Josip Weber

Josip Weber (born Josip Veber, 16 November 1964 in Slavonski Brod, SFR Yugoslavia) is a Croatian-Belgian retired professional football forward. He is best known for playing with Belgian club Cercle Brugge while also representing Croatia and Belgium at international level.

Career

He begin his senior career still in Yugoslavia, where, after playing one season with lower league side NK Borac Podvinje, he joined BSK Slavonski Brod where he played 3 seasons before joining in 1985 the Yugoslav First League vice-champions NK Hajduk Split. He spent 2 seasons in Split winning with them the 1987 Yugoslav Cup. Afterwords, he will play with another Yugoslav top league side, NK Dinamo Vinkovci, before moving to Belgium in 1988.^[1]

Already in Belgium, he played for Cercle Brugge and Anderlecht. In his international career, Weber became notable as one of the last footballers who played for national teams of two countries after acquiring another nationality. In July 1992, he started his international career with the Croatian national team during their Australian tour, where he appeared in all three of their friendly matches against the Australian national team and also managed to score Croatia's only goal during the tour as he scored in the second match, which they lost 3-1. The other two matches ended with a 1-0 win for Australia and a goalless draw respectively. After that, he never played for Croatia again.

During the 1993-94 season, Weber took Belgian nationality and became eligible to play for the Belgian national team (he was allowed to play for Belgium because the previous matches for Croatia were all friendlies that were not under FIFA. Croatia only joined FIFA and UEFA in 1993). He made his debut for Belgium on 3 June 1994 in their friendly match against Zambia, which was highly successful as he managed to score five goals in a 9-0 win for Belgium. He was also a regular member of the Belgian team at the 1994 FIFA World Cup in the United States and played in all of their four matches at the tournament, starting three of them. He nevertheless did not manage to score any goals before Belgium was eliminated by Germany in the round of 16. On the final minutes of that match, he was brought down in the penalty area by Thomas Helmer, but referee Kurt Röthlisberger did not grant the penalty that could have been the Belgian equaliser. He won a total of eight international caps and scored six goals for Belgium, all in 1994.

While playing for Cercle Brugge in three seasons between 1991 and 1994, Weber became the top goalscorer of the Jupiler League three times in a row. He has the 2nd most goals ever for Cercle Brugge. Only Marcel Pertry scored more goals.

Josip Weber was transferred to Anderlecht in the summer of 1994 and finished his career at the club in 1995 due to injury.

References

• Josip Weber at National-Football-Teams.com

Sporting positions
Preceded by Kalusha Bwalya	Cercle Brugge top scorer 1989 – 1990 – 1991 – 1992 – 1993 – 1994	Succeeded by Christophe Lauwers

v t e Belgium squad – 1994 FIFA World Cup 1 Preud'homme 2 Medved 3 Borkelmans 4 Albert 5 Smidts 6 Staelens 7 Van der Elst 8 Nilis 9 Degryse 10 Scifo 11 Czerniatynski 12 De Wilde 13 Grün (c) 14 De Wolf 15 Emmers 16 Boffin 17 Weber 18 Wilmots 19 Van Meir 20 Verlinden 21 Van Der Heyden 22 Renier Coach: Van Himst