Veteran coach Pesic announces retirement after season

Pesic is one of the most successful and high-profile coaches in basketball history. Among other things, he won the European Championship title as national coach with the German national team in 1993. In 2001 and 2002 he won gold with Yugoslavia at the European and World Championships. In 2024 he won the bronze medal with the Serbian team at the Olympics against Germany – the year before he had lost the World Cup final against the German team. As a club coach, he triumphed in the Korac Cup with Alba Berlin in 1995 and in the Euroleague with FC Barcelona in 2003.

Career addition only for FC Bayern

He actually didn’t want to train for a season after leaving the Serbian team in 2025. But then Bayern parted ways with Gordon Herbert and Pesic returned to Munich at the request of club president Herbert Hainer. He had already won the championship with Bayern in 2014.

“I wouldn’t have agreed to any other club,” he made it clear, “but I identify 100 percent with FC Bayern. This is the club I love.” Until a few months ago, his son Marko Pesic was managing director at Bayern.

Realization in the hotel bed: “Stop it!”

Pesic senior’s decision to end his career came a few weeks ago, as he told “Zeit”: “Before a Euroleague game at the beginning of January, I was lying in the hotel bed, and suddenly I asked myself: What are you doing here, are you crazy? You’re almost 77 years old and still a coach. You’ll still make it to 90, that’s another 13 years. Then I said to myself: Stop playing basketball, finally stop!”

Pesic announced that he would remain connected to the sport and, for example, give courses. “But at the end of my life, I can no longer be a head coach.” This Wednesday, the old master’s autobiography (“Always On”) is coming to bookstores.