The Water Polo Federation of Serbia responded to yesterday’s announcement, signed by 11 players, which stated that they wouldn’t play for the national team as long as the current leadership remains at the helm of the WPF of Serbia.
In today’s announcement posted on the WPF’s official website, the Federation stated that four current and seven former national team members have sent them a letter. Additionally, the WPF stated that the process of electing new leadership has become a political confrontation, and the WPF of Serbia doesn’t want to participate.
The Federation’s announcement:
“The Water Polo Federation of Serbia is obliged to be precise. We do not wish to withhold any information from the public, and for that reason, we will publish in full the letter sent to the Federation yesterday by eleven players. However, in the interest of truth, we must point out that these are not eleven current national team players, but rather four current and seven former ones.
Why are we emphasizing this? At the most recent competition (the World Cup qualifiers), which the Serbian national water polo team played under the leadership of Uros Stevanovic, now also a former head coach but at the time the current one, the players Strahinja Rašovic (34), Sava Randjelovic (32), Radoslav Filipovic (28), Radomir Drasovic (28), Nemanja Vico (31), Nikola Dedovic (34), and Viktor Rasovic (32) were not called up to the national team. Whether they were not selected because of their age, poor form, a generational transition, or some other reason, we do not wish to speculate. However, we do wish to state that this is the factual situation and that they were not included on the roster by then-head coach Uros Stevanovic.
Four players were called up, and three of them participated in the competition: Nikola Jaksic (29), Petar Jaksic (24), and Djordje Lazic (30), while Dusan Mandic (31) was unable to play due to injury. Therefore, we believed the public deserved to be informed and that, if there is already insistence on referring to them as national team players—which they certainly all were during different periods of their careers—then it should be stated precisely who are current and who are former national team members, since it was Uros Stevanovic himself who made that decision when selecting the squad for the last competition in which he coached the Serbian national team.
Before publishing in full the letter from the eleven players, we would also like to emphasize that we, as an organization, in no way want to participate in what has turned into a completely natural process in a sports organization like the Water Polo Federation, namely the election of leadership, which is regularly held every four years and which has proceeded without any friction, and which has turned into a pure political showdown and abuse of sport for political purposes. We are a sports organization, not a political one, and anyone among the current or former water polo players, coaches, or Federation members who wishes to engage in politics has every right to do so. However, they do not have the right to use their current or former sporting position for those purposes. It is obvious, and completely clear, that someone is trying to pursue political goals through water polo, and this is confirmed by the way a significant part of the political public became involved as if at the push of a button. The Water Polo Federation does not wish to participate in this and condemns any misuse of sport for political purposes.
We publish in full and without alterations the letter from seven players of Radnicki (Nikola Jaksic (29), Petar Jaksic (24), Nikola Dedovic (34), Strahinja Rasovic (34), Sava Randjelovic (32), Radoslav Filipovic (28), Viktor Rašovic (32)), one player from Marseille (Radomir Drasovic (28)), one player from Jadran (Djordje Lazic (30)), one player from Primorac (Nemanja Vico (31)), and one player from Ferencvaros (Dusan Mandic (31)).”
At the end of its announcement, the Federation published yesterday’s letter it received from the players.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: total-waterpolo.com
