Former Everton midfielder Preki - the first USA international to play for the Blues - celebrates his 62nd birthday today
Former Everton midfielder Preki is now assistant coach of MLS side Seattle Sounders
Former Everton midfielder Preki is now assistant coach of MLS side Seattle Sounders
(Image: Jeff Halstead/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Everton are ‘Coming to America’ again next month but their ‘Special Relationship’ with the US started from an unlikely source. Blues boss David Moyes loves transatlantic trips and during his first spell at the club he took he team on six pre-season trips to the USA, with a seventh, under successor Roberto Martinez, organised before the Scot first departed the club in 2013.
Since then, Everton have taken part in the Florida Cup under Rafael Benitez in 2021 while the following year under Frank Lampard they faced Arsenal in Baltimore and Adrian Heath’s MLS side Minnesota United. Ahead of the 2025/26 campaign, the Blues will take part in the Premier League Summer Series against Bournemouth at MetLife Stadium, New Jersey on July 26; West Ham United at Soldier Field, Chicago on July 30; and Manchester United at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta, on August 3.
Everton’s links with the USA are long and distinguished. As a result, the club has made significant contributions to football in North America and vice versa. The Blues have played more games in the USA and Canada, had more men play in North American professional leagues and more players inducted into the US and Canadian Soccer Halls of Fame than any other English club.
Americans such as Joe-Max Moore from Tulsa, Oklahoma; Brian McBride from Arlington Heights, Illinois; Tim Howard from North Brunswick, New Jersey; and Landon Donovan from Ontario, California, have represented the club hailing from all corners of ‘The land of the free, and the home of the brave.’ However, the first man to represent both Everton and the USA – albeit not at the same time – was born 62 years ago on June 24, 1963, in Belgrade!
Hailing from what was then the capital city of Yugoslavia and now the capital of Serbia, Predrag Radosavljevic, who with 20 characters had the longest ever name of an Everton player (he now shares the title with Diniyar Bilyaletdinov), is better known to the football world by his nickname ‘Preki.’ The mercurial midfielder was always something of a late bloomer, given that he didn’t make his Premier League debut until he was 29 and earned his first international cap aged 33 – over two years after he departed Goodison Park, having applied for US citizenship.
His football story is far from conventional and he arrived at Everton ahead of the first Premier League season in 1992/93 having spent – apart from a few months in Sweden with Raslatts in 1990 – the best part of the previous seven years playing indoor soccer in the USA.
Speaking in 2023 for an article to mark his 60th birthday, Preki told the ECHO: “I’d been on loan from Red Star to another First Division club in Yugoslavia and played in a tournament in Belgrade where Bob McNab (the former Huddersfield Town and Arsenal left-back who coached US indoor sides Tacoma Stars and then San Jose Grizzlies) and Kenny Cooper (a Blackpool-born former Fleetwood goalkeeper who coached Houston Summit, Baltimore Blast and Tampa Bay Terror) were there scouting players.
“Bob approached me and offered me an opportunity to come to the US and I grabbed it with two hands. In those days, the players where I was didn’t make a lot of money and I came from a background of not being an incredibly rich kid so I made the decision to go and it changed my life.”
While Preki had averaged better than a goal a game tearing things up in converted venues conventionally used for basketball and ice hockey playing for Tacoma Stars and then St Louis Storm in the Major Indoor Soccer League, when the competition folded he was eager to try his luck in Europe again after the big impact he’d made in Scandinavia. Fortunately, he was given an opportunity on Merseyside by Everton’s most-successful manager who had returned for a second stint in charge.
He said: “I left Red Star as a young boy and I always wanted to play the proper game but in the meantime I was doing something different. Howard Kendall spoke to Bob McNab, who was responsible for bringing me to the States.
“Howard invited me to trials. I actually tried out for both Everton and Tottenham Hotspur, got invited back by both and then offered a contract by Everton.
“Of course it was a great opportunity for me. It took me a while to get my legs back because I’d been away from 11-a-side football for a long time.
“It’s really not easy to do what I did because when you don’t play the game at the top level for such a long time, to come into the Premier League is not an easy adjustment. I wish I came there when I was younger (Preki was 29 when he joined Everton), it would have been different, but you don’t get to choose when the chance comes.”
Preki of Everton playing against Arsenal at Highbury in 1993
Preki of Everton playing against Arsenal at Highbury in 1993
Apart from Australian-born back-up goalkeeper Jason Kearton, who was Neville Southall’s understudy, Polish international winger Robert Warzycha – who would later become a Major League Soccer stalwart himself as a player and coach at Columbus Crew – was the only other overseas member of the Blues squad but Preki was grateful for the welcome he received. He said: “Howard was a great man, first of all he was a great, great human being. He was always a players’ coach and I have great memories of him.
“The Everton dressing room were terrific, there were no problems in accepting me and while playing in the Premier League was difficult, I enjoyed it.
“There were not a lot of foreign players in the Premier League back then. At Everton there was only Robert Warzycha and myself.
“We both lived close to each other in West Derby and we were friends and are families were close so that made it a lot easier for me to settle in and be more comfortable because obviously it’s not easy if you’re alone.”
Unlike Warzycha, Preki arrived already able to speak English following his time in the USA but he laughs when he’s asked how he got to grips with the Scouse accent. He said: “It was tough at first! It took me a while to understand it and as well as local lads in the dressing room, there were Scottish players too. My son Nick was born in Liverpool but he doesn’t have a Scouse accent.”
Preki’s early Everton career was something of a crash course to the realities of English club football and he started with a trio of consecutive defeats away to Rotherham United in the League Cup, Leeds United and Oldham Athletic. After 53 appearances and four goals for the Blues he then had a spell at Portsmouth before returning to the USA for good where he thrived in the less physically-demanding environment.
Given the way football has evolved since and the Premier League has enticed more talent from around the globe, Preki reckons he’d have been a bigger success in England if he was coming over now. He said: “I had opportunities to move to a couple of different clubs after Portsmouth but I understood that my future was back in the US. I was already 32 and I had an opportunity to become a US citizen and play for them in the World Cup so I took on the challenge of going to Major League Soccer that was just starting.
“Absolutely it would be easier for me coming into the Premier League now than 30 years ago. There were games in my day where I’d be touching the ball just four or five times in 90 minutes.
“It’s a different game now and one that would suit me more. You can’t pick and choose though.”
Although he’s over four-and-a-half thousand miles away in the USA’s Pacific North West region rather than England’s North West, Preki, who has been assistant coach of Major League Soccer outfit Seattle Sounders since 2018, acknowledges that he’ll always cherish his time at Everton and once more he’s hoping for better times ahead at Hill Dickinson Stadium with the Blues relocating to the Mersey waterfront for the 2025/26 season.
He said: “Goodison was always a special ground, I loved playing there. It was nice, tight, compact ground contained within the neighbourhood and people live for that, I hope the new stadium doesn’t lose that magic.
“I loved being there and playing for a club of Everton’s status, they will always be in my heart and I have great memories of being there. It was an honour and I’ll always believe that Everton is a big club, they’ve just got to find the moment again to get there.”