The best water polo in Herceg Novi was played at the beginning of the new millennium - the legendary Petar Porobić formed a great Jadran team that reached the final of the Champions League in 2004 and was the champion of Serbia and Montenegro.
Those were the years when Vladimir Gojković, Boris Zloković, Predrag Jokić, Miloš Šćepanović, along with captain Veselin Krivokapić, goalkeeper Denis Šefik, Ištvan Mesaroš, and then young hopefuls Aleksandar Ivović and Andrija Prlainović, shone in the right way.
One of the heroes of those successes was a guy from Belgrade, Vanja Udovicic, who arrived from Partizan, and who recalled his time in the Montenegrin bay in the show (Failure of Champions).
"I had a great season in 2003/04 in Herceg Novi, we played the final of the Champions League against Hungarian Honved - we lost 7:6, but as a small club from a small environment," began Udovicic.
It was the small environment that left a special impression on him.
"I learned life lessons through living in Herceg Novi, because it's a completely different climate from Belgrade. You know what it's like on the coast and what life is like at sea, or what the father of one of my roommates would say - they were born three days before the fox, so see where you're going and how you're going to manage," said Udovicic in the show hosted by former handball player Mirza Dzomba.
He drew parallels between Belgrade and Herceg Novi.
"I was used to life in a city of two million people, where I had everything from cinemas, theaters, discos and whatever a young man wanted. You don't have that in Herceg Novi, but you have a different attitude towards training, which is good because it guides you to be an athlete and that you are dedicated," explained the water polo player who won the Champions League (with Pro Rek) during his career, was world and European champion with the national team, and was named the best water polo player in 2010 of the world.
Petar Porobić left a special mark on his career.
"I worked with the top coach, the late Petar Porobić, who at that time was the second coach in the Yugoslav national team. He held very long, perhaps boring training sessions with many repetitions in order to instill in you that in the middle of the night when you open your eyes, you know a certain defense and how to set yourself up... Simply put, that's the system of our water polo and the whole climate draws knowledge from it," emphasized Udovicic.
After losing to Hovend in the final at Margitsiget in Budapest, he says that he got a sports motive for the first time.
"In 2004, I lost the final of the Champions League to a Hungarian club, and the final of the Olympic Games to Hungary. I said to myself then - until now you have lost to the Hungarians, you won't again. The very next year we beat them in the final of the World Championship".
He also talked about the way to enter the representation of FR Yugoslavia.
"At that time, just like in the old Yugoslavia, Montenegro insisted on a certain number of players. I am not diminishing their quality, far from it, those players are great. And, when you have ten Vrun players, the nuances are small and you have to choose, and Montenegro had a very strong influence and there were more Montenegrins than Serbs in the national team, when it comes to young players. Everything was somehow equalized with the older ones, but because of that it was more difficult for us younger ones to get into the selection," he said, among other things. Udovicic, who is currently the vice-president of the European Water Sports Federation.
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