From the 4th tier of German football to the Champions league final

Terzic was born on the 30th of October 1982 in Meden, West Germany, to a working class family that immigrated from Yugoslavia. His professional football career spanned 10 years. Terzic was a forward, not a very prolific one, he managed just 23 goals in 188 games, In the 4th tier of German football…

He then retired and began to study Sports Science at Ruhr University in Bochum. After completing his studies he began his coaching studies, it was during this time that he met Borussia Dortmund’s head scout who saw potential in Terzic and signed him as a scout for the club.

Between 2010 and 2013 Terzic worked both as a scout and as assistant coach in Dortmund’s academy, interestingly Terzic’s older brother Alan Terzic was also a scout at Dortmund and for a period was even caretaker manager of Dortmund II. (The second team of Borrusia Dortmund who play in the third tier of German football).

Terzic holds Croatian citizenship as his mother hails from Osijek, Croatia. Perhaps this is why whilst working for Dortmund Terzic decided to send a pre match opponent analysis to Croatia’s national team manager Steven Bilić.

Bilić was so impressed by the analysis that he invited Terzic to leave Germany and come with him to work as his assistant at the football club Locomotiv Moscow. Unfortunately the deal fell through (although things ended up working out pretty well for Terzic).

The following season Bilić joined Besiktas as manager and this time he was able to bring Terzic with him as assistant manager. They stayed with Besiktas in Turkey for 2 years. Despite not winning the Turkish Leaugue Bilíc was offered a great opportunity to manage West Ham in the English Premier League. Terzic had clearly done enough during his time under Bilíc at Bestiktas as he was offered the job of assistant to Bilíc at Westham. The pair worked at Westham together for two years.

Unfortunately it didn’t quite workout for the duo and in the year 2017 Bilić was fired by West Ham and Terzic went back to Dortmund, this time as First team assistant coach under the manager Lucien Farvre.

In December 2020 Favre was sacked and Terzic was appointed interim manager. Terzic stayed in the role of manager for the remainder of the 2020–2021 season and despite the fact the club was struggling (by their own standards) Terzic even managed to win the DFB-Pokal with a 4–1 victory over RB Leipzig. He was however succeeded as manager on a permanent basis by Marco Rose.

Not wishing to return to his role as assistant manager Terzic was appointed as Dortmund Technical Director a role they created for him.Rose managed to lead Borussia Dortmund to 2nd place in the Bundesliga but decided to leave by mutual consent after just one year in charge.

This left the doors wide open for Terzic who then took the role of Manager on a permanent basis signing a contract until 2025. In the 2022–2023 season Dortmund missed out of winning the league only due to goal difference.

On the 7th of May 2024 Dortmund beat Paris Saint-German 1–0 (2–0 on aggregate) to qualify for the Champions League Final with Terzic as their manager.

Real Madrid are heavy favorites to win the final as they have done 14 times before, this year they have dominated La Liga whilst Dortmund have struggled and currently sit 5th in the Bundesliga however Terzic will be hoping for an underdog success story, the beauty of the game and in particular a knockout tournament is that anything can happen!

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