Mediterranean Games in 1971 and later became the first coach of Croatia’s national side from 1990 to 1992. He coached Croatia in three matches in 1990, a year before the country declared independence from Yugoslavia. It was not, however, his first experience of a Croatian national side. In 1956 communist Yugoslavia organised a friendly against Indonesia and put together a national Croatian team. Jerkovic played in that match.

Drazan Jerkovic was born on August 6, 1936. He died of heart failure on December 9, 2008, aged 72