The War At Maksimir

A look at the power struggle at Dinamo Zagreb and the impact it may have on the club

When COVID struck, every stadium in Croatia and Europe fell silent. At Maksimir, the home of Dinamo Zagreb, one stand remains silent to this day - the East Stand, Maksimir’s largest, was damaged in an Earthquake on 22 March 2020 and rendered unsafe for use. Nearly three years on, repairs have not been completed and it sits as the most visible symbol of the internecine warfare that is going on behind closed doors at the club. Its 9,514 seats have become little more than a grand bargaining chip between club and country and mud to be slung between parties. This is the story of how it’s gotten that way.

Mamicism

In 2018, Zdravko Mamic, the man who had set the course at Dinamo for the previous 15 years, was sentenced to six and a half years imprisonment on fraud charges having being convicted of a decade long grift that had seen, prosecutors said, €15m find its way out of Dinamo’s accounts and into the accounts of Mamic and a select few others and, as a result, a large outstanding tax bill also on the behalf of the defendants. While justice eventually caught up with brother Zoran after the conclusion of a lengthy appeals process, Zrdavko fled Croatia the day before the verdict for Bosnia and has kept out of the country since.

But not being in the country didn’t necessarily impact Mamic’s influence on the club. Having been at the head of the club for as long as he had been, many of the appointments to Dinamo’s levels of governance (in ascending order of size - Executive Board, Associate board, Membership) were put into place by him and it is entirely fair to say that most were at least personally indebted to Zdravko Mamic if not personally compromised by Zdravko Mamic.

Over his period in charge, Dinamo became Croatia’ pre-eminent club, eclipsing Hajduk Split and fending off (mostly) challenges from nouveau riche like Rijeka. At his peak, Mamic essentially controlled both Dinamo and Lokomotiva Zagreb, who were transformed into Dinamo’s farm club.

Mamic’s success engendered loyalty from those he brought into place. But Mamic’s absence (at least, in person) has naturally seen that loyalty wane over the intervening four and a half years given that Dinamo have also managed to maintain their success without the hands on input from Zdravko Mamic.

Antolicism

Which brings us to the opposition to Mamic’s influence - Mirko Barisic (a board member who has been with Dinamo since before Dinamo won the Fairs Cup) and Kresimir Antolic (who was brought on by Mamic).

Antolic, in particular, has been the target of most of the ire given that Barisic’s connection to Dinamo is pretty much unimpeachable. Prior to Dinamo, Antolic had been an unsettled civil servant who had eventually found his niche in the police. This convinced Zdravko Mamic to bring him on board as Dinamo’s Director of Security.

(It’s fair to note at this point that allegations have been made and strenuously denied that Antolic’s connection with Mamic stretches back beyond this point - this isn’t proven but it is believed that Mamic did have connections within the police who helped him out behind the scenes.)

This was an uncomfortable mesh of club and state as Antolic used police lists to create blacklists of fans, many of whom belonged to Dinamo’s ultras group, the Bad Blue Boys (BBB). This BBB list was originally justified as based on police requests but it became clear that that list was supplemented with the names of fans whose noses were clean but whose views were not aligned with that of Mamic which culminated in fans being strip searched by police ahead of some games. Stemming from this would land the accusation, after fighting in the stands, that the club had instigated crowd trouble by placing the BBB next to a section of fans particularly loyal to Mamic.

Antolic has gradually become the lead man at the club since Mamic chose voluntary exile over involuntary incarceration, able to hire his brother into the catering team at the club with Tomislav Antolic rising up the ranks to become the head of Dinamo’s entire catering organisation.

The Hybrid Era

Dinamo Zagreb’s organisation over the past few years has depended upon direction from Mamic remotely. There are, of course, things that cannot be done remotely, but it is fair to say that major decisions have generally rested upon the word of Zdravko Mamic in many cases. It is believed, for example, that Nenad Bjelica’s sacking from the club in 2020 was a reaction to Bjelica being seen as getting a bit too big for his boots and needing to be cut down to size to prevent an alternative power-base coming through at the club.

But that didn’t stop an alternative power-base coming through anyway, driven by new competitive pressures from a resurgent Hajduk and an ambitious Osijek. Over the past twelve to eighteen months, the backroom processes at the club have often acted at cross purposes - in particular around the proposed deal for Mislav Orsic in early 2022 and the actual deal that saw him leave for Southampton in 2023 (more on that shortly).

Decision making slowed down with everything going remote and Dinamo’s success in Europe and in earning money beyond simply player development gave the likes of Antolic an extremely pressing reason to detach the club from Zdravko Mamic and it came from a source entirely external to Dinamo - the national team.

