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It started how it finished: with a delicate chip. Twenty‑five years ago, Mark Viduka scored all four goals in Leeds’s 4-3 victory against Liverpool at Elland Road. While those around furiously pedalled, Viduka remained Buddha‑esque, bookending his efforts with deft wedges over Sander Westerveld.
“I had to learn it over time,” Viduka says when asked whether his serenity was a superpower. “I played a lot of games where I was very nervous. When I was younger, I might just have belted it and hoped for the best.”
Viduka chuckles as he recalls a game early in his time at Croatia Zagreb, now called Dinamo Zagreb. He joined in 1995 and in the Eternal derby against Hajduk Split he was one-on-one with Tonci Gabric. He admits he panicked. “There was huge expectation, and a roar from the crowd. Somehow, I hit it with the outside of my foot and it went through the keeper’s legs. All the commentators thought I did it on purpose and I’m thinking: ‘Thank God that went in.’”
That was one of 52 goals he scored for Zagreb. Viduka is back in the city now, serving in the coffee shop he runs with his wife. His parents had migrated from Croatia to Melbourne before he was born. He says he got “a bit of stick” growing up: “They used to call us wogs. But what do you expect? My parents had it worse when they came – but you know what, who’s complaining? Sometimes you’ve got to take it on the chin. I’m proud of Australia. Australia is one of the best countries in the world. It gave my parents everything. It gave them an opportunity to raise their kids in a safe environment.”
Viduka’s builder dad loved football and they were regulars at Melbourne Croatia, now Melbourne Knights. At 16, Viduka left home on a two-year scholarship at the Australian Institute of Sport. By age 18, he was in the Knights’ first team.
Rapidly, Viduka outgrew Australian domestic football. Borussia Dortmund and the Japanese side Jubilo Iwata showed interest, but the Croatian president Franjo Tudjman was visiting Australia and invited the Vidukas out for a meal. He wanted Mark in Zagreb. Given the civil war, his parents were reluctant. Viduka, though, was insistent.
“It was exciting,” he says. “I didn’t really think about the safety aspect of it. But looking back now … bloody hell, I don’t know if I’d have let my kid go at that time.”
Viduka had a cousin in Zagreb who he saw regularly. But shortly after Viduka’s arrival, the cousin – a special forces operative – “had to go to war”. Days passed without news. “There was no internet, there was nothing.” Thankfully Operation Storm ended the Croatian war of independence in 1995 and his cousin returned safely.
Amid poverty and job losses, Tudjman’s popularity waned and Viduka was, in the public’s eyes, linked inextricably with the politician. “I’d have my fans and the opposition fans singing insults to me before I even started playing,” he says.
Viduka likens it to David Beckham’s post-France 98 experience. “I scored in a derby match in Split, and my own fans were insulting me. I’m thinking to myself: ‘This has got nothing to do with football.’”
He would be insulted, even spat on when he left the house. “I just felt exhausted. Exhausted of every day being attacked by people having a go at me on the street. I didn’t know how to deal with it. I’d never envisaged that sort of thing from football. It could have ruined me. I could have stopped playing.”
Determined to continue, Viduka joined Celtic in December 1998, but his debut was delayed until February 1999. He was broken. His friends told him not to show his new coach his struggles, but he needed to speak up. “I had to say exactly how it is, and whatever happens, happens.”
He called the Celtic manager Jozef Venglos and asked for time with his family. Venglos was sympathetic, the media less so. “At six in the morning, I’ve got a news crew in front of my parents’ house. It was like the whole world was not big enough.”
By then the press had labelled him a mercenary. “If I wanted to do it for the money, I wouldn’t have said anything,” he says. Some suggested he had entered a mental health institution. In reality, Viduka was a young person struggling in a high-pressure situation thousands of miles from home. “In the UK, people move from London to the north and they struggle,” he says.
Viduka spent time with his parents and four sisters and headed eventually for Scotland. And the Australian footballer tax hit. “We’ve got to work really hard for people to take notice. People’s first thought is: ‘You Aussies don’t have a clue about football.’ You could be a better player than the Brazilian or European but somehow there’s still that perception … You come to the UK and just fall in like some sort of alien.”
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A Scottish League Cup winners’ medal and 35 goals later, David O’Leary’s Leeds, who had just qualified for the Champions League, paid £6m for him. Viduka hit the ground sprinting, his 22 goals – including the four against Liverpool – helping them to make a Champions League semi-final in 2000-01.
He began an enduring friendship with the French midfielder Olivier Dacourt and recalls that side fondly, from Lee Bowyer’s goalscoring support to Ian Harte’s free-kicks, from Alan Smith’s relentlessness to the quality of fellow Australian Harry Kewell.
But failing to qualify for the Champions League for the following two seasons created a financial hole that turned the club’s highs into lows. Rio Ferdinand, Robbie Keane, Bowyer and Jonathan Woodgate were sold, and O’Leary was sacked. Viduka’s 20 Premier League goals in 2002-03 kept Leeds afloat. “It was a huge uphill battle,” he says. “It went pear-shaped.” Relegation was confirmed in May 2004.
“I love Leeds, I love the place, I love the club,” Viduka says. “If everything was OK, I would have stayed there. But I didn’t want to be playing second division football, and they couldn’t afford for me to stay.”
His next stop was Middlesbrough, the highlight a run to the 2006 Uefa Cup final. Having trailed after the quarter-final and semi‑final away legs against Basel and Steaua Bucharest respectively, Steve McLaren’s side progressed via emphatic Riverside victories. “I’m thinking: ‘This thing’s destined for us.’ Little did we know Sevilla weren’t thinking the same way.” A 4-0 defeat hit hard.
Months later, Viduka captained Australia at the 2006 World Cup. Was that the pinnacle? “A massive highlight but one of my best moments was winning the title with my club, Melbourne Knights [in 1995]. We’d dominated in the late 80s and early 90s without winning the title. I grew up going to those games every week”
Viduka, who turned 50 last month, rarely watches football now, although he will occasionally be a spectator at his son’s games. Working in the cafe suits him. “When I came to Zagreb, the first thing they asked me at the airport was: ‘Do you drink coffee?’ The culture here is all about meeting with friends over a cup of coffee.”
His wife runs the cafe day‑to‑day “up where we live in north Zagreb, in the hills in a green, leafy neighbourhood”, he says. “There was a place I used to go for a beer, but the coffee wasn’t the best. The surroundings were beautiful, tough. We’ve lived all over the place but we thought to ourselves: ‘If this place ever comes up we’ll give it a go.’ The concept is basically that it is somewhere for us to drink coffee.”
