While GNK Dinamo already counts 115 "summers", its sister club ŽNK Dinamo celebrates a jubilee on Wednesday. Namely, June 24th marks exactly 10 years since the founding of the women's section of Dinamo football club. And on that same day five years ago, the women's futsal team was also established. On this occasion, we spoke with one of the founders and current sporting director Marija Damjanović. She emphasizes that the club has grown tremendously during this period.

"When we established the club in 2016 - president Josipa Maslać, Mr. Milan Labus and I - we planned it so that in ten years we could see some results. In the last few years, those results have become visible. The senior team won the Cup two years ago. The youth team won the championship at national level for the first time this season. So we're growing, both in numbers and in results, as well as professionally. In every aspect we have expanded, progressed and that has brought results."

Damjanović also recalled that summer of 2016 when ŽNK Dinamo was founded.

"There was a club called ŽNK Maksimir before ŽNK Dinamo which was also affiliated with GNK Dinamo.

However, they were relegated to the Second League. Then the management at the time asked me, since I had always been involved with women's football, to create a club. First, I needed to familiarize myself with the complete structure of GNK, the club's management, the way of using the pitches and everything else.

Those were very difficult steps, but as I say, if I were to start again, I would probably go the same path, because something that is harder usually gives much better results in the end."

Many don't know that there is also a women's futsal club Dinamo, which was founded five years ago.

"Futsal was created with the idea that players don't become inactive during the winter part of the season, but remain in competitive rhythm constantly.

Besides that, futsal brings great advantages because it develops speed of decision-making and technical abilities, which later helps a lot in big football.

Today we can boast that the futsal club achieves exceptionally good results.

I would say the reason is that our girls are really technically very well trained.

We were national champions, we won the Croatian Cup, there were also second and third places and we participated in numerous tournaments like the Winter Cup, where we also achieved excellent results."

ŽNK Dinamo has great support from its big brother. Damjanović admits it would be impossible for them to function without GNK's help.

"The cooperation is excellent. GNK supports us completely, both financially and in terms of infrastructure and logistics. For example, we have our own office which we use normally, and we can also use all the pitches, of course in agreement with the Football School and according to their schedules. They help us a lot through marketing and sponsors as well."

She emphasizes that the players are very attached to the club and regularly follow and come to support their male colleagues.

"For every match we get tickets from GNK Dinamo and we regularly go to watch the matches.

Both younger and older categories follow all the players, they know them and know many details about their play.

But it's not just supporting. When we send them to a match, they often get specific tasks as well. They observe their position on the pitch, analyze how individual players play defense and attack, and later we discuss it at training sessions.

This way we check how carefully they followed the match and what they learned from it."

And what else the sporting director of ŽNK Dinamo said about her club, as well as her rich football career, the status of women's football in Croatia and beyond, and other topics, check out the full interview on the Dinamo Plus app.