[1] His first opportunity as a professional head coach came from Licata, a small-medium city in the province of Agrigento, where he won Serie C2 with a team mainly composed of youngsters.

It was to be the beginning of the miracle Foggia, also known as Zemanlandia (after Zeman himself), a team of, in those days, unknown players; amongst them, Giuseppe Signori and Francesco Baiano who regularly punched above their weight in the league.

[3] The first appearances of Foggia in Serie A are still quite unimaginable, with a team considered extremely weak verging on the UEFA Cup qualification for three consecutive years.

After a good fourth place with some sparkling play, Zeman launched allegations about the abuse of pharmaceutical products in Italian football, citing former Juventus players Gianluca Vialli (at the time at Chelsea) and Alessandro Del Piero (of using creatine) in July 1998.

Zeman, who had one of the youngest Serie A rosters at his disposal, answered with a good season, leading the team to a mid-table position and giving talented youngsters like Valeri Bojinov and Mirko Vučinić an opportunity.

[8] However, after only five competitive games as Red Star's head coach, on 6 September 2008 Zeman was sacked because of catastrophic results in Serbian League and UEFA Cup.

[9] On 20 July 2010, it was confirmed that Zeman would take over as the new head coach of his former club Foggia, rejoining chairman Pasquale Casillo and director of football Giuseppe Pavone as part of the trio who led the Satanelli into Serie A back in the 1990s.

[11][12] At Pescara, Zeman coached a team composed of promising youngsters, many of them re-joining him from his previous season at the helm of Foggia (among them, Simone Romagnoli, Ciro Immobile and Lorenzo Insigne, and also Marco Verratti); under his tenure, the Biancoazzurri from Abruzzo entered straight into the race for automatic promotion and provided a record goalscoring ratio for Italian standard (90 goals in 42 games, Serie B record).

On 21 May 2012, Pescara won automatic promotion to Serie A following a 3–1 away win at Sampdoria, thus ensuring Zeman a top-flight return at his first season as head coach.

[17] A successive decline in results then led to rumours involving the future of Zeman, with director of football Walter Sabatini explicitly confirming about a potential dismissal of the experienced Czech head coach at the end of January.

[18][19] After being sacked, player Miralem Pjanić commented that hiring Zeman had been a good decision, believing that the club's athletic all-attacking style of play the team's main strength, albeit also being one of its most significant weaknesses.

[17] In June 2014, Zeman returned to football management, being appointed new head coach of Serie A club Cagliari after a successful takeover led by entrepreneur Tommaso Giulini.

[42] Three days later, Zeman tended his resignations to the Pescara board, with his assistant Bucaro being appointed as the new permanent head coach until the end of the season.

[43] Son of a medician and a housewife, Zeman is also related to Čestmír Vycpálek, former Juventus player and coach, who was his uncle from his mother's side.

In 1968, Zeman went to Palermo to visit him; however, at that same time, his country was invaded by Warsaw Pact troops, so he decided to stay indefinitely in Italy.

[1] He successively obtained Italian citizenship in 1975 and later married a woman from Palermo, Chiara Perricone, with whom he had two children named Karel and Andrea; Karel successively went on into following his father's footsteps by becoming a football manager, starting at amateur level with teams such as Bojano and Manfredonia[44] before taking over his first professional role at Lega Pro Seconda Divisione outfit Fano in March 2012.

[45] He then served as head coach of Qormi in Malta before becoming boss of Sardinian Serie D amateurs Selargius in the summer of 2014, contemporaneously with his father's appointment at Cagliari.

[4] A respected and experienced manager, his coaching techniques, especially regarding athletic preparation, fitness, and training (a field in which he has a particular interest), are also proverbial for their effort and diligence.

All of these elements combined made Zeman's tactics solid, spectacular and highly versatile: they are effective against top teams as well as weaker ones.