Surcin Olympics – 2024 Retrospective, investments in SPORTS

In the year marked by the Olympic Games in Paris and Novak’s feat there and the almost equally epic triumph of Serbian basketball players, Serbia laid the foundations for the National Football Stadium, preparing for some big matches in the future; until then, it had organized them, mainly, in Leskovac, at one of the three newly built stadiums, which, despite one skill forgotten by Serbs - maintaining the lawn - in the subjective opinion of the signatories of this annual recapitulation, proved to be a complete success (explanation to be made on another occasion).

There are all sorts of things being said here that are missing, and that they will be built, and after roads and a few railways, sports venues have recently been high on the list of wishes and promises. Most of them, the most important ones, are connected and permeated with the Olympic spirit – by Surcin.

(1) One sport in Serbia is, however, under threat, and that is what our readers were the most interested in, although not so much for competitive as for recreational reasons. So, a mass sport. It is skiing: climate change is melting the permafrost at the poles, so what chance do our mountains stand... say the pessimists. and the Ski Resorts of Serbia, however, are announcing the development of skiing on Golija.

(2) And of all the football coliseums, the most attention was drawn by the latest information about the construction of the new Cika Daca stadium in Kragujevac. And it will actually be the new Cika Daca, while the old one, a modest one and featuring an athletics track, as we also wrote, will be renovated. And which one will be called Cika Daca in the end? Whether because Radnicki from Kragujevac, with its coach from Sarajevo, plays as if it were from the Netherlands and not from Sumadija, or because public investments are more easily tolerated if they are not in Belgrade – even among Belgrade residents – whatever the case may be, Cika Daca is on our (your) list ahead of the National Stadium...



(3) ...which is right behind. It is a future orphan where no club will have anyone to play, and it will offer 52,000 seats, a little more than the existing Red Star stadium (we will call it Cika Rajko), built (dug in) back during Krcun's lifetime. The Fiscal Council said that it would cost almost a billion euros, although this has been disputed. But it will have, being a National Stadium, three levels and radiate green energy so much that, one day, it could bear the name of the venerable Greta Thunberg. Its huge capacity will not be enough to host the Champions League final, however – that will have to take place in the (brotherly) Budapest.

The Ministry of Finance has commissioned a cost-effectiveness analysis of this facility, and the feasibility study will show that, in addition to the national team and the cup final and semi-finals, so many stands (and the lawn) could be filled by Aleksandra Prijovic, Aca Lukas, Cola and, of course, the National Ceca.

(4) The Red Star basketball club is the hit of the Euroleague this season (by the time of publishing this text, this is also true of BC Partizan with two consecutive away victories), but at some point it had to play host in the outdated, cramped and sweltering Pionir. As the same problems – that someone would organize a concert in the Arena, a championship in another sport, a group praise of the wisdom of the state leadership or some kind of celebration – also plague the other Belgrade Euroleague BC, shows that the largest Serbian hall, whose underutilization we were supposedly worried about until recently, has become cramped. And here we will notice that Orban’s capital has two large and modern sports halls - one is larger than the Arena and the other than Pionir - they have had a metro there since the end of the 19th century, and when Belgrade breaks through it in the middle of the 21st century, Red Star plans to build its hall near the starting station, in (Covic’s) Zeleznik...

(5) Although at first glance they resemble the famous “Survivor” grounds, these races are much more challenging. The length of the course ranges from 7 to 20 and more kilometers, over hills, mountains and rocks, through water, mud, pipes, crawling, climbing, jumping, climbing ropes, lifting truck tires and various other natural and professional military obstacles. This is OCR (Obstacle course racing). Everyone needs a vent these days - housewives, the youth, adolescents, but also business people. That’s probably why our article about this extreme type of recreation in this time of extreme stress was so widely read.



(6) While waiting for the Cair stadium, the home ground of “Real from the Nišava” from the first half of the eighties, to get a new and worthy look, the people of Nis have planned, in Niska Banja, the construction of a sports center, the so-called “Mini Pazova”. As announced by the Football Association of the Eastern Serbia Region, on a plot of land measuring 6.7 hectares, at the Lozni kalem location, the construction of two fields with natural and artificial grass, with stands, floodlights, as well as an administrative building with all the accompanying facilities. is planned.

(7) The reasoning of Zvezdan Terzic, the extremely business-oriented president of FC Red Star (whose success in that position is not to be mocked, and his tendency to loudly emphasize his own merits can be attributed to his mountainous area origins - the mountain-man signature below this text guarantees that this is not plains chauvinism), is clear: the Rajko Mitic Stadium is located on a plot of land measuring 16.5 hectares, the market value of which is more than EUR 100 million; the area around the stadium is dead and unused capital that is not in the function of the club’s development; therefore - a new stadium is needed, along with the activation of this entire belt of dead capital (according to Marxists, capital is a value that can create new value). The new Red Star training camp would be - in Surcin, “near the airport.”



(8) And for those who wonder, endlessly, why so much is invested in football and not in water polo, in which we are the best in the world – and who are not satisfied with the simple answer: because no one alive in the world is interested in water polo, and besides, it is a sport in which only the referee knows what calls he has made and whoever introduces VAR in it will receive at least two Nobel Prizes – one piece of good news: the state has decided to build a National Aquatics Center in Surcingrad, The Third or The Newest Belgrade, in addition to the Expo and the football pavilion (and future apartment blocks, of course). Suddenly and without any announcement, another idea for investing state money has emerged. Okay, in addition to water polo, there will also be swimming and diving.

(9) The Aquatic Center allegedly did not cancel the plans of the city (water sports) authorities to build another swimming pool empire in New Belgrade, or rather above it, in the part of Bezanijska kosa that, on the map, from the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was called Marienhof (Mary's Palace, as in Sarajevo), by significantly expanding the SRC 11. april complex. In the meantime, a reconstruction of the reconstruction of Tasmajdan has been completed, because Belgrade today functions according to the principle: what Vesic paves with cobblestones, Sapic paves with asphalt (and Vesic is no longer able to fight back).



(1:0) But basketball responded to the water challenge! The president of the Basketball Association of Serbia, Nebojsa Covic, as a former mayor and at one point one of the co-rulers of Serbia, understands the importance of infrastructure well, so in addition to the renovation of the Arena - which is also to come, and the choice of a concrete roof was a solid construction failure from the beginning - he mentions, like Dusko Vujosevic once did, the expansion of Pionir (the hall has just been renovated and - insufficiently - expanded by Vesic), but also says that a larger facility could be built in the place of the New Belgrade Sports Hall... and also, he announces, inevitably: the National Basketball Center - in Surcin.

Skijališta Srbije Beograd

Sportsko privredno društvo FK Radnički 1923 doo Kragujevac

Fiskalni savet Republike Srbije

Ministarstvo finansija Republike Srbije

KK Crvena Zvezda Beograd

FK Crvena zvezda Beograd

JP Sportski centar Novi Beograd

Sportski centar Tašmajdan d.o.o. Beograd

Košarkaški savez Srbije KSS

Retrospective 2024

Retrospective sport

National Stadium

Čika Dača Stadium

Red Star FC

Rajko Mitić Stadium

new Red Star stadium

Mala Pazova Niška Banja

SRC 11 april

expansion of 11 april

skiing

future of skiing in Serbia

Aquatic Center

Belgrade Arena

Nebojša Čović

Zvezdan Terzić