Flashback: Remembering the career of Australian striker Mark Viduka
Proud of his Croatian roots
Mark Viduka is currently celebrating his birthday - he was born on October 9th, 1975 in Melbourne, Australia. At the age of 18, in 1993, Viduka started his professional career playing for Melbourne Knights, which, up until the 1993 season, was known as 'Melbourne Croatia'.
His parents emigrated to Australia in the 1960s from Croatia (which was then part of Yugoslavia). The Croatian diaspora in Australia is large (it is estimated that more than 250,000 Croats and their descendants live in Australia).
The Melbourne Croatia club also functioned as one of the expatriate associations. Apart from that, Viduka has football in his blood. His father and his entire family in their European homeland also used to play.
One of the cousins of Viduka's father is the father of another famous footballer - the famous Croatian international, and 2018 Ballon d’Or winner, Luka Modric. Thus, Viduka and Modric are related.
Viduka's football fate seemed to pull him back to his roots. In 1995, Viduka moved to Croatia to play for Croatia Zagreb (now Dinamo Zagreb, the same club where Modric began his career). He spent three and a half seasons with the club, helping them to win three doubles in a row between 1996 and 1998.
But also a loyal Australian
At that time, Viduka already was an Australian international. He was called up to the Socceroos shortly after starting his career as a Melbourne Knights player.
Thanks to his great performances in Croatia and thanks to his roots, even the president of the Balkan country tried to convince him to change his national allegiance. Viduka was still eligible to play for Croatia, but he refused the offer and insisted that he only ever wanted to represent Australia, the country where he was born and raised.
Mark Viduka has become one of the finest Australian footballers of all time. He even captained the Socceroos. After his career ended, he was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame. In total, Mark Viduka made 43 appearances for Australia scoring 11 goals. However, he scored even many more goals during his time playing in the British Isles.
Celtic and the Premier League
In 1998, Mark Viduka was acquired by Celtic. During two seasons in Scotland, he scored 35 goals (in 48 matches) which preceded his move to the Premier League.
In the summer of 2000, Viduka was bought by Leeds United. The previous season (1999/00) Leeds finished third in the Premier League and qualified for the Champions League 2000/01.
At Leeds, Viduka was expected to line up in attack alongside the previous season's top scorer Michael Bridges and Australia teammate Harry Kewell, but injuries to those two saw him form a partnership with another great striker, Alan Smith.
In his first season at Leeds, Viduka scored 22 goals, including all four in a memorable 4–3 win over Liverpool. The four goals Viduka scored in the Champions League that season make him still the highest-scoring Australian in the history of the most prestigious club competition in the world.
In that spectacular season, Leeds even reached the semi-finals of the Champions League (where they lost to Valencia) and finished fourth in the Premier League.
Thanks to the exceptional performances of the team and his personal ones, Viduka became the subject of interest from several more famous clubs. One of them was AC Milan, whom Viduka supported as a child, but the move ultimately did not happen. Allegedly, there was also courtship from Alex Ferguson and Manchester United but Mark Viduka decided against joining one of Leeds' fiercest rivals.
Australia's best goalscorer
Viduka spent four seasons in the Leeds jersey. In 2004, when the Yorkshire side was relegated, Viduka transferred to Middlesbrough. In 2007, he moved even further north, to Newcastle United. He played two years for the Magpies.
During nine seasons in the shirt of three different teams, Mark Viduka made a total of 240 appearances in the Premier League, in which he scored 92 goals.
He is Australia's top scorer in the English top flight. His record far surpasses the aforementioned Kewell (57 goals for Leeds and Liverpool) and Tim Cahill's 56 goals for Everton.
However, in terms of the number of starts, the top Australian in Premier League history is goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer with 514 appearances (which he made for Middlesbrough, Fulham, Chelsea and Leicester).
A coffee shop in Croatia
Due to his size and his physical style, Viduka was nicknamed the 'V-Bomber' or 'Big Dukes'.
During his time in Croatia in the mid-1990s he met his wife Ivana. They have three sons together: Joseph (born 2002), Lucas (born 2006) and Oliver (born 2008).
Mark Viduka currently lives in Zagreb, where he owns a coffee shop and enjoys making coffee alongside his wife.