We searched our archives and found a pearl from G2.3 Meeting

In the last eight years, Meeting G2 organized 8 conferences with 47 panels and 250 panelists, we presented 42 Croatian start-ups, gathered more than 1100 participants from 34 countries of the world, and helped 340 business people from Croatian diaspora connect with almost 300 Croatian companies, business trips were organized for guests from the diaspora, presenting the economic potential of Osijek, Rijeka, Gospić, Zadar and Zagreb. It’s hard to single out the most memorable and interesting panel, but this time we’re making an exception to honor our one-of-a-kind soccer coach:
Watch Ćiro laughing, crying, swearing and sending a message: Help us!
This Wednesday, 2 days ago, the celebrated Croatian football coach Miroslav Blažević, better known simply as Ćiro, was buried at the Mirogoj cemetery in Zagreb. A man who left no one indifferent, a man who attracted attention wherever he appeared, a man who was loved by everyone, both politicians and media and athletes and ordinary people because he himself was an ordinary man.
He was born in Travnik in BiH way back in 1935. and he died after due to long and serious illness last week in Zagreb, at the age of 88, just a few days before his birthday.
At his funeral, among tens of thousands of people, the entire Croatian football world gathered, because Ćiro lived football until the last day of his life. However, history will always remember him for two of his greatest successes:
– the third place and the bronze medal of the Croatian football team at the World Cup in France in 1998. with the generation of famous Vatreni, led by Šuker, Boban, Prosinečki, Ladić, Jarni, Vlaović and others…
– winning the championship of the former Yugoslavia with Zagreb’s Dinamo in 1982 – when Ćiro became famous for his white scarf, and Dinamo additionally built the status of a symbol of the national resistance of Croats against communist Yugoslavia.
We will not talk about Ćiro’s rich biography on this occasion, because these days in the Croatian media a lot could be heard, seen and learned about him. We want to remember Ćiro as our dear guest because in 2017 he participated in our conference MEETING G2.3 where he – as a panelist, in the company of several other legendary Croatian athletes – put on a real show!
That year, we organized the third MEETING G2 conference, and as part of it we also held a panel entitled: “Ball and tie – the perfect business combination or How globally famous Croatian athletes can help the Croatian economy”. The panelists were: tennis player Iva Majoli, water polo player Dubravko Šimenc, table tennis player Zoran Primorac, swimmer Gordan Kožulj and Ante Bogdanić as an expert in sports branding. However, the main star of the panel moderated by Božo Skoko was certainly – Miroslav Ćiro Blažević.
We searched through our rich archive, and found a video with Ćiro’s answers!
Watch it yourself, listen:
– what he said about the famous Vatreni and 1998 and our first WC
– why did he cry when he mentioned Franjo Tuđman
– why he cursed several times
– what he told the Croatian diaspora
– discover that back in the fall of 2017, Ćiro visionarily told Modrić and the national team that they could be the first in the world, and the next summer in Russia, Croatia played in the World Cup final!!! Ćiro – a visionary and an eternal optimist!
To him be eternal glory! May he rest in peace in his eternal home in Croatia, country that he loved so much…