Football after Yugoslavia: conflict, reconciliation and the regional football league debate

Abstract

Twenty years after Yugoslavia began breaking apart into new states, former Yugoslavs have re-established many of their commercial, professional and cultural ties. This network of renewed connections extends to most team sports, but not to football. Advocacy for a regional football league is a decade old, and there have been several concrete proposals. Despite all this, the idea remains intensely controversial. This article provides an argument for the controversy's depth and persistence, which is that football, unlike other sports, had a role in Yugoslavia's dissolution and continuing post-war inter-ethnic animosities and conflicts. This article also pays attention to challenges and alternatives to this legacy, as expressed in the league debate. Given the intolerance and violence in post-Yugoslav football, the increasing openness to football reunion is noteworthy.

Acknowledgements

Funding for this research came from the Oswald Backus Memorial Award (2010) and a U.S. State Department Fulbright grant for Croatia (2011–2012). I am deeply grateful to the University of Kansas History Department and the U.S. State Department for their generous funding.

Notes

^1.Judah, ‘Entering the Yugosphere’.

^2.Rogošić, ‘Hajduk i Dinamo’.

^3.Hudelist and Španović, ‘Ujedinjenje nogometnih gubitnika’.

^4. ‘Regionalna liga dobra ideja’ [Regional league a good idea], Večernje novosti, March 14, 2009.

^5. ‘Regionalna liga tudi v nogometu?’ [A regional league in football too?] Delo, February 18, 2010; ‘Zagrijavanje za regionalnu ligu bit će turnir prvaka?’ [Tournament of champions will be warm-up for regional league?] Dnevnik, February 18, 2010.

^6. Dragiša Binić, the current director of a small Serbian club, Napredak, explained this practice in a 2010 interview: ‘Small clubs sell players to Star or Partizan, and then we wait for them to further sell them abroad, and all the titles belong to them [Red Star and Partizan]’, Petković, ‘Patriotski u SFRJ ligu’.

^7. While advocating for an amalgamated league in early 2010, Zdravko Mamić, Dinamo's executive vice-president, called the region's clubs ‘cannon fodder’ for west European teams – and this was before his club set the Champions League record for worst-ever goal difference. See ‘Mi smo braća, a UEFA je naša majka’ [We are brothers, and UEFA is our mother], Jutarnji list, February 12, 2010.

^8. The average match attendance in 2009–2010 in Croatia's league, UEFA's highest-ranked national league in the former Yugoslavia, was 2031; Lalić, ‘Umro je hrvatski nogomet’. The only matches that draw large audiences in the former Yugoslavia today, apart from European (and national team) contests, are the two big derbies, Partizan–Red Star and Hajduk–Dinamo.

^9. ‘Ivica Osim: Regionalna liga, sad ili nikad’ [Ivica Osim: Regional league, now or never], www.index.hr, March 10, 2011.

^10. ‘Je li moguća regionalna liga?’ [Is a regional league possible?] Hrvatska Radio-Televizija, February 17, 2009.

^11. ‘Dejan Savičević: Prosinečki i ja smo nosili Zvezdu do europske titule’ [Dejan Savičević: Prosinečki and I carried star to the European title], www.index.hr, March 12, 2010.

^12. The founders of the Adriatic basketball league staved off much controversy in Slovenia and Croatia by not speaking publicly about their interest in Serbian clubs. Roman Lisac, one of the founders, admitted that ‘the idea of having both Red Star and Partizan in the league was there from the very beginning, but we avoided talking about it publicly because of politics’ (quoted in Raić, ‘An Ex-YU Football League’).

^13. Bosnia and Herzegovina initially had three separate leagues, one for each major nation (Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croats), but since 2002, there has been a statewide Premier League. Montenegro established its own league in 2006, the year it severed union with Serbia.

^14.Lalić, ‘Nasilništvo nogometnih navijača’.

^15.Čolović, ‘Football, Hooligans and War’, 373–4.

^16. Ibid., 379–81.

^17. Ibid., 376.

^18.Perasović, ‘Navijačko pleme’, 65.

^19.Lalić, Torcida, 69, 202.

^20.Mihailović, ‘Rat je počeo 13. maja 1990’.

^21.Kebo, ‘Horde zla i manijaci’.

