Meet Your Croat: Danijel Pranjic

Here we go again, Meet Your Croat, vol. II:

Name: Danijel Pranjic

Born: 2. 12. 1981. (age 26)

Position: Left Wing-back, Left Midfielder

Club: Left, I mean, SC Heerenveen

National Caps: 9 (0)

Biography:
Started his career in NK Osijek, where he spent a total of two seasons (2002-2004). Also a part of Croatia’s youth setup at that time, Pranjic inevitably caught the interest from Croatia’s two biggest clubs, Dinamo Zagreb and Hajduk Split. He chose Zagreb as his next destination, and had a solid first season as well, accumulating 29 appearances and scoring 2 goals in the process.

Though it turned out those statistics alone weren’t enough to satisfy the always hungry Dinamo officials, who proceeded to sell Pranjic to SC Heerenveen for a rather modest sum of €500k. Incidentally, Dinamo had played Herenveen in previous season’s UEFA cup, a match in which Pranjic had obviously done enough to impress the Dutch folks. It was a rather rash decision made by Dinamo officials, as Pranjic went on to make a great impact in Heerenveen, collecting 73 appearances and producing a number of goals and most notably assists in his time there.

As a reward for this fine form, Pranjic has sparked the interest of clubs like Ajax and Tottenham, in the meantime of course earning himself a place in Bilic’s squad for the upcoming EURO’s.

On The Pitch:
As it usually goes with you wing-backs, he’s fairly short (172 cm), pacey, and well, short and pacey. Seriously though, he’s been labeled as the new Robert Jarni, our NT’s most influential left wingback up to this date. His strengths are obviously his pace and dribbling down the left side, and more importantly his quality when delivering the ball. These have all resulted in him being among the Dutch Eredivisie top assists players for a couple of seasons now. Under Bilic, he’s not yet that influential, and usually comes off the bench. However, his performances when coming on and those he produces in his club, might just force Bilic to turn to Pranjic as our NT’s first choice left back.

Off The Pitch:
Not much to say here as he’s moved abroad fairly soon in his career. He has rarely featured in an interview or any kind of media exposure since then, so I guess commenting his personality would be simply speculating. I did mention he is short and pacey though?

The Good: Pace, dribbling, quality delivery, natural left footer
The Bad: NT inexperience, perhaps too offensive for a left back
The Random:
- see him in action here, (I recommend you mute the audio though)
- first Croat to have a Dutch fan site
- wears this on a weekly basis
- he’s short and pacey
- I’ll probably get in trouble for calling him s&p so often

Stay tuned for more.