Former great volleyball player Svetlana Ceca Ilić (52) is returning to Croatian volleyball. She spent one of her most beautiful playing moments in the 1990s in Rijeka, where she defeated the then great Mladost and won the first historic Croatian Cup.
She also achieved a top-notch coaching career, which she will continue by taking care of the cadet national team and the CRO Team, a new project of the Croatian Volleyball Federation that will bring together talented volleyball players who will live and train together, go to school, play in the championship matches…
– After 30 years, I am back in Croatia. At the age of 14, I came from Modrič to Rijeka, under the patronage of Pera Božić, that then great Rijeka that played derbies with Mladost. I played mostly in the position of receiver-shooter, although I would jump in as a game organizer if necessary. I played for a long time, until the age of 38, in Serbia, Italy, Russia and Belgium. Immediately after the end of my playing career, in Belgium, I entered the coaching world, which I had been doing until then. slowly prepared. Four years ago, I was an assistant to the coach of the Belgian national team, who was my coach at the club at the time. In a way, he directed me to that job because volleyball is my life and I knew that I would stay in that environment even after an active playing career. Later, in 2009, I received an offer from Vollero Zurich to become a coach, which is something I cannot refuse, so I moved from Belgium to Switzerland. I was four years old and a member of the Swiss national team. For two years I was the coach of Dinamo from Moscow, I worked in Serbia and Indonesia, and in addition to the national teams of Belgium and Switzerland, I also coached Austria for four years. Last season I was a coach in Switzerland, at the Volleyball Academy – she shared her rich past for the HOS official website.
Orć has experience working with young players.
– My work in Switzerland has always been somehow related to the development of young players. I also worked a lot with young players from this area, like Alajbeg, Kaleb, Grbac, Deak… Although in my career I worked with big world names like Nataša Osmokrović, Gončova, Košeleva, I was always somehow in my soul draž and work with young people. That’s why I gladly accepted the invitation to work in the Swiss academy because there were young players who got the opportunity to work in the highest level of the competition for the first time.
Have you followed the events in Croatia?
– I left Croatian volleyball a long time ago, but I never stopped following events in Croatia. A lot of nice results and successes have happened to Croatia in the meantime, but there were also periods of a kind of lull, which is completely understandable. After I received the invitation from the head of HOS, I realized that the time of a new wave is coming again, which I myself felt when I came to Croatia as a young player. The time has come for Croatian volleyball to once again create great, world-class players through younger age selections. I have followed and know that in recent years it has been difficult and hard work, but also that now a new generation is emerging that could, with great work, bring a lot of good things. I’m not a euphoric guy, but I see that HOS has a good team of former volleyball players with great knowledge, and that gives me reason to be optimistic about the whole project.”
More specifically, the Cro team would be…
– The national team has a lot of work to do over the summer, EP U18, WC U17, but the main agreement is to form a CRO Team in parallel, which would look like similar projects in Europe that have been around for a long time. So, the CRO Team should live together during the season, the girls would go to school, play in the domestic league… There are still a lot of undefined things that we have to solve on the fly, but it is important that we have a common vision. . The base of that future CRO Team is roughly known, some of them I know myself because most of them appeared on the international scene. Right now I’m looking through all those lists by age categories, the players born in 2009 and younger would be represented. So, from the first grade of high school. With me, for the most part, I will also be the coordinator of all selections, my former teammate Marija Anzulovi. with whom I’ve been playing and private friendship for a long time, which I think is very good for future cooperation – towards the end of Ili.
– I would like that very interesting idea to come to life as soon as possible and last as long as possible. The goal we have all set for ourselves is very ambitious, and it takes time. The younger age categories always had two tasks: to create games and, of course, as much as possible, to make a result. In this case, by the term result, I think it is necessary to create national team members who will stay as long as possible in our volleyball. Those who know me, know that more than anything I want to win, but the term victory in this case is a bit more complex, and I think that the result of everything must be players who will last for many years at the international level and who are finally capable of doing something big.