Original article (in Serbian) was published on 07/03/2023
Arijana Gulan, along with Sasa Sredanovic, presented herself on national television as a sports psychologist at Barcelona’s La Masia academy. Tragac contacted Barcelona where they confirmed that she does not work there, while Gulan confirms for our web portal that she has never been to the La Masia academy and says that Sredanovic wanted to deceive her.
Sasa Sredanovic as a mentor
At the end of last year, we wrote about Sasa Sredanovic, an alleged sports psychologist who wrongly claimed that Serbia is the only European team at the World Cup in Qatar that does not have a psychologist. Through further analysis, in January of this year, we found that Sredanovic was falsely presenting herself – the clubs she allegedly worked for denied cooperation with Sredanovic, and the information she provided regarding her higher education is impossible, since “Maastricht University of clinical psychology” does not exist, nor does the University of Maastricht offer a specialization in the field of sports psychology.
Sasa Sredanovic spent months building the image of a sports psychologist, and more than 60 media outlets in Serbia and the region reported on her “successes”. Among those media was TV Prva, which hosted Sasa Sredanovic in December, along with Marijana Gulan. She also introduced herself to the audience as a sports psychologist, and the presenter announced her in the introduction as a “specialist” of Sasa Sredanovic. Before this show, Sasa Sredanovic told in an interview for the RTS web portal, when listing sports psychologists in Serbia, that Gulan is “fantastic” and that she is being mentored by Sredanovic.
During the program “U ritmu Katara” on TV Prva Sredanovic twice tried to present Gulan in more detail, but on both occasions, she was not sure of what she was saying and corrected herself. At first, she said that Gulan was a “lecturer” at La Masia, then she quickly corrected herself and said that he was a “psychologist”. A little later, Sredanovic says that the interlocutor is a “student” at La Masia, only for Gulan to correct her and add that she is “doing a specialization internship” there. Towards the end of the show, Gulan says the following: “I always wanted to be a sports psychologist after graduation and I searched and applied for a long time and was accepted, thank God, at La Masia”.
Director of La Masia: “I’ve never heard of her”
We waited a long time for a response from FC Barcelona, but in the end, we received confirmation that Marijana Gulan does not work there. Then the director of the La Masia academy, Miguel Puig, answered us, saying that in the two years he has been in that position, he has not heard of a person named Marijana Gulan. “I can confirm that she is definitely NOT completing an internship with a specialization in sports psychology at La Masia”, Puig said.
Marijana Gulan: Sredanovic put before me a fait accompli
We also contacted Marijana Gulan, who admitted that she had never been to the La Masia academy. She also stated that Sredanovic was never her mentor and that she wanted to deceive her. “She said that she is the head of the department of psychology at La Masia and that I have all the qualities to enrol, that I have already been accepted, that I will be tested there when we go and that it has been arranged. That’s how she introduced me in the show, it was already a fait accompli, and that’s why I reacted like that. After the show, I asked her why she introduced me like that, to which she said, “I’m in charge there and it’s over when I tell you.’ My suspicion starts from that sentence and I start to investigate”, Gulan tells Tragac.
Given that the program did not provide any information about Marijana Gulan’s education, we were interested in whether she graduated in psychology. “I enrolled in Psychology at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, completed 48 exams, transferred to Singidunum and finished Psychology there”, claims Gulan.
Without a lawsuit and a description on Instagram
After the text of FN Tragac, Sasa Sredanovic removed from her verified Instagram profile the information that she is “Head Sport psihologyist” at La Masia. She also drew attention via her Instagram story to the fact that the statements from our text are incorrect and that “appropriate legal proceedings for compensation for damages have been initiated” against Tragac, and she threatened that it could be initiated “against any other media that would convey these incorrect statements either in part or in whole”. By the time this text was published, no such lawsuit had been sent to Tragac’s address, nor had Sredanovic provided the public with any evidence that would refute the information from our analysis.