^22.Marojević, ‘Varvari i New Barbarians’.

^23. s.v. ‘Armada’; Kramer and Klemenčić, Nogometni leksikon, 18.

^24.Kebo, ‘Horde zla i manijaci’, 56.

^25.Marojević, ‘Varvari i New Barbarians’.

^26. Quoted in Čolović, ‘Od Delija do Tigrova’, 60–1.

^27.Čolović, ‘Od Delija do Tigrova’, 61.

^28.Vrcan and Lalić, ‘From Ends to Trenches’, 177.

^29. Ibid.,181.

^30.Čolović, ‘Football, Hooligans and War’, 373.

^31.Vrcan and Lalić, ‘From Ends to Trenches’, 177.

^32.Mills, ‘Velez Mostar Football’, 1107.

^33. Ibid., 1120–21.

^34. Ibid., 1122.

^35. Ibid., 1131.

^36.Vrcan and Lalić, ‘From Ends to Trenches’, 181.

^37.Lalić, ‘Bad Blue Boys i Torcida’, 52.

^38.Butigan and Obrenović, ‘Razbijali stakla doma’; Lesički and Španović, ‘BBB-i i Torcida idu u pohod’; ‘Navijači u Vukovaru pjevali “Ubij, ubij Srbina”’ [Fans in Vukovar sang ‘Kill, Kill the Serb’], Jutarnji list, March 2, 2008.

^39.Medo, ‘Na Marakani gorjela “šahovnica”’. Marakana is the nickname of Red Star's stadium.

^40. ‘Štimac o regionalnoj ligi: Nema šanse, živimo u huliganskom vremenu’ [Štimac on regional league: Not a chance, we live in hooligan times], www.index.hr, November 17, 2010.

^41. ‘Zajec: Jednoga dana igrat će se YU-liga, ali još je prerano’ [Zajec: Yugoslav League will be played one day, but it is still too early], Jutarnji list, February 25, 2010.

^42. ‘BBB: Nikada nećemo prihvatiti natjecanje sa klubovima iz Srbije, Crne Gore i Republike Srpske’ [BBB: We will never accept a competition with clubs from Serbia, Montenegro or the Serbian Republic], www.index.hr, February 18, 2010. An irony here is that the violent acts of fans have brought several successor states closer together: Croatian and Serbian governments have met several times to discuss ‘football hooliganism’, and they even have an agreement on police cooperation in preventing and controlling football fan excesses.

^43. Private correspondence, June 2011.

^44. ‘Grobari i Delije stižu u Hrvatsku: “Ne postoji sila koja bi nas spriječila da dođemo na utakmicu”’ [Grobari and Delije coming to Croatia: ‘No Power Can Stop Us from Coming to the Match’], www.index.hr, August 2, 2011. Grobari, Partizan's fans, means gravediggers.

^45.Židak, ‘Dopredsjednik NS Srbije’.

^46. For a discussion of the Delije's clout in Red Star affairs, see Pašalić, ‘Teror Delija nad Crvenom zvezdom’.

^47.Petrović, ‘Nostalgia for the JNA?’, 63.

^48.Breber, ‘Mamić’.

^49.Krušelj, ‘Regionalna liga’.

^50.Rogošić, ‘Hajduk i Dinamo’.

^51. ‘U Otvorenom o regionalnoj ligi’ [About a regional league on Otvoreno], Hrvatska Radio-Televizija, February 17, 2009. Otvoreno is a television programme in Croatia.

^52. ‘Je li moguća regionalna liga?’ [Is a regional league possible?], Hrvatska Radio-Televizija, February 17, 2009.

^53. ‘Marković: Želim Srednjoeuropsku ligu, Balkanska ne dolazi u obzir!’ [Marković: I want a Central European League, a Balkan one is out of the question], Sportske novosti, February 15, 2009.

^54. ‘Central European’ Croatia and Slovenia compete with other such countries (i.e. former Habsburg territories) in the Erste Bank Ice Hockey League, Middle European Volleyball Zonal Association and field hockey's Central European Interleague. Slovenia and Croatia also remain separate from Serbia in water polo, where two separate leagues have been established, the Adriatic and the Euro-Inter. Yet, Serbia and Slovenia currently participate in the Central European (American-style) Football League along with Hungary and Turkey. And most of the formerly Yugoslav republics are members of the Adriatic Basketball Association's NBL League as well as the men's and women's handball leagues (Southeast European Handball Association and Women's Regional Handball League).

