Zarko Paspalj takes jab at Pesic, touches on Serbian basketball’s problems

Last September, Svetislav Pesic stated that Serbia is “on the way to hit rock bottom, like Croatia.”

Former Serbian legend Zarko Paspalj was asked in an interview for tportal to comment on that statement and took the chance to express his disagreement with the 74-year-old coach.

“He’s been saying that for the last four years,” Paspalj, 58, said.

“Master, where have you been for the past 15 years? You didn’t care because you were working abroad. I think it is hypocritical for him to warn about it now, when he is here and has seen first-hand what is happening. We have known this for the last 15 years, and what has he and all the other great coaches done about it?” Paspalj asked.

“What did they do to give encouragement to young coaches and young players in any way? That topic is not the most comfortable for me, because I don’t think you can have two different standards when talking about something,” the former player pointed out.

Paspalj didn’t deny that if Serbian basketball doesn’t change, it might fall into darker days, just like their neighbors.

“But you had 15 years to talk about it and where were you?” he continued.

“You really didn’t care when you were ‘out there’. You were not interested in Serbia then. Now you’re here, you’ve signed a decent contract and suddenly you have something to say. What Pesic did on the Serbian bench is great, no one can take that away from him, but everything else… I’d better keep quiet.”

Paspalj also referred to the foreign players on Partizan and Zvezda, replying to the journalist’s observation that it is more difficult for fans to identify with a team that has a large number of foreigners.

“Of course it is, but then you have to be honest enough and say that we are in a problem, that we need to pass a law that will deal with that problem,” he remarked.

“We’ve been saying it for 15 years, I’m sick of repeating it. You realize that you have no players — and then Misko Raznatovic appears, like a magician who creates a miracle with a single trick. In the end, it turns out that he is the only one who deals with young players.

Where are these young players? Someone should deal with them. If we talk about Mega Basket as a nursery of young players, then where’s the rest of us? What exactly are we doing?”, Paspalj wondered.