Ciro Resurrected!

Javno - Ciro ended up in hospital for heart arrhythmia, but was released as soon as five o’clock in the afternoon. 

-- They wanted to keep me overnight for observation, but I wouldn’t hear of it. I came on my Vespa and I left on it – Ciro said after leaving the hospital.

The heart arrhythmia did not prevent the top coach to have some fun after leaving the hospital. Sipping Baileys, Ciro answered dozens of telephone calls of concerned friends. And he told all of them clearly:

-- I have resurrected. How can I be sick with company like this!

What was most important is that Ciro was feeling fine and had no health problems. Cigarettes and Baileys were unavoidable while he talked football. Although the television was showing a game between Espanyol and Werder, he talked the most about Croatian football. Like an encyclopaedia, Ciro turned the pages of his life from his playing days to the fame he earned as a coach. He spoke about his playing days that only the rare remember, from his debut in his home town of Travnik when he was 16, to the starry success on the bench, first of all with Nantes where se placed the young Didier Deschamp for captain, then Dinamo and the captain ribbon on the then 18-year-old Zvonimir Boban, to the same with Niko Kranjcar that he set as captain when he was also 18.

-- In Nantes I gave the ribbon to Deschamps and the next day came Burruchaga with his impresario and said ‘he will not be a captain’. I told him, look, you can choose, either you go out there or you won’t play any more – Blazevic told the story about Deschamps that later on went to become the captain of world champions, France.

Especially interesting were stories about Maradona about whom Ciro once said:

-- Maradona says to Suker: Davor, when I get the ball, you just run. And so it was, tells Davor, wherever I ran the ball turned up in front of me. He was a wonder.

Still, the third top coach in the world does not just like to talk about himself, his heart opens more when he tells anecdotes about his proponents or funny characters in Croatian football and his life.

Ivan Brlekovic, member of the Croatian Football Alliance (HNS), arrived at the café to support his boss, Vlatko Markovic. Before he arrived, many rolled their eyes at Brlekovic’s presence who exalted his work and the work of his boss, the “dragon from Bosnia”. Brlekovic charmed Ciro by saving his electoral chair in 1999.

-- You know that I voted for you. You had an almost 100 percent support, only one member was against you. We know each other, you know how it was then, like it is for Markovic now – Brlekovic explained.

Markovic’s subject thus equalised the debacle in Cardiff with winning third place in France in 1998.

-- We were not last in Cardiff, we were third. There were nine candidacies, the mighty Russia and Greece fell out of the race before us – Brlekovic defended himself, taking offence at statements that they were the last of three.

The gathered in the end concluded that the current HNS president is not tactical in his statements and simply does not know how to communicate with people and the media. We had to listen to the well-known alibis that we heard after Cardiff once again.

We concluded the darker part of the evening with a discussion about the HNL. Brlekovic reiterated the words of his boss, that the PHNL Club Association was responsible and that at their insisting they had been given legal character and independence, but still reporters gave food for thought that the HNS was again dealing with league football.

The cause of the evening was the unbreakable Ciro, who spread good cheer in the café with a smile and his stories.

The stories were tragic and comical. He remembered a story about Dragan Maric, a former president of the Zagreb football club, better known for the story of his riding in the trunk of a car. Blazevic also remembered Zuzi Jelinek, Otto Baric and nurses in the hospital who ‘crossed themselves like nuns’

Ciro announced a spectacle at a news conference on Friday at noon:

-- It will be fun, ha ha, but before that I just need to take a stroll so people see that I am alive.

The top coach, apart from brightening up the evening for others, brightened up the evening for himself. From a moment in which he is he drew maximum joy and spread it all around. As he had said at the beginning:

-- I have resurrected, my son!