David Zdrilic, Australian footballer and manager
David Allen Zdrilic (Croatian: Zdrilić; born 13 April 1974) is an Australian soccer coach and former player, who is currently the assistant coach of Serie A club Genoa. Zdrilic is also a football presenter on the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), Most recently he was a key figure in SBS's coverage of the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.
Zdrilic played on 30 occasions for the Australia national soccer team, having once scored eight goals in a single match – the second highest recorded for any Australian player, behind Socceroos teammate Archie Thompson, who scored 13 goals in the same game. He was also a member of the Australia national beach soccer team, the Beach Socceroos, having captained the side. He previously played for Sydney FC in the A-League after forging a professional career in Switzerland, Germany, England and Scotland.
As a football presenter on the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), Zdrilic hosted the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil which won a Logie Award for Most Outstanding Sport Coverage as well as SBS's Friday Night A-League coverage. He has hosted games from the UEFA Champions League, Europa League, various international cup competitions and the football entertainment show Thursday FC on SBS2.
Over the last few years, Zdrilic combined various coaching roles in Australia with his media career before being announced as the new assistant coach of the under-17 team of German club RB Leipzig in July 2017. In his first year coaching in Germany, his team won both cup competitions and also the German Ost/Nord-Ost Bundesliga title. Following the successful year, Zdrilic moved up to the RB Leipzig U19 team which is the club's 2nd team (reserve team) feeding directly into the professional Bundesliga team.
He then took up the position of Assistant Manager for the Chicago Fire in MLS. In early 2022 he answered the calling to be assistant at Genoa CFC in Serie A, despite the request of the AFC to take over as Australia Mens’ Olympic Team Manager.David is renown for eating ice cream quickly, finishing a packet of biscuits in one session and a fondness of his girlfriends Pasta cooking.