Boris Smiljanić

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Personal information
Boris Smiljanić
Full name	Boris Smiljanić
Date of birth	September 28, 1976 (1976-09-28) (age 31)
Place of birth	Yugoslavia
Height	1.90 m (6 ft 3 in)
Playing position	Defender
Club information
Current club	Grasshopper
Number	6
Youth clubs
1984–1990 1990-1993	FC Neuenhof FC Wettingen
Senior clubs¹
Years	Club	App (Gls)*
1993-2002 2003-2007 2007-present	Grasshopper FC Basel Grasshopper	200 (11) 106 (11) 35 (1)
National team²
1999-2006	Switzerland	3 (0)
¹ Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only and correct as of 6 June 2008. ² National team caps and goals correct as of 18:07, August 7 2007. * Appearances (Goals)

Boris Smiljanić (born 28 September 1976) is a Serbian-Swiss football player. He currently plays for Grasshopper.

[edit] Club career

Smiljanić started his career with local club Grasshopper-Club Zürich in 1993 where he made his debut in 1993-94 season. He was a fringe player for his first few seasons but his leadership qualities and winning mentality soon got him noticed by the manager, Christian Gross, who started to include him among the substitutes before eventually including him in the first-team after injuries in the squad. He played well on his debut and kept his place in the team. He was eventually made captain of Grasshopper and made over 200 appearances for the club. The lure of European football was too much for Smiljanić when he signed for FC Basel in January 2003. His old manager Christian Gross had remembered his no-nonsense defending techniques and bought him strengthen his Basel defence. He went straight in to the first-team at Basel where he went on to play 106 games. Smiljanić returned to Grasshopper at the beginning of the 2007/08 season after the arrival of defenders François Marque from FC Baulmes and Patrik Baumann through the youth system. He inhereted his old number, 6, and is a first-team regular again.

[edit] International career

He made his national team debut against Czech Republic on 18 August 1999. The friendly match finished as Swiss lose zero to three. He made 2 more appearances for Switzerland before being frozen out of the international scene in 2000. He made a shock return to the Switzerland squad in 2006.