This post will be a non-usual one. It is not about matches, results or events, instead I try to see through all those the former and current management of the football team has made. I also try to come up with solutions, even if I'm not in the position to solve the team's problems (I can still come up with solutions, just nobody in charge will be interested). I still want to give an insight about how those teams do it that are financially more stabile and effective, in terms of league table results as well.
Don't expect deep analysis with diagrams and charts, nor exact terminology. It's still a subjective fan blog, if anyone needs precision and accuracy, then ask an economic expert, there are as many available as stars in the night sky.
The upheaval around
selling Petar Škuletić is still stirring. The possibility of
selling Ivan Šaponjić has been added, too. Team management members deny everything, nobody knows anything, while fans demand the beheading of the board members, letting their rage out at all social media sites.
Dear Mr. Popović and Tumbaković, it is your shame. You are the bosses, it is your DUTY to know about everything that happens in the team. What is more, you should know about things that happen outside the team. That’s what is called "being informed". It is also called "professionalism". Do you know this word? You know, it is when you follow the happenings of the outside world of sports, not just what’s going on in your street.
Of course, we all know, you and us that this "I don’t know what’s been going on" is a lie. You all know what’s going on and we all know you’re lying. Meanwhile the sky has fallen on the team. We got to know the team has a 14 million euro debit, we got to know that mortgage has been put to Teleoptik SC that is also the place of Partizan’s school of young footballers. We got to know, Russians still haven’t paid a cent for Škuletić. And after all these president Zoran Popović uses the dirtiest trick, blaming former president Dragan Đurić for the indebtedness of the club. Serbian press is echoing from Popović’s mud-throwing as the current president blames the former one for taking out loans from loan sharks and he is the one who pushed FK Partizan into this giant debt. He brought up no evidences, but the public that is always hungry for scandal is chewing on this now, while the fact that auditors marched in to the club to make a list about every single debit stays in silence.
There are many other things that stays in silence, as nobody talks about them.
Like the fact we have been waving to the European cup competitions only from distance instead of taking part in them. That Partizan-employees went on strike after not getting salary for months. That players play for their love for the club, as their salaries are also late for months. That the Serbian Football Association will kick hard into our asses for our debts. That foreign teams easily stepped over us during the preparational matches, and Average Fan couldn’t not think of Lukač’s sad words, when he said ’that’s it, our reality is the SuperLiga, we cannot reach any further from here’.
In the meantime one keeps watching former players as they find foreign clubs for themselves. And Average Fan watches in shock the professionalism of those teams, not mentioning their commitment. It doesn’t matter if we talk about Lokomotiv Moscow, Anderlecht, Borussia Dortmund or Liverpool. There is one common thing in them.
Professionalism.
They mean business. They don’t make a living from state donations or barely available sponsor money. Their leaders are all businessmen who take their job very seriously. They want profit, they want results, not just on the league table, but on the bank accounts, too. There isn’t a single politician around them. They might be found on the tribunes, after they legally bought their tickets while standing in a row, or even, buying it online.
But there is NONE of them in the management. And there are no mastodons either, those fossils who have been pushing themselves into the club’s leadership since the age of Miloš Obilić. These may be found in the club’s museum, if any. There are highly educated managers, PR-managers, experts, talent spotters and trainers at everywhere. Everyone is fully committed, their skills are not a matter of question. They are there, not because they are friends, former classmates or neighbours who put their licking tongues to the best place at the best time.
Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only solution for Partizan is the same as for all other clubs worldwide.
Privatisation.
There’s nothing diabolical in it, to put the club’s directing to the hands of businessmen. Who knows, maybe they’ll even make profit for the team at the end. Because, the thing is, dear readers and fans, as long as the management consists of politicians and fossils, nothing will change ever. SC Teleoptik be sold by auction together with the bench under our bottoms and we end up as beggars. Do we need it?
Absolutely not.
Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, it is high time to kick out everyone from the management. Every single idiot. None of them is allowed to stay even for a moment. Everyone must go, immediately, right now.
Businessmen must be allowed to the club together with investors. NOT friends/neighbours/whatever, but professional ones whose past is open and available. Every single candiate who wants anything from the club (buying, investing, etc.) must be clear about their entire past, the origin of their money, what and how they want to do with the team, even the posters they used to have on their wall as teenagers. If any of them has just one single grey spot on their past, they must go and mustn't return.
No compromises.
Fans must get full service. You know, they are still the basic resource for the club's survival. There must be a full-service webshop where people can purchase even from abroad. Live streaming of preparational matches on the team's own official Youtube-channel. Multi-language infos must be at everywhere. (You know, as long as everything's available only in Serbian, with minimal English here and there, nobody will take us seriously in Europe.) And youth schools, to go on with it, with lots more resources, and NOT with mortgages.
And brutal, hyper-modern infrastructure to the stadium. Not just to the VIP-section, but also to the locker-rooms and corridors. So modern that makes even Real Madrid and Barcelona cry. Plus such an entrance system to the stadium gates that beeps whenever an idiot tries to cross it.
Until it gets real, the club's budget MUST be transparent. As long as the team makes their living from state donations, using tax payers' money, then it must be their first and foremost duty to give account on every single dinar to the public. All the incomes, all the expenditures, all the resources, may it be state or sponsor-owned. And independent auditors must control it all regularly.
Until it doesn't change, nobody should expect results. Neither on, nor off the field.