Finding a home for the Vatreni

That original Mamic trial culminated just prior to the 2018 World Cup and threatened to engulf Croatia’s preparations for the tournament given the very real risk at the time that captain Luka Modric would be convicted for perjury given his statements during the trial.

Modric would go on to be player of the tournament as Croatia went all the way to the final. The risk of perjury charges was quietly dropped a couple of months after the tournament on a technicality and has not come back to the fore. Croatia’s success was followed by promises of investment in football but these were swiftly forgotten in the midst of the electoral cycle.

With Croatia’s success in Qatar, however, there is clear movement on turning investment in facilities from planning work to brick work and this follows a couple of paths but, for our purposes here, Dinamo are key. Within Zagreb, there are two key stadium projects - Kranjceviceva and Maksimir.

Kranjceviceva can, and must, be completed first. That smaller stadium hosts Lokomotiva (among others) and is due a full renovation which would allow Dinamo to move in while the larger Maksimir project is completed. With Croatia now World Cup medallists twice in a row, there is a drive to ensure that the nation makes the most of increased interest in it and also in the large extra amounts of money that have come into the FA and nation because of the national team’s success. Therefore, top of that list of priorities of spending must be ensuring that Croatia has something it hasn’t had in the 2020s yet - a stadium in its capital fit for hosting the world’s best sides. Since the Earthquake and fans coming back to grounds after COVID, Maksimir has hosted the national team once with Poljud in Split hosting them three times (and will in the opener to Euros qualifying also).

Political Palatability

Key in all of that is one basic fact - to complete a project at Maksimir (which would be a demolish and rebuild, be that on the same site or otherwise), funding that comes from outside Dinamo must be sought.

That external funding will come from the HNS (Croatia’s FA), UEFA (in the form of small grants) and the Croatian government (who have allocated money in their budget for stadium projects). It will come as no surprise to learn that those parties, especially the government, have no interest in providing Dinamo with a massive investment if that investment means doing a deal with a company that is controlled at a distance by someone who is a fugitive from justice from the very nation providing the money. UEFA also are very much anti-Mamic given that Zvonimir Boban is in a major role there and Boban is on the record multiple times expressing his antipathy towards Zdravko Mamic.

As such, the slow distancing that has developed between the Mamic bloc at the club and the Antolic bloc has had the issue forced and become a gaping chasm. For Dinamo to progress, they need the capital investment in their infrastructure that the money towards Maksimir would bring. Both sides are well aware of this situation and Kresimir Antolic, while the previous paragraphs surely show he is hardly Mr White goes to Washington, is well aware that it is hard to be less palatable to the people that want to give Dinamo money than Zdravko Mamic is. Zdravko Mamic knows this also and that is why what has happened, has happened.

Battle in the Bureaucracy

On 12 December, while the national side were still battling in Qatar, Dinamo exploded. Earlier, I mentioned Dinamo’s three levels of governance - Executive board, Associate board and membership. On that date, the second of those met for what was meant to be a fairly routine meeting. Instead, the Mamic bloc came prepared and dropped a no-confidence vote in Antolic in the expectation that the Antolic bloc were about to push Mamic out of the club for good. This passed and was referred, then, up to the Executive board a few days later.

That board is much smaller and is more a gerontocracy than anything else, taking the lead from the 86 year old Mirko Barisic at the top. With Barisic firmly allied with Antolic, the no confidence vote was struck down and if anyone needed to know exactly where the state’s chips were cashed in this feud, that vote was immediately followed by Zagreb’s mayor turning up to chat stadiums.

Things are, at the moment, partially frozen. The company AGM (which is of all members) is due in March at which emotions are bound to run high but, given that any EGM request is only down in the statutes as needing to be held within two months of the request, no such request has been made given the proximity of that to the AGM any way.

But while the backroom battles may be on pause, that hasn’t stopped both parties from very public briefings against each other. For one, the no-confidence fiasco is now under investigation by Croatian authorities to see whether the vote and subsequent veto were actually carried out in a legal and proper manner.

In public manoeuvrings, the Mamic camp published a letter with 45 names on (those who voted no confidence vs Antolic) to express their wish that Antolic should leave the club. Zdravko Mamic also used his traditional festive address to berate his opponents. In retaliation, the Antolic camp made a criminal complaint against Mamic and those supporting him listing off examples of problematic behaviour they attribute to Mamic. Mamic then followed that with another public address to rile against those claims.

Stuck in the middle of this are the fans - whose general opinion is that both Mamic and Antolic would be better off not being associated with the club - and the squad, who are acutely aware of the issues and the reasoning behind them.

On the pitch or in the balance book?

