I have long stopped cheering for this or that sports club. However, there is an exception. It is called the Basketball Club Cibona. Despite the information about who has led this once world-famous club and how, whenever I stumbled upon a game, whether I wanted to or not, I would turn from a cold observer into a somewhat biased fan. This was the case a few days ago when Cibona narrowly defeated Zadar in the fifth game at Dražen’s home, thus winning the Championship after the Cup. No matter how much the cheering songs do not affect me, when the full hall sang: ‘How good it is to see you again…’, my throat tightened.
Hope has returned that this Zagreb club could again be a healthy and potentially successful Zagreb sports collective. One that entire families will enjoy attending games.
The boys deserve it.
The day after the victory, which was fought for selflessly by players who have long gotten used to the uncertainty of salary payments, but that did not prevent them from playing fairly until the last second, a collision with reality occurred. Due to the way strange administrations handled the club’s finances during the mayoralty of Milan Bandić, the new management led by club president Mario Petrović has not succeeded in removing KK Cibona from the brink of bankruptcy. Bankruptcy due to five million euros in inherited debts could be declared very soon. A team of people who are ready to start building things from scratch out of love for the club, basketball, and Zagreb has finally gathered around Cibona. The double crown after just a few months of different management of Cibona is proof that the prospects for a better future are good.
The key figure without whom it is now impossible to preserve the institution of KK Cibona is the Mayor of Zagreb, Tomislav Tomašević. With good will and quick decision-making (actually, just two decisions), collapse could be avoided. Simply put, the City of Zagreb should grant Cibona a concession for, say, twenty years for the use of the Dražen Petrović Hall. Additionally, in the phase of possible transformation of Cibona from an association into a joint-stock company (like HNK Hajduk), the City of Zagreb should delegate its representatives to the club’s Assembly.
Insiders estimate that Mayor Tomašević is not against the City’s help, but with hundreds of other fires he is trying to extinguish, delegating the work to associates has not proven to be the most effective. In relation to Cibona, he can prove that, no matter how much sports were not life-important to him, as someone who is building political leadership, he has the strength to deal with something that is not close to him, like pedestrian or cycling paths. Moreover, if there is an audience in Zagreb sports that represents urban Zagreb, it is those five thousand spectators at the final of the Croatian basketball championship. If he wants to raise the crumbling institutions of Zagreb, Cibona must be an example.
