{"id":27521,"date":"2022-12-22T14:42:34","date_gmt":"2022-12-22T05:42:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/?p=27521"},"modified":"2022-12-22T14:42:34","modified_gmt":"2022-12-22T05:42:34","slug":"former-ceres-borneo-and-melaka-head-coach-vidakovic-takes-charge-of-the-sailors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/2022\/12\/22\/former-ceres-borneo-and-melaka-head-coach-vidakovic-takes-charge-of-the-sailors\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Ceres, Borneo, and Melaka Head Coach Vidakovic Takes Charge of the Sailors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Singapore Premier League side Lion City Sailors have named former Ceres-Negros, Borneo FC, and Melaka United head coach Risto Vidakovic as their new boss for the upcoming 2023 season.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>53-year old Vidakovic famously guided Ceres &#8211; now United City FC &#8211; to the AFC Cup inter-zone semifinals in 2017, before <a href=\"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/2022\/01\/24\/melakas-vidakovic-appointment-angers-borneo-fans\/\">infamously leaving Borneo in January of this year following &#8220;COVID concerns&#8221; only to be appointed as Melaka&#8217;s new head coach days after his departure from the\u00a0<em>Pesut Etam<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Vidakovic&#8217;s time at Melaka were very torrid as he only won one of his five games there, leading to his sacking after less than four months there.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Risto is a serial winner in the region and has proven that he can work European knowhow into the football culture in Southeast Asia \u2013 and this in varying challenging circumstances as well,&#8221; said LCS chairman Forrest Li, as quoted from\u00a0<em>The Strait Times<\/em>, &#8220;I\u2019m confident he is the right man to take the club forward.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>LCS were involved in the 2022 Singapore Premier League title race, up until the sudden resignation of head coach Kim Do-hoon due to a brawl that he had with Tampines Rovers assistant coach Fahrudin Mustafic in July.<\/p>\n<p>Interim head coach Luka Lalic guided LCS to three huge victories &#8211; a 10-1 demolition of Young Lions, a 7-0 thrashing of Tanjong Pagar United, and a thrilling 9-4 win over Hougang United &#8211; however fatigue and injuries from Lalic&#8217;s intense training regime began to set in and LCS lost their last four games in a row,<a href=\"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/2022\/10\/14\/the-perfect-week-for-albirex-niigata\/\"> conceding their Singapore Premier League title to Albirex Niigata (S) in the process<\/a>. The Sailors then suffered the ignominy of being knocked out of the 2022 Singapore Cup in the group stages.<\/p>\n<p>LCS were then dealt with a further blow after club owners Sea Limited suffered a plunge in their valuation amounting to a staggering US$150 billion, meaning that cost-cutting measures had to be done. The experienced quartet of Hassan Sunny, Gabriel Quak, Faris Ramli and Shahdan Sulaiman has been allowed to leave the club, while a number of backroom staffs saw their contracts being terminated, with similar lay-offs being done at Sea Limited&#8217;s e-commerce arm Shopee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Singapore Premier League side Lion City Sailors have named former Ceres-Negros, Borneo FC, and Melaka United head coach Risto Vidakovic as their new boss for the upcoming 2023 season. 53-year old Vidakovic famously guided Ceres &#8211; now United City FC &#8211; to the AFC Cup inter-zone semifinals in 2017, before infamously leaving Borneo in January of this year following &#8220;COVID concerns&#8221; only to be appointed as Melaka&#8217;s new head coach days after his departure from the\u00a0Pesut Etam. Vidakovic&#8217;s time at Melaka were very torrid as he only won one of his five games there, leading to his sacking after less than four months there. &#8220;Risto is a serial winner in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/2022\/12\/22\/former-ceres-borneo-and-melaka-head-coach-vidakovic-takes-charge-of-the-sailors\/\" class=\"tribe-more-link\">Continue reading &#8220;Former Ceres, Borneo, and Melaka Head Coach Vidakovic Takes Charge of the Sailors&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"featured_media":27525,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[855,26],"tags":[2008,2473,108,1935,95,315],"class_list":["post-27521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rest-of-sea","category-southeast-asia","tag-lion-city-sailors","tag-risto-vidakovic","tag-singapore","tag-singapore-premier-league","tag-slider","tag-southeast-asia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27521"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27522,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27521\/revisions\/27522"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}