Ruin We Call Home

By: Mario | July 12th, 2009

Maksimir is in ruins. No, better yet, Maksimir *IS* a ruin. It’s mind boggling, the fact that this much money (approx. €50m) can be poured into rebuilding a ground and than have exactly zero evidence showing that some work has actually been done. Well it’s less of an enigma once you find out who the players behind the curtain are, shady politicians and such. But that’s politics, it’s evil and let’s leave it at that. What matters right now is that the UEFA officials have been monitoring Maksimir’s “renovation” for quite some time now, and it looks like this year they might actually be prompted to act.

As things stand, Dinamo’s holy ground doesn’t satisfy UEFA’s ground criteria for its competitions next season. Yes, that’s the one that starts this Tuesday (for Dinamo at least). Which translates into one of the following scenarios:

1) Dinamo either hires a magician who drops some magic dust on the ground and voilà: a new 40.000 all-seater pops out of nowhere.
2) Dinamo officials manage to bribe UEFA’s officials with a shipment of fine wine and quality meat, after which the latter are somehow convinced that some work is actually being done (I swear they actually just keep repainting the same wall every time an UEFA official comes along, and then *High Five* each other when the officials buy their story).
3) Dinamo plays its home matches somewhere in the neighborhood, on an eligible Croatian ground.

Though the third option sounds like the reasonable one, the odds are the second option will probably come out on top. Why? Well, for one, we’ve got wine, meat and paint in abundance. But to explore the third option a bit, the media have recently started toying with the idea of which of Croatia’s clubs could host Dinamo’s European exploits, and names like Varteks and Hajduk are apparently topping the list. Most interesting solution is of course Split, as however unlikely the situation, it’d be interesting to see how the fans of both clubs would react if the idea would come to pass. War? Love? Chaos? Riots? Giant mushrooms? You name it.