Buducnost celebrated the title in May this year and announced the European autumn. In December, it is at its lowest point probably in its entire 100 years of existence.
Down to the bottom, an object of ridicule in the already funny - actually sad - Montenegrin club theater, which is played on fields and meadows deep in the 21st century, the largest and most trophy-winning Montenegrin football club is for the first time in half a season closer to last place than first place.
They have 10 points more than Jedinstvo, and 11 less than Sutjeska...
This is a direct consequence of performance on the field, but also indirectly of every bad, wrong and unsportsmanlike decision made at the club's higher levels in the previous 12 months.
It is not the first time in football that the results do not reflect the state of the club, nor are they better than the organization deserves. In the case of Budućnost, however, everything is so interconnected that it is difficult to separate the causes from the consequences. And even harder to find a solution.
From the dismissal of Ivan Brnović, the coach who led the team to the title - under pressure from some fans, who, in the process, gained a seat on the Board of Directors, and then had a decisive influence on the selection of Nenad Lalatović, to the discovery of possible irregularities in the club's operations, especially during the rather lucrative transfers of players from the club and the magical selection of reinforcements from abroad, to the removal of nine experienced/oldest players from the team at the end of the half-season, the suspension of two young players, and even the change of the club doctor - literally every major decision was wrong and unsportsmanlike, i.e. not made in accordance with football logic.
And in the end, it got to the point where it was not even known who was in charge of what in the club, or whether there was even normal communication between, so to speak, sectors.
In such an environment, coach Dejan Vukićević, on the eve of the last match, informed the public in an extensive monologue about the contracts with the players, how much Budućnost could earn from potential transfers, he also talked about how the players had their own players - in other words, they were their agents, that the club's leaders were practically guests at the club, that the football players spent the summer on water slides, that the night before the match he learned about the suspension of two players who did not want to sign new contracts...
Even if every word was true, Vukićević is not the address from which such analysis should come. His job is on the field, working with the players he finds, or rather those he decides to keep.
If he lost two important young players without his knowledge, he had two options - to leave or to stay and accept the club's decision, without making internal details public.
Issues of contracts, transfers and relations with agents are the business of the people who, ultimately, appointed him as the coach of Buducnost.
And who he knew, as everyone knew, had come to those positions through classic political redistribution.
That's why it seems surprising when he talks about the political search for balance and compromise, instead of standing in the way, as he said, of certain things.
Vukićević is not inexperienced and naive enough to not know how things are in the club and at what level decisions are made. It has been like this since 1945, but since 2023, when the new government was formed in the city, there have been many more interested parties than there were in the one-party system and during the one-party government.
Vukićević simply did not do his job properly and that is all he should be doing.
And the fact that his performance is analyzed and evaluated by the people who brought him in is a normal thing in football. It's just that Buducnost is not a normal club, which is described as big, the biggest in a country.
Is there, after all, a club in the world whose team plays under the banner "Management Out", and whose stadiums and playing fields are entered by those whose representatives are part of that same management? It couldn't be more bizarre...
And the solution - is not in sight. The future is like a whirlpool from which you can only occasionally catch your breath, but it quickly pulls you back and you can't possibly emerge.
Bonus video:
