Veljko Paunovic’s right hand moves in a wide, smooth arc: up, around and down. “This tends to happen to me a lot,” he says, eyes following his finger as it traces a curve. It is his first day as Serbia’s coach and he is waiting for his players to arrive, entrusted with an “urgent mission” that brings him back again, all the way to when he was a boy. “I tend to close circles, and this could be another. There’s a connection there: my career outside the country, going to Spain, round the world, then returning. And this first game, the link to the legacy left by my dad, to what I inherited from him.”

Growing up, there were three games Paunovic recalls his father talking about most, matches that resonate in his mind. Blagoje Paunovic, a defender who played 39 times for Yugoslavia and became a coach, told his son about being invited to play in Pelé’s farewell at the Maracanã in 1971 (“He said people saw Yugoslavia as Europe’s Brazilians”), the European Championship final against Italy in 1968 and the game that took them there, against the world champions. That day in Florence, Blagoje’s Yugoslavia beat England; this Thursday at Wembley, Veljko begins against the same country.

“That win had huge repercussion,” Paunovic says. “My dad talked a lot about Bobby Moore, how imposing he was. He talked about that generation: their physical presence, their ability to intimidate. They believed they were champions; there was this footballing aristocracy about everything they did. They felt strong, they had an arrogance, in a good sense. And this generation now is a superpower that has everything: a very modern team, with depth and variety. They’ve scored 18, conceded none. They made a statement in Serbia.”

England scored five in Belgrade in September, which is why Paunovic is here and underlines the difficulty of his mission. Third in the group, with Serbia on the edge of elimination, he has two games to salvage something, the second at home to Latvia on Sunday. Even winning both may not be enough and, if it is, two playoff games would stand between them and World Cup qualification. It is a mighty task, handed to him suddenly. Paunovic was appointed three weeks after being sacked by Real Oviedo despite returning them to the top flight after a quarter of a century on a similarly express mission: 10 games to reach the playoffs, four more to get to primera.

A player when Oviedo had been relegated from primera in 2001, it was another circle closed. But two days before Serbia’s home loss to Albania last month, there was a knock on the coaches’ dressing room door. Oviedo had beaten Valencia and Real Sociedad and were outside the relegation zone – they have fallen in since – but Paunovic was sacked. In Oviedo, it baffled; in Belgrade, it was an opportunity. The man who went 24 days between coaching Tigres and joining Oviedo now went 21 between Oviedo and the national team. The way he tells it, though, it has been coming a long time.

Veljko Paunovic has expressed his determination to restore his team’s belief in their push for World Cup qualification. Photograph: Marko Metlas/Beteaphoto/SIPA/Shutterstock

“From the day I was born, I had a role model at home,” he says. “It was like my path was marked out, and en route we were always talking football.” Those conversations formed him, Paunovic talking about the “unbreakable” values his father shared, what he calls horizontal and vertical codes, the lessons of the Partizan Belgrade academy, and how a socialist society shaped them. Yet his path, which he rarely chose but rather followed, a hint of regret in how he describes it, took him away from the country at 17 having recently made his debut at Partizan.

The footballing impact of the Balkan war was seen in 1992 when Yugoslavia (by then in effect Serbia and Montenegro), were kicked out of the Euros by Uefa in the wake of a UN embargo for Belgrade’s failure to end the mass killing in Bosnia. Their place was taken by the eventual winners, Denmark – “football still owes Serbia, in this case, as the inheritors of Yugoslavia,” Paunovic insists – but it went beyond that.

“The prodigious sons emerging were Dejan Stankovic, Sasa Ilic, Mateja Kezman,” Paunovic says. “I was in there with many others but that generation: we all left. All for the same reason, but along different paths. I didn’t understand what was going on around me. When it broke out, I only had one dream: play for Partizan, the national team, go to the World Cup. I didn’t want to take long getting there, and my progress in the Serbia system suggested as much. But then I went. Many had great careers; for others, like me, it didn’t flourish the way it could have. I think that’s because of the inexperience and the circumstances, which were extraordinary in the most negative sense.

