By Jaroslaw Adamowski
January 9 – Serbia’s Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic has announced that various investors have expressed interest in the much-awaited privatisation of two of the country’s top football clubs, Red Star and Partizan Belgrade.
Vucic said that, given the continuing financial woes of the two sides, putting the state-owned clubs on sale is inevitable in the long term.
“I do not have the strength to fight against it. I admit a defeat, and I think that privatisation is the only viable solution for Serbian sport,” Vucic said, as reported by local daily Vecerne Novosti.
The prime minister said that potential investors who have expressed interest in the privatisation of Partizan Belgrade include representatives of some of the top German football clubs.
Earlier this year, Zvezdan Tezic, the general secretary of Red Star Belgrade, called on the government to amend the country’s sports bill to facilitate the potential privatisation of the two Belgrade-based sides.
Terzic told local media that as long “as the sports bill remains unchanged, there will be no strategic partners” for Partizan and Red Star.
“Paragraphs 72 and 94 of the current bill … are preventing investors from using their own, private capital and profits [to invest in Serbia’s football sides],” the official said.
Serbian club football is in the middle of a desperate cash crisis so deep that players union FIFPro took the unusual step of advising its members not to sign contracts in Serbia as there is a high risk that they would not get paid their salaries. Their warning came out jointly with the Serbian professional footballers association Nezavisnost (SPFN).
Eight of the 16 teams in the SuperLiga have had their bank accounts blocked by the Serbian national bank and are unable to pay their players and other employees.
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