Milosevic: Dejan (Danny)

2000-2003 (Leeds Player Details)(Player Details)

Goalkeeper

Born: Carlton, Melbourne, Australia: 26-06-1978

Debut: None

6’1” 14st 12lb (2003)

After being one of a long line of Australian Internationals to have been produced by the Australian Institute of Sport, Milosevic started off his professional career with the Canberra Cosmos in the old NSL, where he made fourteen starts, and captained the Under-Twenty Australian side to the World Youth Cup in 1997. He had also had a spell in Germany with Arminia Bielefeld and Preussen Munster, without making their first teams, before joining Perth Glory where he was a high profile signing in 1998. He had a strong start to his time in Perth and soon gained cult hero status and went on to make seventeen appearances before he moved to Leeds for £110,000 in January 2000 after only one season at Perth Glory. Milosevic was capped by Australia at Under-Seventeen, Under-Twenty and Under-Twenty-three levels and represented Australia in the 2000 Olympic Games and the Under-Twenty World Cup in 1997. In the latter he played in the four games which saw Australia reach the last sixteen before going down 1-0 to Japan after having a 4-3 success over Argentina. In the former he was part of the team that played in many friendlies in 1998 and 1999 in the lead up to the Sydney Olympics of 2000, which Australia had automatic qualification as hosts. Hopes were high as the Olyroos three times defeated their Brazilian counterparts in some of these games. He also played in all three games, against Italy, Nigeria and Honduras, in the Finals before Australia were ignominiously eliminated. At Leeds he hardly ever got a chance with the likes of England number two, Nigel Martyn, and future England number one, Paul Robinson, ahead of him. However, he had been signed on a three year contract by David O'Leary in 2000 and later Terry Venables, who took over at the start of the 2002-03 season, had given him a further two year contract when his initial one was almost finished. He had been loaned out by Leeds to Wolverhampton Wanderers for the second half of the 2001-02 season, but a training injury saw him return to Leeds without playing a game. He was also loaned to Plymouth Argyle in November 2002, but he sustained a knee injury in his only game, a 2-2 home draw with Oldham Athletic on 9th November 2002, and had to leave the field in the eighty-second minute. This was followed by a spell at Crewe Alexandra for the second half of the 2002-03 season but he only played one game. In his only game with Crewe he had the misfortune to break his wrist, after fifty-one minutes of the 3-1 away win at Oldham Athletic on 25th January 2003. So both spells at Plymouth and Crewe, like the one with Wolves were cut short by injury. While Milosevic never played a game for Leeds in the first team he was an unused substitute for the first three games of the 2001-02 season against Southampton at Elland Road and the away fixtures at Arsenal and West Ham United. He was also the unused substitute on fourteen consecutive games in 2000-01, at Besiktas, Manchester United, Barcelona at home,Bradford City, Tranmere in the League Cup, Liverpool at home, AC Milan, Chelsea, Home games with West Ham United, Real Madrid and Arsenal, and away to Leicester City, Lazio and Southampton. Terry Venables was the Leeds Manager in 2002 and after extending his contract by two years, he told Milosevic that he could be the second goalkeeper at Leeds as Nigel Martyn was looking to move on. Unfortunately for Milosevic, while Martyn did move on, so did Venables, and his successor Peter Reid did not share Venables view. He did not take kindly to Milosevic asking for his time at Crewe Alexandra to be extended. He consequently preferred Scott Carson, who was much younger and a future England Under-Twenty-One and full England goalkeeper. After a short loan spell with Hull City, where he did not play a game, with the writing on the wall and Leeds keen to save money, Milosevic was released from the playing side of his contract at the end of September 2003, but still remained on the Leeds payroll until the end of its duration. In January 2004, he was signed up on a pay as you play contract in Scotland with Celtic. After only a couple of weeks and with the two better keepers at Celtic unavailable, he was set for a call up for the starting eleven but, according to Celtic sources, decided that he wasn't being paid enough and decided to walk out on the club. According to Milosevic, his father, Zoran, had been diagnosed with a heart condition in Australia. "I was told he had a year to live so I packed my bags and headed home," Milosevic said. "My career did not pan out. With the right frame of mind I am sure it would have been different." He never returned to Glasgow, and was without a club until he joined the New Zealand Knights, on a three year contract in 2005, for the inaugural A-League season on the advice of former Leeds and Perth Glory team mate Danny Hay. The Knights first season was a disaster, despite Milosevic's often valiant efforts in keeping scorelines to more acceptable level. He played Fourteen games and was top of the saves made charts by a long distance as he was behind the worst defence in the League. A change in management for the second season saw two able goalkeepers, Mark Paston and Michael Turnbull, brought in as competition, yet Milosevic still started the season as the club's number one. However the poor morale at the club and increasing strain on them to promote more New Zealand players saw Milosevic demoted to the bench with All-White’s keeper Paston ahead of him. Consequently he only made five appearances. Before the close of the A-League's second season Milosevic was released from his contract. He moved to Inglewood United in Western Australia in January 2007 and was there until December 2007 apart from being loaned to Perth Glory as a back-up keeper in September 2007, where he only sat on the bench. He made a surprise appearance on ex-Leeds star Robbie Fowler's North Queensland Fury substitute bench in their friendly against Perth Glory on 18th July 2009. After retiring from football the former Olympian goalkeeper was determined to clear up some of the misconceptions about his playing career and he revealed that he had battled depression at the height of his career in the United Kingdom. He said that he was hungry to give back to the sport that gave him so much and promised even more before a mixture of injury, personal reasons and depression prematurely curtailed a potentially lucrative career. He became keen to develop the grass roots of football, particularly goalkeepers, through his company One2One. Perth-based Milosevic took twelve teenage goalkeepers to England in early January 2013 to show them first-hand the joys and pitfalls of being a professional footballer at the elite level. "I am trying to find the next generation of Australian goalkeepers," said Milosevic, who is a part-time coach with Football West's National Training Centre in Perth and has also developed his own range of goalkeeping gloves, Xsentr1q.