Oka Nikolov

Oka’s first club was SG Sandbach based in Odenwald (Hessen). There Nikolov made his first steps as an outfield player. At the very time his trainers noticed his ostensible keeper’s talent and his excellent reaction in particular. In 1989 he joined SV Darmstadt 98 where he was already put on the position of a keeper and held it for 2 years whereupon was recruited by Eintracht and here in Frankfurt the longest period of his career got started.

The recent 11 years of his life were devoted to keeping goals for Eintracht Frankfurt. Here he experienced about 400 appearances. He started in the amateur team but in 1994 he was awarded a professional contract. First he was just a substitute keeper behind Uli Stein and later Andreas Köpke, but after Köpke’s departure Nikolov took his place in the goal net. In 2001 Felix Magath, the manager, changed the place of work and Nikolov had to assert his status of the first-choice goalkeeper. Again he came off this challenge with flying colours. But in 2005/2006 Oka suffered an injury that kept him from being regularly featured in the starting lineup for one season and a half. But because of Marcus Pröll’s analogous injury Nikolov managed to return his regular starting spot and ever since didn’t let anybody to shift him from it.

After a faithful 18-year service for the club Nikolov moved to USA joining Philadelphia Union in the summer 2013.

Oka Nikolov was 5 times listed into Macedonia national squad in the period from 1998 till 2001. Then he obtained German citizenship that prevented Oka from continuing his international career.