^55. ‘Regionalna liga dobra ideja’ [Regional league a good idea], Večernje novosti, March 14, 2009.

^56.Milanović, ‘Jadranska liga u’.

^57.Petković, ‘Patriotski u SFRJ ligu’.

^58. In 2010, sociologist Dražen Lalić even pronounced the strongest successor league, the Croatian Football League, dead; see Lalić, ‘Umro je hrvatski nogomet’.

^59.Petković, ‘Patriotski u SFRJ ligu’.

^60. ‘Ivica Osim: Regionalna liga donijela bi novac i plasman u Ligu prvaka’ [A regional league would bring money and a spot in Champions League], Nacional, November 12, 2009.

^61. ‘Facebook anketa Sportskih novosti: Regionalna liga pitanje je vremena’ [Sportske Novosti's Facebook poll: Regional league is a question of time!] Sportske novosti, March 10, 2010.

^62.Jutarnji list conducted the opinion poll on its website (www.jutarnji.hr) and the cited figures were taken on March 2, 2010, by which time responses were no longer coming in.

^63. See the following online forum discussions throughout the former Yugoslavia (their years are noted in parentheses): (2004) http://forum.b92.net/topic/16171-regionalna-liga-u-nogometufudbalu/page__st__15; (2006) http://www.nkmaribor.com/forum/sporocila.asp?id_sporocila = 207952&res = 1; (2006) http://www.sarajevo-x.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f = 14&t = 29258; (2008) http://www.mycity.rs/Fudbal/Regionalna-liga-diskusija.html; (2008) http://forum.b92.net/topic/48047-jadranska-liga-u-fudbalu/; (2010) http://www.footytube.com/forums/the-stands-general-footy-banter/balkan-affairs-15042/; (2010) http://fcinter.forumakers.com/lige-svijeta-f9/regionalna-liga-ex-yu-liga-t567.htm; (2011) http://forum1.orbis.hr/showthread.php?t = 592067&page = 231

^64.Deželić, ‘Regionalna liga’.

^65. ‘Blažević o Prosinečkom i regionalnoj ligi’ [Blažević on Prosinečki and regional league], Hrvatska Radio-Televizija, December 25, 2010; ‘Ćiro: Odnosi Hrvatske i Srbije nikad bolji, sve bliže je regionalna liga!’ [Ćiro: Relations of Croatia and Serbia never better, regional league is ever closer], gol.dnevnik.hr, December 25, 2010.

^66. ‘Moj posao nije miriti Srbe i Hrvate’ [My job is not to reconcile Serbs and Croats], Hrvatska Radio-Televizija, December 31, 2010. The Belgrade newspaper was Press.

^67. ‘Ćiro Blažević: Josipović, Tadić i Prosinečki su “vojnici” pomirenja’ [Ćiro Blažević: Josipović, Tadić and Prosinečki are ‘soldiers’ of reconciliation], dalje.com, December 25, 2010.

^68. ‘Tadić and Josipović podržali regionalnu fudbalsku ligu’ [Tadić and Josipović endorsed regional football league], Blic online, July 18, 2010; Ivan Gojčeta, ‘Josipović i Tadić složni: Podržavamo regionalnu ligu’ [Josipović and Tadić in Unison: We support a regional league], www.index.hr, July 19, 2010.

^69. ‘Nisam protiv “balkanske lige”, ali to ne znači i da sam pobornik iste’ [I am not against a ‘Balkan League’, but that does not mean that I am an advocate of it], Sportske novosti, March 3, 2009.

^70. ‘Srpski mediji: Naši političari žele regionalnu ligu, ali HDZ i SDP su vrlo skeptični’ [Serbian media: Our politicians want a regional league, but the HDZ and SDP are very skeptical], www.index.hr, November 18, 2010.

^71. ‘Pao dogovor, rađa se Istočnoevropska liga (EEFL)’ [Agreement made, East European League is born], www.sportske.net, November 15, 2011.

^72.Ivelić, ‘Balkanska liga’.