For months, he has been the right-hand man to the President of the BiH Football Federation, appearing at trainings, matches, official visits and talking with clubs and associations. Marko Milicic, Vico Zeljkovic's advisor, is a man about whom very little is known, and he seems to have a great influence on the President of the BiH Football Federation (FS BiH). Pročitaj više

Milicic began working for the Football Federation on July 2 2021 as an advisor and according to the document published in the local media, the FS BiH is paying him approx € 2,500 per month.

Who is Marko Milicic?

For some time now, it has been rumoured among journalists that Zeljkovic and Milicic are more liked than via business cooperation. According to N1’s confirmations from Belgrade, The first man of the FS BiH and his advisor are godparents, which immediately indicates employment through a personal connection. This type of employment is not prohibited in the FS BiH, where it has long been known that many fathers and sons, brothers, relatives, etc. work, but the question is how moral it is to employ staff in such a way, even temporarily.

Perhaps Milicic has some great football knowledge and experience? N1 tried to find information about him online; when he worked before, what he did, but without success, and it seems that Marko Milicic has never been employed in the world of football.

We received confirmation from numerous management agencies and fellow journalists from Serbia and a great many of them have never heard of Marko Milicic, and only a minority claimed he is a man who has only recently entered the managerial business, and that he represents the interests of some BiH football player.

All N1 managed to find about him is a profile on linkedin.com, which states that Marko Milicic is employed as a manager in the Sport Clean agency.

The agency for which Milicic works is registered in Belgrade under the name Sport Clean. The company was founded in 2016, not as an agency for the representation of athletes, but as a company for the removal of hazardous medical waste, under the name “Clean Medical d.o.o.”. However, that company changed its name on December 1, 2017, and since then it has been registered as a “Sport Clean” with the Serbian Business Registers Agency.

According to publicly available documents, the former director Zoran Trbic was deleted from the register from the position of director on that date, and a person named Petar Milicic was entered in his place.

To clarify, Petar Milicic is the director of the Sport Clean agency, he has the same last name as Marko Milicic, who is known to work for the same agency.

If Marko Milicic is little known to the sports public in Serbia, Petar Milicic is a complete unknown. Through contacts with fellow sports journalists from Serbia, N1 learned that Petar Milicic does not physically appear in the football world at all.

“Nobody from the football world knows those people. I called some other friends yesterday, but they don't know them either… And those from the RS (Republika Srpska, op. Cit.) have no idea who Petar is,” a sports journalist from Belgrade with over 20 years of journalistic experience, who wished to remain anonymous, told N1.

According to the available information on the renowned transfermarkt.com website, the Sport Clean agency represents seven footballers.

The most prominent among them are Bosnia and Herzegovina’s A-team players, Sinisa Sanicanin and Vladan Danilovic. Apart from them, the agency also represents young members of the BiH national team Marko Kujundzic and Djordje Milojevic, both of whom play for Banja Luka's Borac FC, in which until recently Vico Zeljkovic served as club President.

The Football Federation of the Republic of Serbia recently published a report on the work done by intermediaries (ie: managers) during the last year, which is a legal obligation of every football federation in the world. Among them is the name of Petar Milicic, who collected € 112.6 thousand for the free transfer of Sinisa Sanicanin from Vojvodina to Partizan.

That figure was paid to Petar Milicic by the Partizan Football Club. That club paid a total of € 1,097,715.00 to managers for various businesses last season, and only a tenth of that money went to Sanicanin.

Isn't it strange then that no one, not even in Partizan, knows the man who was paid so much money?

Colleagues who helped N1 with the research also claim that only Marko, and not Petar Milicic, is negotiating regarding the affairs concerning Sinisa Sanicanin.

N1 tried to contact Petar Milicic by phone on several occasions, but no one answered the number listed on the website of the Business Registers Agency of the Republic of Serbia.

Is money the only motive for holding office?

Without going into whether any of this is illegal, the question arises as to how morally and ethically correct it is? Is the only mission of the President of the Association to receive a salary while football in BiH is sinking to the bottom?

From the highest positions in the Federation, Vico Zeljkovic and Petar Milicic could determine which members of the national team will receive invitations for different age groups of the BiH national team, then sell them and possibly share the earnings. This is a practice that was, not so recently, a public secret in the Serbian national team.

Is it recurring in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well?