Aleksandar Petrović did not hide his dissatisfaction after the appointment of the new coach of the national basketball team.
Just as Croatia got a new coach, a scandal broke out! The man who had to choose his successor on the bench, Aco Petrović, spoke up and said that he was shocked by the choice! The Board of Directors of the Croatian Basketball Association elected Cibona coach Josip Sesar to the position of the first man of the profession, and even though it was Petrović who proposed him, he spoke out and said that he could not believe in this decision!
“The vote went in a direction that I did not propose, and it is an understatement to say that I was shocked when the general secretary of the Association, Joke Vranković, informed me that the result of the vote was 8:2 in Sesar’s favor. At that moment, I was driving towards Dalmatia because I I had an agreed obligation there, so it was agreed that I would present both candidates and then leave the session of the Board of Directors, which had other items on the agenda,’ said Petrović for “Večernji list”.
According to him, he went to Brussels to talk with Dario Đerđa, who is currently the coach of Belgium, and after he convinced him to take over the selection of his country, he returned with the idea that Đerđa should be the coach.
“Until last Monday and the conversation I had with Đerđa in Brussels, Sesar was an obvious candidate. But with Đerđa’s consent, he gained my trust more than the two candidates. During the presentation, which lasted about 50 minutes, I presented both candidates and said that Đerđa is the present and Sesar is the talented future. I left the Board of Directors quite calmly because everything I have done so far has met with approval, all my proposals have been accepted one hundred percent,” Petrović added.
However, now the Board of Directors did not accept his idea, and he is especially disappointed that Đerđa was rejected because of the Belgians’ games against Serbia.
“Because Dario Đerđa with the Belgian national team went through what Croatia needs to go through, from pre-qualification to Eurobasket, and he knows the road ahead. He knows the material, he worked in similar conditions against rivals of similar quality. In addition, we are talking about a coach who is with a national team of similar quality as ours, which defeated Pešić’s Serbia twice, and at the Eurobasket, the only one, and the future European champion Spain’, Petrović told Večernji list.