The derby win has catapulted the club’s interim head coach as the prime candidate to take over full time
Mirko Ocokoljic 'the right man for the job' after Partizan’s Serbian Derby comeback
Report partita
3 Minuto di lettura
Regular Season
Round 15 of 38
Regular Season
Partizan Mozzart Bet BelgradePAR
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Crvena Zvezda Meridianbet BelgradeCZV
Overview
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Not in his wildest dream could Mirko Ocokoljic imagine until just a few weeks ago that he would rocket into the spotlight as a top contender to take charge of Partizan Mozzart Bet Belgrade on a full-time basis.
Rewind the tape to the early stages of the current EuroLeague season and you’ll see a confident and beaming Zeljko Obradovic thinking big after Partizan made a 3-2 start, looking forward to another tilt at reaching the postseason.
Then came a dramatic slump in form and with it disarray at the club, the likes of which was almost unfathomable. Partizan dropped to 4-9 after a dismal 1-7 run, prompting Obradovic, the winner of a record nine EuroLeague titles with five different clubs, to do the unthinkable.
He stepped down. Shocked and infuriated by their icon’s resignation, the die-hard fans reacted emotionally and then brutally. They gave Obradovic a hero’s welcome at Belgrade airport when he returned from Greece a day after the team landed, following a 91-69 drubbing at Panathinaikos AKTOR Athens.
Not just a handful of fans but thousands. They begged him to reconsider and so did the board, but Obradovic stayed true to his word and honored his promise not to return.
Ocokoljic was cold-shouldered by fans, much like the team when they stepped inside a packed Belgrade Arena, with the 20,000-strong crowd rooting for Bayern out of spite and holding giant placards with Obradovic’s image. Having absolved their “patriarch” – as one of the fans at the airport described Obradovic – of any wrongdoing for Partizan’s plight, they ripped into the players, jeering every time they scored and cheered every single time Bayern did at the other end.
Having ground out a 92-85 win over the German side despite feeling like the road team at home, Partizan went on to win at U-BT Cluj-Napoca by the same score in the regional ABA League before locking horns with an in-form Crvena Zvezda Meridianbet Belgrade, which had hit top gear under head coach Sasa Obradovic.
Ocokoljic rebuffed suggestions that being Obradovic’s understudy at AS Monaco was his trump card in a memorable 79-76 win on Friday night, as Partizan wiped out a 16-point third-quarter deficit and roared back in the fourth to overpower Zvezda.
“I know Sasa well but you never know what he might pull out of the hat, and that’s why we struggled so much against their switch defense,” Ocokoljic told the post-game press conference. “He is methodical and structured but also full of surprises. I want to thank the fans for their frenetic support. This really is the most emotional victory of my career, for sure.”
Partizan fans did show up this time, for their own team. The atmosphere reached fever pitch as the hosts turned the contest on its head in the home straight, drawing wild cheers from hordes on the terraces which only a few days ago interrupted their practice session as thousands gathered in front of Belgrade Arena and demanded to be addressed by captain Vanja Marinkovic.
For Ocokoljic, who enjoyed a trophy-laden spell as an assistant at Monaco under Zvezdan Mitrovic and then Sasa Obradovic, it seemed just like another day in the office as he deflected questions whether he was about to be promoted.
“I can’t speak to that,” he told reporters. “I came into this job as an interim knowing that it might only be for a few games, and I have had no talks to such effect with anyone at the club. We’ll see what happens and my priority right now is to make sure we keep working hard and keep our feet on the ground.”
Ocokoljic, who joined Partizan as Zeljko Obradovic’s assistant during the close season, could not be a more contrasting figure to his former boss, who made it a habit of screaming at players and getting into their faces during games when things didn’t go according to plan.
Cutting a calm and composed coach never looking likely to lose his temper, Ocokoljic appears to have a soothing effect as desirable as aftershave to sensitive skin, having calmed his players’ nerves after jittery starts in all three games under his tenure.
“The club really should do the right thing and give him a long-term contract,” pundit and former coach Vlade Djurovic told Serbia’s Arenasport television after the derby. “There’s been a plethora of top names circulating around since Zeljko stepped down and I don’t know what Partizan’s board is going to do, but they ought to look closer to home. Ocokoljic is the right man for the job.”
