Every once in a while, in every country, there's one team that will come out and make an issue public. This time around, Wild Boars Kr...
Every once in a while, in every country, there's one team that will come out and make an issue public. This time around, Wild Boars Kragujevac felt there was a problem that should be brought to the public eye.
Note that we are not getting into the whole history - we're just covering what's currently happening. More like a report with statements straight from the source(s).
Not too long ago Kragujevac Wild Boars issued a public statement via their website saying their team is not being treated right, and, that some of the penalties that were given to a few of their players were not justified when being compared to penalties other teams would get in a similar or different situation.
Since, this was not the first time Serbian Vice Champion is coming out, we reached out to the team president Nemanja Calija and asked to explain what's going on. It started with the semi-finals in Novi Sad, where there was a bit of a mess. Dukes player pushed a ref and received one year penalty, and, Wild Boars players insulted the ref and received an 8 months penalty.
"We had to go public so we can explain to the wide audience what's going on and what's being done against our team. 3 months after the semi-finals we received the penalties for our 3 players. We feel the penalty is too high. Now, we decided to push this issue until it's resolved, we've been quiet for too long. Unfortunately, most football teams in Serbia are not too interested in developing the sport, for them it's more than enough to have the ref expenses paid by the league. However, no one cares that we're going backwards for years now. While the situation is like this - this sport will not move forward, and our public announcements will not make a difference. If anything, people will remember it once this sport stops moving completely." says Nemanja, and forwards us to Darko Cvetkovic for more info on the situation, as he is one of the 3 players mentioned above.
Darko has been around football since it started in Serbia. He shared more details.
"We decided to go public. We're trying to prove our point and that the rules (league statue) are not being followed. Once we drain our legal sources, we will have another sit down at the round table and decide what are the next steps for the Wild Boars. Nemanja just resigned from the league board. Right now, no teams showed their support. My opinion is that no one really wants that type of attention at this moment.
Our announcement was mostly towards the Disciplinary Comissioner."
Wild Boars sent an appeal and they're still waiting for the answer. In the meantime, we reached out to the Disciplinary Comissioner, Peter Bezovnik.
"League disciplinary statue had one mistake where there could be two penalties - penalty for expelling a player and a penalty for hitting a player. With two teams before the Wild Boars - we used both options, which Wild Boars didn't like when it came to their situation. They went public without looking into each case and why we made decisions we made. Wild Boars came out with insults not just towards the Disciplinary Comissioner, but towards the league as well.
So, to make things more clear, and to show we made the right decision, we sent a request to the Serbian Olympic Committee to look into this particular issue, and, they confirmed our decision was a rightful one, and gave us a suggestion to make a change in the rules so the issues like this don't happen again - which we did.
However, even with that being said - Wild Boars continued with insults on their website.
When it comes to these 'protests' from the Wild Boars, we feel the board just doesn't want their players to be penalized. If this behavior continues, I will be forced to protect myself and the league with legal actions.
I'm not the only person who can look into their issue - there's a secondary department which can go through my decision and confirm, change or cancel it." says Peter.
It's interesting to mention that Wild Boars players who were invited for the national team stepped out, as well as Darko and his teammate who is now offensive coordinator for the senior national team both rejected the league's offer to coach the juniors national team.
We hope that the issue will be resolved soon and that the both parties will be satisfied with the outcome!
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