The Buducnost players will face their last game of 2025 on Sunday, playing a back-to-back match of the 13th round of the 1st CFL against Dečić in Tuzi - it will not be an ordinary 90 minutes for the current champion.
It won't be the same for coach Dejan Vukićević, whose status was discussed by the "Blues" Board of Directors on Thursday, when it was concluded that the decision on whether he will remain on the bench will be made after Sunday's game.
The fact that Buducnost is in crisis is also evidenced by the monologue that Vukićević gave in a statement for the club's official website.
"I'm a little surprised by some of the headlines, stories, situations that are happening, the negativity around the club, the locker room. Some people must have "seen the blood", so they also waited to deal with these things and then I find out from the media about some last chances, last opportunities and so on," said Vukićević.
Whether he stays or not - we'll know on Sunday or Monday.
"First of all, for every coach, the first game is always potentially the last. That's just the way it is in this business, depending on the results. And I have absolutely no problem with that. I would have thought that was the club's official position, because we have some other agreements in place, but I haven't heard such an official position from anyone. I assume that someone from the Board of Directors probably told some people in the media, so it spread through the public and literally every performance is like a death or a last chance. I have a name and surname in the industry that will never experience it like that," Vukićević pointed out.
As he says, he doesn't need a last chance.
"If it's the last one - they didn't have to give it to me. They could have decided that a few days ago at a certain committee. The fate of the coach is always in the hands of the people who manage the club, I really don't have that problem. I work with a huge desire for this club to do something that it has to do, especially in Montenegrin football, but also more broadly. I say it again and say that if that is the official position of the people who manage it - they shouldn't have waited for that last chance, because I am absolutely sure that this game will not change anything in that regard. I say all this because it really has no impact on me, but it does on the locker room. And these are young guys who must certainly be affected by it, and if that was taken into account, that's not how matches are prepared."
He recalled everything that had happened at the club since June.
"It was a summer where you could have filmed a reality show, literally, because the preparation period and the change of coach contributed to the players not going on the field, but on the slides and swimming pools. That's a fact. For players like that to enter the championship, for an extraordinary coach to come, who had four defeats in seven official games, two in three championship games, to Sutjeska and to Arsenal, and of course then see that he had to go. After that, there was a transitional solution, again to have one win and one defeat in three games... And when I came, I knew where I was coming from. And only a crazy person would come on Tuesday, and on Wednesday sit on the bench. And that was against Mornar in Bar, an extremely high-quality team. And that's what I did. With a group of 14 injured players at that moment. And we slowly stabilized, we had a nine-game streak with one defeat against Mladost. You know how it came and you know what penalty that defeat came from," Vukićević remembers.
Then the decision was made to cross out nine players, including Petar Grbić, Igor Ivanović...
"And then I did something for the sake of the club's interests, not my own. If I had looked at it personally, I would have hung out with those guys, hugged them every day, told stories, agreed on how much they would play, because those guys had a serious status here. And believe me, the managers were guests at their club on certain days, because those guys had so many roots there, so many connections and so much power that they could literally work as much as they wanted, how they wanted and when they wanted... And the decision was made jointly, and I'm only interested in my conversation with the club president and two directors, executive and sports. Everything else is outside of what we talked about in the office. And we talked about how there were so many harmful contracts at the club."
"That Buducnost was put in a situation where it was probably the only club in the world where a player had his own players. That it was not known who represented whom. That there were percentages of 30-40 percent to the people who represented the player. That there Buducnost was limited in the sale of certain players, where the clause was set at some 80.000 and not a cent more. Even if that transfer was worth millions, Buducnost was limited by earnings. And from the moment I arrived, those channels were closed. And I was aware of what kind of fronts I was opening and I was aware that certain interest groups would no longer have what they had until then. And as long as we are here, no one will have it. And everything I have done and am doing is for the interest of Buducnost and against my own, because I turned an army of people against me for those reasons."
The "Lazar Savović - Lazar Mijović" case is a special story. The two were suspended because they did not want to extend their contracts and thus delete clauses that were harmful to the club.
"When we stabilized everything, when there were four rounds left, at 10 o'clock in the evening before the game against Bokelj they told me that two players had been suspended. I'm not saying that we would have won with them, but that's not the way, because football is not about changing the glass and putting in another one. It's an aquarium of some fish that have been together for a long time and who are so calm. And if you put a better one than them into that aquarium, you'll upset it. That's the locker room. Everything that happens related to it upsets it. And the day before the game even more. And we ended up playing against Bokelj in an environment that wasn't exactly a good preparation. And what I could have done that night at 10 o'clock was to say I don't agree, to do things against the club's interests or against the decision, or to say I don't want to work in those conditions, I'll go home and let the team play without me. We lost by one goal, it happens...", concluded Vukićević.
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