Preki Q&A With MLSE's Mike Ulmer

His given name is Predrag Radosavljević but he has been Preki since his school days.

The fourth Toronto FC coach in as many years is a naturalized American and a native of Serbia.

Preki is only four years removed from his final MLS game. He is a two-time league Most Valuable Player whose speedy play along the wing made him one of the league's most dangerous attackers. He is also one of the league's most driven personalities. A star unable to play in Europe because of an edict from the Yugoslavian government preventing players from playing anywhere but on the continent until they turned 28, Preki looked to indoor soccer in the United States, then played for English sides Everton and Portsmouth before joining MLS.

Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment senior writer, Mike Ulmer, spoke to Preki about his journey to the BMO Field sidelines.

Mike Ulmer: Who was the first person who called you Preki?
Preki: It came from my school days. I was given that name and it stuck with me all my life.

MU: Were your parents wealthy people?
Preki: No, hard-working people. We were in Belgrade. My Mom who passed away, she worked in a factory. My father was a clerk in a government facility. Hard workers.

MU: Was it hard to find the money to play?
Preki: In Serbia you don’t pay to play. The clubs pay for all the things, balls, shoes, uniforms, but you have to be good enough to play. I had a coach, a special coach who put me where I needed to be by hard work, being hard on me every day. When you have someone who is hard on you but who cares about you, you grow as a person and a man, your mentality grows.

MU: Who was he?
Preki: His name was Mirko Dakic.

MU: How big an influence was he on you as a coach?
Preki: He was a hard worker and a guy who liked a lot of discipline. It’s how you applied yourself. Every day, he was tough.

MU: What’s the one thing he told you every day?
Preki: To work hard. It doesn’t matter how much talent you have because hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.

MU: When did you know you were a special player?
Preki: If I was a special player or not that’s for other people to say. I just loved the game, respected the game a lot and always tried to do the best I could.

MU: Tell me about the profile a young player would enjoy in Serbia?
Preki: A lot of us weren’t from wealthy families. It was a fight for survival, a fight to come out and make something out of yourself. It made it easier that I already loved the game. It was easy for me, sacrificing and working hard every day. If you work hard you can have a better life.

MU: Does it irritate you when players don’t know what it takes to be successful?
Preki: Of course, sometimes it is irritating but we can’t all live in the past. I can’t live in the past, just because I went through something doesn’t mean every single person should go through that…

MU: But that’s in your DNA. Where you’re from shapes how you look at everything.
Preki: I don’t know. I guess I grew up that way and I can’t be any different than what I am. Kids here, sometimes they ask for things, they have it easy. They come to the stadium and they have video games, all these things. It’s a lot easier, a lot easier. Where I come from, a lot of times things are difficult and you have to find a way to survive. All of our country went through these things, the wars and things, the people found a way to surprise.

MU: That’s one of the differences between you and I. Things got better as I grew older, but as you grew older, things grew worse and worse.
Preki: Hopefully now we are turning the corner as a country and towards the European Union. I think people in our country deserve something good to happen and have a better life.

MU: What was it like playing there?
Preki: It was competing for your life every day. There are so many kids, you are fighting every day for the job. If one day you let your guard down, somebody comes and takes your spot so you had better be on guard every day.

MU: What was at stake, being taken care of by the team or playing somewhere else?
Preki: It meant down the line you would go somewhere and make a good living. That’s still the case in Serbia. Players make very little and try to get out and make a better living.

MU: In your heart are you a Serbian guy living in North America or a North American from Serbia?
Preki: I’m a Serbian guy. I always will be Serbian. I’m a naturalized American but I grew up in Serbia, my parents were Serbian. Not to take anything away from America.

MU: Half the people who live in Toronto are not from Canada. What does it mean to represent a city like this? You are the product of another culture. Do you feel at home here?
Preki: I feel the passion and we haven’t kicked the ball here. You hear people talking. We played here three times (with CHIVAS USA) and we saw the passion. Those are all great things, but they don’t really matter. We have to be successful.

MU: Work hard and win?
Preki: We have to make sure that we change the culture inside the team and that slowly but surely we will become successful. I feel the city, the ownership, the whole organization, the fans deserve better and hopefully we will get them there.

MU: You must have known friends and family who lost their lives. How often did you see this when you were growing up in Serbia?
Preki: You would see it all the time. I lost some friends in the war, some died when I was away from home. It’s not an easy thing but you have to overcome all these things. It’s not easy but life goes on.

MU: People like you, if I can generalize, look forward. They don’t look around, they don’t look behind them, they look forward. But guys like you don’t often savor when things go well. They just keep on walking. Is that a fair assessment of you?
Preki: My thing is just because you won today, doesn’t mean tomorrow you are going to be lucky. Every day is a different challenge, every day you have to be the best, every day you have to drive yourself to win. If you win once and think, ‘I won once, that’s it,’ you’re in the wrong business. You’ve got to think every day that you are going to win every day. If you don’t…

MU: What else is there?
Preki: Exactly. People say it’s fun to be part of the game. Yeah, it’s fun if you are winning. If you are losing it sucks. Simple as that.

MU: How do you react after a loss?
Preki: I’m a bad loser, yes. I take a lot of thinking, what went wrong, analyzing, watching the tapes.

MU: Do you sleep poorly after a loss?
Preki: Win or lose I sleep good after the game. I get pretty empty after the game, emotionally. I don’t even watch the tape. I sleep good. I get up in the morning and I am fresh and now I can really think about what’s next. If we lose it’s 'how do we fix it?' If we win, it’s 'how do we keep going in this direction?'You have to watch a lot of films and show a lot of things to the players.

Whatever happened the night before is behind us. We can analyze why things went wrong and we can prepare for next week. We can have fun and make sure the next week will win.

I am happy in general because I am doing something I really love. Some people may not see it that way because they say ‘he doesn’t smile too often.’ We smile inside here (the coach’s office), we laugh and we have a good time, but when we go out there it’s business. You don’t see a lot of CEOs smile in their meetings.