Žarko Zečević

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Žarko Zečević (Serbian cyrillic: Жарко Зечевић) (born 19 January 1950 in Belgrade, SR Serbia, SFR Yugoslavia) is a Serbian retired basketball player, former football administrator, and current businessman. Known by his widely used nickname Zeka, he is most notable as the controversial and all powerful general-secretary of FK Partizan, a role he performed for more than two decades. Since 2007, he is employed at YugoRosGaz, a subsidiary of Gazprom.

Born to Slavko Zečević (former Police Minister and former FK Partizan managing board member) Žarko's entire sports career, both playing and administrative, is also tied to Partizan Sports Society. During the late 1960s and 1970s, he was a basketball player for KK Partizan and even managed 16 appearances in the Yugoslavia national baskeball team jersey, though only in friendly preparation games - he never made the final cut for any of the big competitions.

In the summer of 1984, Zečević became the general secretary at Partizan Football Club, a position he occupied for the next 23 years. Many aspects of his long and turbulent tenure at the club's helm are subject to controversy. The accusations of corruption, transfer fee skimming, and generally running the club as if it was his own private property have followed him for years. Eventually, in fall 2005, after many sporadic and short-lived calls for his resignation throughout the years, the club's hard core fans known as Grobari commenced a strict boycott of all FK Partizan matches demanding that he leave the club. Though he managed to ignore their demands initially, the pressure grew too high and Zečević eventually left FK Partizan during summer 2007.

[edit] Personal

Žarko Zečević is married to Mira who used to work as a marketing director at Politika during the 1990s. They have a son and a daughter.

Zečević's sister is married to Danko Đunić, president of Partizan Sports Society.