Zlatko Zahovič
Slovenian footballer
Zlatko Zahovič (Slovene pronunciation: [ˈzlaːtkɔ ˈzaːxɔʋitʃ] ; born 1 February 1971) is a Slovenian former professional footballer who played as an attacking midfielder.
After making a name for himself in Portugal, most notably with Porto and Benfica where he amassed Primeira Liga totals of 246 matches and 54 goals over one full decade, he went on to have brief stints in Spain and Greece. He was known for dribbling and goal-scoring ability alike. Although primarily a midfielder, he scored 11 goals in 32 Champions League appearances and 35 in 80 for the Slovenian national team.
The all-time record holder in goals for Slovenia, Zahovič was an essential member of the squad as they qualified for the first time ever to a European Championship and a World Cup, in the early 2000s.
Club career
Partizan
Zahovič was born in Maribor, SFR Yugoslavia. In 1989, at the age of 18, he was noticed by Partizan's Milko Ǵurovski, at the time doing his mandatory military service in the town, who recommended the youngster to the club.
With the Belgrade team, he was relatively used over the course of three seasons, and also played on loan for Mladost Petrinja and Proleter Zrenjanin. For Partizan, he made 15 appearances and scored three goals during the 1992–93 league season as they won the national championship.
Portugal
In the summer of 1993, aged 22, Zahovič moved to Portugal and joined Vitória de Guimarães.
The public source identifies “Zlatko Zahovič” as slovenian footballer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Zlatko, Zahovič and Slovenian.
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This entry incorporates text from “Zlatko Zahovič” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.