Key among the accusations of both sides are that Mamic has sought to interfere further in the club’s transfer business, that he claims credit for certain things and that the club has, more recently, gone down a separate path.

Mamic, for example, took sole credit for discovering Josko Gvardiol as the first one to suggest he be given senior football (which, if true, would mean he did that while already exiled). But many of the claims and counter claims are more recent. A brief run through them:

That in January 2022, Mamic arranged the transfer of Mislav Orsic to Burnley for the club to block it and sign Orsic to a new deal. Mamic does publicly disagree with the sale of Orsic this winter on basis, seemingly, of price.

That in summer 2022, Mamic arranged a deal with Darko Milanic to take over as head coach. Instead, the club confirmed interim manager Ante Cacic as permanent and have since confirmed him as sporting director also. This does align with much of what was in the media last summer, particularly as linked existed to bring Zlatko Zahovic to the club also, who acted as sporting director above Milanic at Maribor.

That in summer 2022, Mamic arranged multiple transfer deals for the club, all of which were blocked by the club, such as Marko Pjaca.

Mamic doesn’t deny most of these given that he speaks with the personal certainty of someone who fully believes they are doing the right thing for the club and his ripostes are more around his political opponents’ competence rather than the truthfulness or otherwise of their accusations.

But, as all these claims show, the playing staff is stuck in the middle and with the likes of Orsic, Petkovic and Livakovic all having strutted their stuff at times in Qatar, the transfer value of many of Dinamo’s assets sits as high as they are ever likely to get.

The Dominance Question

Mislav Orsic was allowed to leave for a couple of reasons - on signing his contract in January 2022 to stay at the club, a tacit agreement was made that Dinamo wouldn’t stand in his way if a big offer for him came in again. It did, from Southampton, and the prevailing feeling within the club was that the competitive reasons that existed for keeping Orsic in 2022 no longer applied in 2023, namely that last year they did not enjoy the relatively handsome gap at the top that they have now.

That does not, however, mean everything is happy. It is clear that the path of faith in Ante Cacic is not a popular one among fans given that, with Cacic being 69, he is a short term measure at best. Even with that discounted, he has never been the most popular figure with the support.

Orsic, according to Mamic, expressed surprise at his sale. Goalkeeper Dominik Livakovic has a £10m release clause that seems certain to be met this January by one of at least three clubs heavily linked with the national number one. Captain Arijan Ademi has had a showdown with the club over the potential for a move, considering not unreasonably that it Orsic is permitted to depart to get one big contract, his service to the club should be rewarded with a similar opportunity - the club are unwilling to let him go. Bruno Petkovic may have been in a similar situation but an injury has likely derailed any interest there may have been.

While this isn’t a scurrilous tabloid piece seeking to sow disharmony at Dinamo, the reality is that the discord at the top of the club has seeped into the dressing room slightly. It is not the case that there is general unhappiness at the club or at the retention of Cacic, but it is the case that there are players who had potential reasons to look to move on have had those potential reasons progressively crystallise. Ademi does want a deal that becomes the last big contract of his career - be that at Dinamo or elsewhere. Livakovic does expect to leave. Players lower down the food chain do expect options to open up for them. Players are thinking about decisions for what is best for their career at Dinamo this winter and that has become a pressing concern - particularly when the press are running stories that the silent hand that feels they control the club wanted to replace you with someone else.

The Future

Where things go from here is a mystery. Dinamo don’t appear in any great risk of losing the lead of the HNL however a couple of bad results, particularly should they lost the derby against Hajduk at the end of February, could easily be enough to set alarm bells ringing. When it comes to the AGM and the wider membership are asked their opinion on matters of confidence, matters on the pitch will surely be taken into account.

Local government’s preferred option isn’t Antolic or Mamic - they seek a third way of someone who is completely untouched by the scandal that has sometimes dogged Dinamo over the past two decades. That isn’t likely but it neatly sums up their issue - jumping into bed once more with Zdravko Mamic is utterly impossible, but jumping into bed with Kresimir Antolic wouldn’t be all that tolerable either. The state are being forced to back a least worst option rather than a best option when it comes to working with Dinamo.

And that is the important thing. This isn’t, ultimately, about who runs Dinamo. This is about whether Croatia can live with itself. Croatia looks to the west. Croatia aspires to be a modern European republic. Croatia would look in the mirror long and hard were a national stadium - what will be the long lasting icon of sporting greatness and of a Croatian national identity built not by Luka Modric but by Franjo Tudjman - built by jumping into bed with a criminal. It would be a very Balkan move and the exact sort of thing they have spent thirty one and a bit years of independence trying to forget.