“You’re 17, you’re a foreigner, you can’t play, you’re not ready. You don’t understand what’s happening. I went to Atlético Madrid: they saw a promising player. But I didn’t always take good decisions. I use that experience now to tell my players to be clear about their route, not to make my mistakes. But, absolutely, that forged me. Football took me but it never abandoned me because I never abandoned my dream. I went from place to place. The love of football carries you. I couldn’t always see where it was taking me. But today I have the answer. Now, I see what I didn’t then. I see the circle …

“I think I was [always a coach]. I could also see that more could have been got out of me. I saw it in teammates too. At 27, 28, I came through a bad time with a series of injuries, mostly because of the demands I made of myself. I realised I couldn’t do so much. I needed my teammates even more, so I started to organise them. I did my first badge at 29. I did my practical at Atlético’s academy under Claudio Arzeno, now my assistant. When I retired, I did courses at the Spanish federation: sporting director, agent, coach, methodology … I told my wife: ‘I’d like to be a coach but I would never be home, the family would suffer. I could be an agent maybe, a sporting director.’ And she said: ‘No, no, no, you coach.’ It was like: I can’t leave the path I’m on.”

Paunovic had spent the 16 years of his senior playing career abroad, mostly in Spain but also in the US, Russia and Germany, earning two caps. He started his managerial career with the Serbia youth structure, leading the under-20s to an epic world title in 2015, going through extra time in the last 16, quarter-final, semi-final and final before Nemanja Maksimovic scored a 118th-minute winner against Brazil. Then he set off again: Chicago, Reading, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Oviedo. “I’ve been everywhere, but my epiphany moment was in England,” he says. “The first year at Reading was very nice; the second they sunk us with the embargo, the points deduction. That hurt but we avoided relegation and it was a lesson I’ve applied everywhere since. It changed my perspective, made me mature.”

Paunovic draws another circle, bigger this time. “Maybe the circumference of this circle is very, very big, very expansive, but it’s starting to close,” he says. “Everything makes sense to me now. What I see now is that I’ve been formed in a more authentic way: the experience, languages, cultures. I feel privileged now, although the process was hard.”

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His finger comes full circle, ends almost touching. “My generation was affected [by the sanctions] in 1995. We weren’t allowed to qualify for the Euros. We had a very strong generation and they took us out because of the sanctions. Twenty years later, with the kids born in 1995, with me as coach, we were champions. Sadly, my dad passed away and didn’t see that title. But football gave something back to my generation [with] a new one.” That under-20 generation form the core of the senior side Paunovic takes to Wembley.

Paunovic talks about the task ahead, accelerating everything. There is a depth, but a need to simplify too, no time for more. He discusses the importance of ego – Balkan football’s achilles heel, he says – and leadership, “alpha” players and the application of his father’s ideals. He talks rules of engagement, group dynamics, even music. He has his playlist ready but if the players take charge, so much the better and he will watch with interest. “Those things accompany you; maybe you don’t realise but it matters. The music says a lot about the spirit of the team: what kind, if the volume is high or low, the rhythm, if there’s no music at all.

Paunovic taking on Chelsea and Dan Petrescu in Real Mallorca colours in 1999. Photograph: Phil Cole/Allsport/GettyImages

“I have to observe, liberate them from that block, for things to start to flow. We have to work on their self-esteem, give them confidence quickly. Once we have, the football will come out fast, the things we need: concentration, organisation, commitment. There’s a fertile base from which that can grow. In conversations, I see they need guidance, clarity. And that’s something I think I do well. There are a lot of players I’ve worked with before and we have a strong connection, some of the work done.”

Paunovic clasps his hands together, fingers intermeshed. “It’s like it was at Oviedo: there’s something that will unite us for ever. Winning promotion, pfff … it’s even greater than you can imagine. Having that small place in their history is something I will hold on to always. I cried too. Leaving hurt but, look, here I am now, somewhere else they need me and where I want to do my duty. I have that same connection with this generation [from 2015], which is in its prime. But there is no time to wait. This is the last call, the last opportunity. If I had waited another cycle, the majority wouldn’t be here. This team has an urgent mission.

Veljko Paunovic during his spell in charge of Reading in 2022. Photograph: Steven Paston/PA

“Lots of people said: ‘Are you conscious of what you’re doing?’ Of course I am. When the federation directors came to Madrid to convince me, they talked about a four-year project. And I said: ‘But what about now?’ They said: ‘It’s difficult.’ I said: ‘Let’s do it the other way round, let’s focus on this.’ I know it’s complicated but I also know that in football it’s possible. We start against one of the best in the world. But I think it was, and is, my duty to respond. It’s not in our genes to give up. I’ll tell the players: ‘Few even get the chance in life to see a game at Wembley; others get the chance to play one.’ In the stands they can’t change anything but the people on the pitch can echo, leave a legacy.”