Boričić
“It’s not about function, it’s more about fresh ideas and organization. I’ve been involved in volleyball for 50 years – as a player, coach, president, official…But, I’m still standing on the court, thinking about players and coaches and what we should change. Likewise, we have to admit that they are professionals and they need to be paid and we have to work together to create conditions for that. Their role is to play and someone have to make conditions for practice, transport…For that, the money is needed. To get money, we have to find sponsors. I this moment, volleyball has no good sponsors. I just became president and we’ve already have a meeting with our marketing team to try to unite the whole Europe and after getting the sponsors, we will invest in volleyball not to put the money in banks. The second goal: We have to reorganize competitions, European championship and European Cups. We already started to talk about it. I want to gather the whole Europe to work on this together. I want to create a new value system. That means, who works a lot and who achieves good results should be awarded for that and to take responsibility to help others. It’s not all about one country who organizes competition very well and then say “That’s all”. All together, we can raise quality of volleyball in all countries! I noticed that some countries’ federations don’t have communication between each other and we want to change it.”
Plans for re-organization of the CEV Champions league?
“We want qualifications in Champions league. It is very important for some low quality leagues. One game in Champions league qualifying round would be good. The right example is Macedonia! They love volleyball so much, but they have problems to find funds for their budgets! They have huge desire to organize competitions and qualifying tournaments and that’s very important. By organizing one game in the Champions league, their club can secure much bigger funds than playing whole year in domestic championship”
Are you thinking about raising awards in Champions League?
“We have to make good conditions for that. In this moment European Volleyball Confederation don’t have sponsors. We started creating some solutions with our marketing team. We have to find money and to invest it in volleyball. That’s clear.”
The winner of this European Champions won’t get a ticket for Olympics. Do you have plan to change that?
“My plan is that winner of European Championship in 2019 gets Olympic ticket. No matter on decision of other continents. We have to save our championship. CEV organize two big events – Champions league and European senior Championship! So, we have to increase awards, to give some value to these competitions. If the winner of European championship goes to Olympics, we will save two million euros. You wonder how? Because, CEV will get around 350,000 dollars and we need to spend two millions! Why do we need that amount of money? Because, eight teams need to prepare, they need to pay transport, hotel, arenas, they have to play some friendlies…Organizers have to pay for hotels, training halls etc for eight teams. And instead of investing in volleyball we have to spend large amount of money. That’s the problem.”
The players who are playing in clubs and national teams record about 100 matches per year. Is there some possibility to change that?
“The players are professionals. But they are very burdened by competitions’ system and schedule. We have to find some balance, I mean clubs and federations. We have to find solutions how to keep the players and not to destroy them in three years. We have young players who can’t withstand it. We have together to find some easy schedule, to talk with FIVB. We have to create good FIVB calendar, than CEV to harmonize with the schedule of FIVB, and national federations’ to fit in CEV’s schedule, and I hope we’ll find some time for players to take a rest” says Boricic at the end of interview for WorldofVolley.
If you wish to read more interesting interviews, visit our Interviews page.
Share your thoughts about this article on WoVForum.
Also check out the Latest news.
