Richards Bay’s new coach, Dimitar Pantev, is the latest from Eastern Europe to take charge of a club in the top flight of South African football.
The 50-year-old from Bulgaria will kick off his new job later this month in the Betway Premiership. He is added to a growing list of coaches from Bosnia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Montenegro, Romania, Russia, Serbia, and Slovakia who have been in charge of South African clubs.
Teodorescu ‘Ted’ Dumitru was the first Eastern European coach to work in the top flight of South African football, although he came a circuitous route.
Dumitru was from Romania but had left in the 1960s and moved to the USA, where he became an American citizen and coach in the North American Soccer League with the Rochester Lancers. He became Zambia’s coach in 1980 and later oversaw the Swazi national team, where Kaizer Motaung first encountered him.
In 1986, he moved across to work at Kaizer Chiefs and stayed in South Africa for the rest of his life, dying of a heart attack aged 76 in May 2016.
He won four league titles and six knockout trophies, doing the league and cup double with Mamelodi Sundowns in 1998 and retaining the championship the next campaign. He then won back-to-back league titles in 2004 and 2005 with Chiefs.
A spell with Orlando Pirates also put him in an elite group of coaches to work at all the major South African clubs, but his stint as Bafana Bafana coach in 2006 proved disastrous.
These are the other east European coaches to have worked in the top flight of South African football
Miloslav Bjelica: The soft-spoken Yugoslav first came to work at Umtata Bucks in 1990, lasting six months before moving to Bloemfontein Celtic. The next season, he coached Real Taj, one of six Federation clubs that joined the National Soccer League as part of the unity process. Moroka Swallows hired him at the start of the 1992 season but fired him in August of that year. He was at Mother City briefly in the 1999/00 season.
Petr Packert: The coach hailed from the Czech Republic, who played at Dukla Prague and Bohemians and has been in charge of the Czechoslovakian junior national teams, before moving to Greece. He was at Panathinaikos, where he won the league and cup double, and then PAS Giannina when Sundowns, through the Tschilas family, recruited him but he stayed only a few months in 1992.
Viktor Bondarenko: The Russian coach came first to Pirates after coaching Mozambique to a place at the 1996 Africa Cup of Nations finals. He won the Top Eight Cup immediately with Pirates in March 1996 and followed that up at the end of the year by winning the BoB Save Super Bowl. He also coached Umtata Bucks, Swallows, and was briefly at Sundowns.
Pal Dolezar: Born in Yugoslavia but of Hungarian heritage, Dolezar played professional football in the Netherlands and France and worked as a coach in Gabon. From there, he moved to Chiefs at the start of the 1997-98 season and worked for two full campaigns, winning the Rothmans Cup two years in a row.
When he moved to Sundowns for the 1999/2000 season, he won the Rothmans Cup again and took them to the league title. In 2005, he won the Top Eight with Bloemfontein Celtic and the returned six years later for a brief run at Mpumalanga Black Aces.
Kolyo Markov: The Bulgarian coach lasted two games at newly promoted Dynamos in 1998 but after losing both, was fired. He had helped them win promotion, but after Dynamos, he went to Botswana where he coached at several top-flight clubs plus worked as a school teacher.
Vasil Takov: From Bulgaria, he had worked in Algeria and Tunisia before taking over at Vaal Professionals at the start of the 1998-99 season. He won one of his first nine games before being sacked, then went to Giyani-based Dynamos where he lasted only two matches.
Zoran Pesic: Newly promoted Ria Stars had the Belgrade-born Serbian coach in charge as they began their top-flight adventure but after seven games, showed him the door. He began the 2002-03 season at Hellenic but there he lasted six games.
Kosta Papic: Pirates hired the Serbian from Nigeria in 2004, and he stayed almost two full seasons before getting the sack. The next season, Maritzburg United employed him, where he was for half the campaign, and by the end of the 2006-07 season, he joined Chiefs, who brought him in to finish the season after showing Ernst Middendorp the door. In 2015, Papic was back for a year at Polokwane City.
Vladislav Heric: The Serbian coach worked in the top flight of South African football with Maritzburg United (three months in 2007), Bay United (August-December 2009) and Black Leopards for six months in the 2011-12 campaign. He took Chippa United up in 2014 but quickly became the first of many fired by the club since, only to go back again briefly in 2018.
Milutin Sredojevich: The first of two spells at Pirates for the Serbian coach better known as “Micho” started in the 2006-07 season but lasted six months and 15 games. He returned after working extensively across Africa in 2017 for three seasons at the Buccaneers, where they finished runners-up but could not depose Sundowns as champions.
Vladimir Vermezovic: A former Yugoslav international and coach of Partizan Belgrade in Serbia, Vermezovic was at Chiefs for almost three full seasons from 2009, winning the Telkom Knockout twice in a row. In March 2014, he joined Pirates and took them to Nedbank Cup success two months later but left after the trauma of Senzo Meyiwa’s death later that year.
Hristo Stoichkov: The former Ballon d’Or winner and Barcelona striker came to Sundowns in mid-2009 as a marquee coaching signing, recommended by Johan Cruyff to owner Patrice Motsepe. But the Bulgarian superstar proved a poor fit and did not last a full season.
Zoran Filipovic: Lamontville Golden Arrows hired the former Red Star Belgrade and Montenegro national coach after the 2010 World Cup, but he left after nine months, later to have a spell as national coach of Libya.
Vesselin Jelusic: The sports professor from Serbia had much success in Angola and Botswana and was hired by Bloemfontein Celtic at the kick-off of the 2017-18 season but departed at the end of the campaign.
Nikola Kavazovic: Free State Stars brought the Serbian coach from his previous job in Botswana, but he proved unable to save them from relegation in 2019.
Jozef Vukusic: From Slovakia, Vukusic was coached of Polokwane City for the 2018-19 season and then moved across to AmaZulu in 2019 and lasted almost one year with Usuthu.
Zlatko Krmpotic: A former Yugoslav international who played at the 1982 World Cup, he coached Polokwane City after working in Rwanda but was fired after the first 14 games of the 2019-20 season.
Sead Ramovic: Born in Germany but of Bosnian heritage, the former Bundesliga goalkeeper joined TS Galaxy in 2022 and overlapped four seasons at the club with the highlight being a top eight finish and place in the Carling Knockout final. He left for a more lucrative job in Tanzania.
Adnan Beganovic: The Bosnian was Ramovic’s assistant and took over at Galaxy from his friend but after a string of defeats last season got the sack, just before the side reached the 2026 Nedbank Cup final.