Later years, European Football would have heard a lot about Boban and Mihajlovic, especially in Milano, Italy and in Munich, Germany. However, a year before Boban had already won a world youth championship cup with his U-20 Yugoslavian side and started to make small ripples back then already.
Having won the first leg 1-0 at home, Beşiktaş simply starts out with a strict defense knowing that a single goal that they will score should earn them a second round spot in the European Arena. Dinamo needs the goal desperately and looks more of the pressing side, however could not find an opening to dissolve Beşiktaş' defense.
There comes the infamous referee trio of the game, starts to push Dinamo a little more forward with the critical foul and offside decisions, which seems to be given deliberately in advance of the home team. For example, in the first quarter of the match, an offside decision was given against Beşiktaş, and if this would happen today, UEFA probably rip apart the refereeing licenses of the trio from that night. Here's some not so clear pictures from that but still gives you the idea:
You can see clearly that when the ball was played out to Zeki, he was about 5 to 7 meters behind the last defender.
Eventually, after all the artificial pressure that was created by the referees, a good passing move gives the lead to Dinamo Zagreb and the first half ends with that scoreline. On the second half, the mentality of Beşiktaş doesn't change much, but seems to be more eager for counter attack options, especially with Feyyaz up front. Here comes the second critical decision of that night when Feyyaz was clearly going for a real good goal scoring chance and brought down by his defending opponent while he was almost entering into the Zagreb's penalty area. The referee says; play on folks... In today's standards it could even be a straight red card:
Actually I am amazed that they didn't try the offside trick on this one as well.
The third and final knock comes in when the ball was played about 60 yards or so up in the sky by Boban, -could be more 'cause it really went out of the view of the camera-, and Beşiktaş leftback Kadir tries to head this awkward ball away with a very unlucky and most likely unintentionally touch of his hand changes the direction of the ball in the penalty area. The foxy referee sees the opportunity from about 50 meters away and decides for a penalty. Mihajovic doubles the lead as Beşiktaş' keeper Zalad, a former Yugoslavian today's Serbian National goes to the other end of the goal line.
In the end, operation against Beşiktaş was complete and the referee even finishes the game before the full 90 minutes over, just in case a stray shot from Beşiktaş may goes in to the Zagreb net and would spoil everything. About 5 minutes or so of protests comes from the Beşiktaş squad as a whole including the subs and all, while Zagreb players goes for a victory lap in the Maximir Stadium.
If you have half an hour to spare, you can click on this link here to see the review from youtube, with the original commentary by the Croatians from that infamous night in Zagreb.
And who was that referee from that night? One Todor Kolev from Bulgaria... I kept searching about him, but I guess apart from only three qualifier matches in late 80s and early 90s, he seemed to be retired from the refereeing arena. I wonder why?
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