What's gone wrong at Hajduk?
Out of Europe, ostracised a legend - it's panic at Poljud
2024 has been a difficult year for Hajduk.
From a winter that promised the ending of a title drought that, should they fail to win the title this term, now stretches two decades, Hajduk are entering a summer of mess. Ivan Perisic is out the exit door, Hajduk are out of Europe in spite of a facile draw. How have things gone so wrong, so quickly.
Nikola Kalinic
As the new sporting director of the club, straight on the back of ending his playing career, Kalinic has had a baptism of fire. His first job was to hire a new manager, the remainder of his inbox has been around recruitment and it’s clear that, upon the departure of previous director Mindaugas Nikolicius, Hajduk’s recruitment team has been left seriously short.
Just look at the hires - Gennaro Gattuso as manager is a former Kalinic team-mate, so is Ivan Rakitic as a player. The only other player coming in is Bamba from Grenoble - a player Gattuso will have been aware of from his time at Marseille. In short, Hajduk don’t seem to have that much imagination in how and where they’re acquiring talents from. Kalinic is neither working hard nor smart - he’s simply working to get whatever he can and the filters that should be there in a big club that ensures quality control and efficient recruitment seem to not be there.
As such, whatever has happened at the club since has to be placed in that context - the framework of success that other clubs have is not currently present at Hajduk. It is directed by someone new to their role who has been thrown in at the deep end and who has relied heavily on his own network rather than pre-existing work or in rebuilding those structures around himself in the short term to try to work a little smarter.
Ivan Perisic
The Perisic situation has been a very divisive one, that’s for certain. Many Hajduk fans feel the player simply took advantage of the club to get to Euro 2024 and then, when the going got tough, ran away.
Whether that’s fair or not, it has been very widely reported that Perisic signed for Hajduk with the proviso in his contract that if things started to go awry at the club, he would be able to leave the club on preferential terms. In terms of it as a reflection on the personality of the player - that clause isn’t a good thing, it isn’t a bad thing, it’s just a thing. It’s what Hajduk agreed to and, as such, when things went in a way that meant Perisic would wish to exercise that get-out, it’s hard to really blame him too much for the crime of asking Hajduk to honour that agreement.
The problem is that Perisic’s departure became a PR issue. When the story came out around ten days ago, Gattuso was immediately firefighting, stating it was a disciplinary issue before rumours came out that Perisic had refused to accept being benched against Lokomotiva - rumours which were further fanned by reports Gattuso had indicated to Perisic that he didn’t think he was pulling his weight performance-wise. Eventually, this created such a ruckus that Hajduk had to put a statement out to encourage fans to not post anti-Perisic content on social media.
Whatever the truth of the matter (and, again, it’s worth mentioning that Perisic’s crime is basically just to do what it’s reported is in his contract), the fallout of it has been handled terribly. There isn’t any good reason as to why Perisic couldn’t have continued to play for the club while looking for another one by the end of August. There isn’t any good reason why Gattuso, upon having Perisic come to say “I want to leave”, couldn’t have just said “fair enough, but we’d like to keep you until the European qualifiers are finished” and had an amicable departure at that point.
But if you are framing Perisic’s departure from the club as what exercising that clause is - in that it’s simply a vote of no confidence from a player in the direction of the club - you have to say that Hajduk have proven that choice to be absolutely the correct one in how they’ve reacted to it. Worse still, it’s surely unsettled the wider playing staff.
Gennaro Gattuso
Which leads to where Hajduk find themselves on the pitch.
It’s rare, as a person in the UK, I get too many people interacting with me on social media related to managerial hires in Croatia. Not so with Gattuso. Marseille fans were happy to share how little they rated him and you can see why.
Perhaps the best summation of his time so far is that in the absence of clear tactics and goals, he’s chosen to set his line in the sand purely by being a disciplinarian. Perisic is one example of that, Sahiti another after being dropped from a European game for arriving late for a team dinner. Other players, such as Benrahou, have been straight up exiled.
None of these things in isolation mean that Gattuso wouldn’t be a success. But tied into a profile over the past 12 months of Ivan Leko leaving the club (that involved falling out with players) and Hajduk throwing away their best chance to win a title in years to stumble meekly into third, the squad needs an arm round it and lifting from the deck gently rather than shock treatment and a bipolar approach to hiring coaches.
Gattuso has had six games and zero convincing performances in them. Every game should have been a slam dunk win and Hajduk won 2, drew 3 and lost 1. In the league, a draw against a Lokomotiva side that Rijeka demolished followed an unconvincing win over a Slaven Belupo side that will flirt with relegation.
The one loss suffered has sent Hajduk out of Europe but that feels more like a denouement to extended issues rather than simply a stop on the road. And while the second leg vs Ruzomberok was a hard luck story with Hajduk well on top and knocked out by one of the flukiest own goals you’ll ever see, Hajduk didn’t really look like converting, Hajduk didn’t make chances through exhilarating play (rather benefitting from mistakes and set pieces) and they got what their profligacy deserved.
That’s on Gattuso.
So where now
Hajduk’s issues aren’t in isolation. When ex-President Luksa Jakobusic left the club in the Spring, one key criticism around him was about his lack of patience with managers and his lack of patience when it came to actually sticking with a plan. As such, it seems weird to be in a situation where you wish to write a manager off at the mid–point of August, but this seems like a very predictable sort of dismissal.
They could, arguably should, have gone and finalised the deal to bringt in Ivan Juric when they hired Gattuso. Since then, you’ve now got Zeljko Sopic available, whose Rijeka side last season were what Hajduk would like to be. You could argue that the list of available coaches now is perhaps more helpful for Hajduk that it was on hiring Gattuso.
If Hajduk know what sort of club they want to be, that is. Coaching isn’t the only area of the club that feels like it needs a restructure and while Osijek similarly dropped out of Europe yesterday, they do so with the consolation that they can obviously point towards the fact that their direction of travel is clear and that they know what the club is working towards.
Can Hajduk fans say that?
Until they can, Hajduk are better sticking rather than sacking. But that plan, and the direction from above needs to come urgently if Hajduk are to avoid a season outside of relevance.