Change Continues at Pro Recco: Sandro Sukno is Named Head Coach
A whirlwind of changes for Pro Recco continues, but an end is (apparently) in sight. Within days of winning a record ninth LEN European Champions’ League title, Recco lost its head coach and two of its top players. Gabi Hernandez, who this time last year signed a one-year contract with the club, declined to continue as coach, citing a desire for personal time. Dusan Mandic, the club’s superb left-handed shot, and Marko Bijac, one of the world’s top goalies, have also departed. Mandic signed with Novi Beograd in his native Belgrade while Bijak will now backstop Olympiacos. This on top of losing Filip Filipovic, arguably the greatest player of his generation, last year.
But help is in on the way. It was announced yesterday that Sandro Sukno, star of the Croatian side that captured gold in the 2012 London Olympics, will step into the head coaching role at Recco. He will have new help on the right side Gergo Zalanki, a young Hungarian lefty, most recently capped for Ferencvaros TC, will be moving to Genoa, giving Sukno another weapon as Recco looks to defend the LEN title it won two weeks ago in Belgrade.
The choice of Sukno—after Hernandez stunned the European professional water polo establishment by saying goodbye to its most illustrious member—suggests that the former Recco star has long been deemed fit for the most prestigious, as well as pressurized coaching seat in the sport. He is relative a newcomer to leading a top club, but Sukno is familiar with life at the sport’s upper echelons, having apprenticed the past year with Ivica Tucak, the brilliant leader of the Croatian national team.
[On The Record with Ivica Tucak, Coach for Croatia’s National Men’s Water Polo Team]
That experience, and a stint leading VK Primorac Kotor, a leading Montenegrin club, was deemed sufficient by Recco President Maurizio Felugo to offer him the job leading the most famous polo club in the world.
Sukno during his playing days with Recco. Photo: Pro Recco
Sukno, one of polo’s top players until a heart ailment diagnosed in 2019 prevented him from continuing his brilliant career, is not daunted by the challenge ahead, as he revealed in a statement released yesterday by the club.
"When Felugo called me it was a great honor; we all know what Pro Recco represents for water polo, now it is also champion of Europe,” said Sukno, who is only 31—younger than a number of the players he will now lead. “It's true, I'm young, recently I started coaching, but I'm in love with this role and I feel ready for the challenge. We have a strong team, I have a great desire to start preparing for the season, knowing that leading Pro Recco means only one thing: you have to win.”
Felugo, Sukno’s former teammate and new boss, embraced the return of the one-time Recco star who helped the club to a LEN title in 2015.
"We are happy to announce Sandro Sukno as our technical guide,” the Recco president said in the same statement. “Already in December 2017 we had proposed to remain in [Vladimir] Vujasinovic's coaching staff, but understandably he wanted to try everything to stay in water. In his new role as coach he has shown skills and ideas, I followed it carefully and the feedback I received is extremely positive. Sandro is a person who has clear ideas, the I have spoken in these days, he is charged, hungry and the right enthusiasm to open a cycle with us: we can't wait to embrace it again in Recco.”
Sukno will arrive with the wind at his back, a result of the 2021 LEN final win engineered by Hernandez. But with success comes a warning; expectations coaching in Genoa has a way of swallowing you up. The young Croatian becomes the club’s fourth coach in five years, a sobering reality as it had been six years—a lifetime for some Recco fans—between LEN championships.
[Departing from Pro Recco, Ratko Rudic, Legendary Water Polo Coach, Concludes His Career]
Or, as Sukno himself declared, leading Pro Recco means one thing and one thing only: winning.