Serbian president to fulfil his hoop dreams

FILE – Serbian President, and leader of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), Aleksandar Vucic celebrates his party parliamentary elections in Belgrade on June 21, 2020. – Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic claimed a landslide victory for his ruling party in a parliamentary vote tarnished by a boycott from parts of the opposition, who accuse the leader of burgeoning authoritarianism. (Photo by ALEKSANDAR DIMITRIJEVIC / AFP)

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has enrolled in a sports college to fulfil what he called his boyhood dream of becoming a basketball coach.

“For the second time in my life I became a student… in a wish to become a basketball coach for kids,” Vucic said on Instagram on Saturday.

“You would not believe how happy I am that after many years I am starting to realise my boyhood dreams.”

Vucic, 50, who is a law graduate, posed in the photo with his student ID book from the Belgrade-based college of sports and health and a small basketball.

Vucic told a pro-government tabloid in June that his unfulfilled wish was to become a basketball coach in basketball-mad Serbia.

“There is nothing nicer than spending Saturdays and Sundays with young players, children whom you can teach something,” he told the Kurir daily.

Asked whether he had bigger ambitions, he said his dream was to train children from a “small club”.

Vucic is fan of both basketball and football.

He became prime minister in 2014 and took over the presidency in 2017.