The Great Yugoslavian School in Water Polo

Nikola Stamenić wasn’t just a coach. He was a water polo “philosopher”, a teacher who turned the raw energy of water polo into mathematical precision and artistic expression. For more than four decades, Stamenić shaped generations

Born in Belgrade in 1949, he played for Partizan and the Yugoslavian national team, with whom he won the silver medal at the 1972 Munich Olympics. But it was the next stage of his career—coaching—that would make him a water polo legend. As a coach, he won gold at the 1988 Seoul Olympics (1988), turning the Yugoslav national team into an unstoppable machine.

And he would go on to leave an indelible mark on Greek polo, too. Taking charge of Olympiacos in the late 1990s, he transformed the Piraeus team into European champions (the Reds reached the final of the European Cup Winners’ Cup) and laid the foundations for their absolute dominance of Greek water polo in the years ahead. In 2002, as a coaching consultant, he saw Olympiacos reach the very top of Europe with victory in the Champions Cup.

Nakić laid the foundations on which the Club’s greatness still stands

Stamenić believed in defense, hard work, and discipline. He stressed physical fitness, but also the athletes’ mental cultivation. He spoke about “polo directors”, of “meaningful movement” and “team instinct”. Many of the top Greek coaches—including Thodoris Vlachos, Nikos Deligiannis and Kostas Loudis—were his students, either directly or indirectly.

And even after he quit coaching, the sport never left Stamenić’s heart. He continued to provide advice, write and speak passionately about the sport he loved. He passed away in 2024, leaving behind titles and accolades, but above all a way of thinking, an approach that made water polo more art and less “war”.

Nikola Stamenić was a man who inspired his players rather than browbeating them. Who guided rather than dictated. Which is the measure of a true leader.

Vlacho Orlic, the “high priest” of Yugoslav polo, said Stamenić “assembled the pieces of his team like a civil engineer”. Stamenić had an utterly unique way of thinking about polo, which was simultaneously innovative, radical and timeless. And his moral stance was honored, albeit indirectly, when the new rules of the sport placed fair play center-stage.

Mile Nakić: the cornerstone of the Olympiacos team of the 1990s. He changed the course of Greek water polo with his discipline, principles and dedication.

However, before Stamenić, there was Ante “Mile” Nakić. More than simply a great polo coach, he was a silent pioneer, a coach who worked for his sport ethically, with discipline and love, and was the cornerstone of Olympiacos’ emergence on—and subsequent dominance – of the European polo map.

Born in Šibenik in 1942, he started his career at VK Šibenik, where he played for a decade. As a coach, he started out with the same team, where he remained for another eleven years before embarking on his great journey on the international stage.

In 1978, he took over at Olympiacos for the first time, with a short but decisive tenure. He returned for a second stint in the 1985-86 season, and again for his most successful and historic partnership with the Reds in the mid-1990s. He led Olympiacos to two consecutive Greek championships in 1995-96 and established the club as a Greek water polo power house. The club’s subsequent European success would be built on the foundations he laid at that time.

With his focus on fitness and balanced tactics and flawless psychological management of his athletes, Nakić was considered the ultimate fount of knowledge about the sport. He was never noisy, and his teams did their talking in the pool. He used the Greek model as a springboard for taking the sport to new heights, while working with top athletes and passing on the principles of modern polo to Greece’s future coaches.

In addition to Olympiacos, he also coached the Greek (1992-1995) and Yugoslavian (1982-1983) national teams, leaving the latter post just two months before the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, where Yugoslavia took gold. He also worked at the Greek team of Halkida, as well as in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Slovakia, achieving results everywhere he went. He was particularly successful at Glyfada, which won four championships and three Greek Cups under his guidance.

Well-traveled, knowledgeable and always humble, Mile Nakić was more than a coach. He was a visionary who passed through Olympiacos at crucial moments in its history and changed the course of red-and-white water polo with his disarming professionalism. He was the cornerstone on which a great team was built that would go on to dominate Greece and conquer Europe.

In 2010, of the 12 clubs in the first division of the Greek league, seven had coaches who had played under Nakić! Names that remain iconic: the current national coach Thodoris Vlachos, Voltirakis, Chatzitheodorou, Loudis… His multifaceted coaching footprint continues to nurture Greek polo to this day.

Moreover, it was Nakić himself who paved the way for a number of Croatian coaches and players to come to Greece and forge a tradition that remains very much alive. It is no coincidence that Ante “Mile” Nakić lived and worked in Greece for 18 years in all.

Stamenić was a man who inspired his players rather than browbeating them. Who guided rather than dictated. Which is the measure of a true leader.

Nakić, the father of another Olympiacos player, Franco Nakić, who was a European champion with the Reds in 1997, showed that sportsmanship and attention to detail were written into his DNA.

Olympiacos and Greek polo owe him a great deal. Ante Nakić’s contribution isn’t measured in medals. It’s measured in principles, ethics and progress. And the progress he made left an indelible imprint on Greek aquatic sport.

The names of the two Yugoslavs are indelibly engraved in Red on Olympiacos water polo, with Serbo-Croat intelligence and Balkan honesty. Nikola Stamenić and Ante “Mile” Nakić. The first, an architect of integrity, gave birth to a school. He didn’t just train players. He created men, characters who learned to fight fairly in the water, to win without crowing and to lose with dignity. Like a poet of the chlorine, he taught polo as an art, not technical trickery. The second—steady as a rock and with a gaze as deep as the Adriatic—built the Olympiacos of the 90s. He brought titles to Piraeus, but more than that, he gave the team discipline, structure and recognition. With mathematical precision and quiet strength, he laid the foundations on which the Club’s greatness stands still.

The two men followed different paths in the service of the same mission: to teach ethics, passion and perspective. For Olympiacos, Stamenić and Nakić were more than coaches; they were standard bearers for another, more ethical, era. And if, one day, they are forgotten by the many, they will live on still in the souls of those who gave their hearts to Olympiacos in the churning cauldron of the unforgiving pool.