A look at the season so far through the eyes of Hajduk’s coach.
Hajduk coach Damir Burić held his final press conference for this year and expressed his views on the long season, reports Slobodna Dalmacija on December 21, 2015. He thanked all the players, his entire coaching staff and wished everyone happy holidays. And then he continued: “We have played 32 games and it was very exhausting. Some of the matches we played in the national championship have suffered due to our European obligations. While we played in European competitions, we have lost a lot of points. But after we were eliminated, we did not lose a game or even conceded a goal for a long time. Now we are six points behind the leaders. We played good football, but due to the youth of our players we were not always mature enough. That will motivate us to work harder in the future and I am sure that we will be even stronger in the second half of the season.”
Burić added that his wish is to continue to play modern football, and he also mentioned the fact that the vast majority of his players are very young. “The average age of our first team is 22. Some of the players are just 18 years old, but are already quite experienced. We have a large number of young players in the starting line-up.”
“We are working on improving the club infrastructure, which is the basis for the development of young players. They need to have better facilities. We train on artificial grass, but play on regular grass”, Burić said. “As far as the national team for the European Championships is concerned, I cannot say which of our players deserve to be called to the national team. We still have three months ahead of us; there will be a lot of games and injuries, so we cannot predict what will happen. If you had asked me at the beginning of the season, I would have said Caktaš and Milović.”
“We have a lot of quality coaches in Croatia. For example, Zekić has improved Osijek considerably, he is a phenomenal coach. As far as players are concerned, I always think that my players are the best. It would be unfair to single out anyone else. In the national team, I like how the former team manager Niko Kovač used to work. I am sorry about what happened to him. Čačić knows Croatian football, and his assistant Ante Miše is a good coach from Dalmatia. There are many Hajduk players in various national teams, and there will be even more of them in the future”, Burić concluded.
