The goalposts of transition: football as a metaphor for Serbia's long journey to the rule of law

Abstract

Football (soccer) provides a useful prism for analysis of the long transition of the Serbian state and society since 1991. To a striking extent, the world of professional football and the attendant phenomena of financial corruption and football hooliganism have informed both the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia and the current concerted attempt to create a “European Serbia.” During the 1990s, football in Serbia to a significant extent became synonymous with organized crime and the criminalization of the Serbian state. Since 2000, the persistent phenomena of crime, violent hooliganism and lethargic reforms have mirrored the difficult and halting transition of the post-Milošević state. Although recent events highlight the reluctance of the Serbian authorities to confront these problems, both government and sports officials are coming to see reform of Serbian football as a key element of the establishment of the rule of law.

Keywords:

• Serbia
• transition
• sports
• football

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge the helpful comments of Peter Bugge, Zlatko Jovanović, Mark Biondich and the two anonymous reviewers on earlier drafts of this article. Any errors are those of the author alone.

Notes

The print run of the book was 300,000 copies. During Tito's lifetime, his birthday was traditionally celebrated with a ceremony (slet) at the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) stadium in Belgrade.

This article discusses European football, known in North America as soccer. “Fudbal” and “nogomet” are, respectively, the Bosnian/Serbian and Croatian words for football or soccer.

The present article can usefully be read in tandem with Richard Mills' recent article on Serbian football, which was written virtually simultaneously.

This article draws extensively on two documentaries aired by the independent Serbian television channel B92. This media outlet, which began broadcasting as a radio station in 1989, has a strong track record of producing and broadcasting investigative reporting, documentaries, as well as producing news coverage critical of the powers that be in Serbia. As will be seen below, a number of recent investigative series produced by B92 have spurred the Serbian Prosecutor's Office into action.

For example, in East Germany, BFC Dynamo in Berlin was affiliated with the Stasi, the East German secret police. In Czechoslovakia, Dukla Praha was affiliated with the Czechoslovak military. And in Bulgaria, “Bulgarian sport and in particular football was always used for the underpinning of the asserted ‘leading role’ of the communist party in society.” Spartak was the team of the Bulgarian Ministry of Internal Affairs, and CSKA (like in the USSR) was the military's team (Mintchev 169–70).

“Torcida” is the Brazilian Portuguese word for an association of football fans.

The name “Delije” derives from a Turkish word meaning “crazy,” “strong,” and “violent” (Imami 60). The Gravediggers allegedly received their name from their opponents, who felt that the black-and-white colors of Partisan seemed similar to those of mortuary personnel. Milan Popović offers a brief guide to football fan clubs in Serbia (Popović).

“From around the mid-1960s, too, popular newspapers in England began increasingly to use a military rhetoric in the reporting of soccer matches and crowd behavior, and, as a result of the interaction of these two trends, soccer grounds began to be publicized more and more as places where fights regularly take place” (Williams, Dunning, and Murphy 363).

See also Huber. Politika chose to put the violence in a pan-European context, calling it “Heysel,” a reference to the Belgian stadium in which dozens of fans were killed and hundreds injured in 1985 (Janković).

In the multinational Soviet Union as well, “football developed as a theatre for duplicitous subversive communications, making a contribution to the working up and circulation of the multiple ideas of nationalism which hastened the breakup of the Soviet state” (Sugden and Tomlinson 92).

By contrast with the amount of scholarly attention devoted to the role of the JNA in the collapse of Yugoslavia, relatively little has been written about the role of the police, i.e. the federal and republican ministries of internal affairs. For a solid treatment of the subject in Croatia, see Barić. On Bosnia and Herzegovina, see Nielsen.

Yugoslavia had other late great sports successes (Perica 288n10).

The available literature on Arkan is marred by sensationalism, but see Stewart. On Arkan and football, see Foer 17–34.

The Ustasha was the Croat fascist movement in the 1930s and 1940s. “Balije” and “Šiptari” were derisive terms for (Bosnian) Muslims or Bosniaks and ethnic Albanians, respectively.

Paragraph 8 (b) of UN Security Council Resolution 757 of 30 May 1992 states that UN member states shall “take the necessary steps to prevent the participation in sporting events on their territory of persons or groups representing the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro).”

The presence of state officials on the boards of Partisan and Red Star dates back to the socialist period (Pravila, episode 4).

At the beginning of this episode, we are told that Partisan and Red Star combined earned more than [euro]300 million in transfer fees alone during the period 1991–2007. A list of prominent transfers for both clubs is then shown, along with figures and names of the destination clubs. However, simple research into the transfer fees shows that the producers appear to have failed to distinguish between Deutschmarks and euros. Although the true figure is undoubtedly in excess of [euro]100 million, it is considerably below [euro]300 million.

Ivan Slavkov, the president of the Bulgarian football association until 2005, and son-in-law of socialist Bulgaria's last leader, Todor Zhivkov, played a crucial role in this evolution.

There are also indications of the transnational scope of the problem. Sreten Jocić (“Joca Amsterdam”), a well-known figure in the Serbian and broader European criminal underground, has claimed in court in Serbia that he enjoyed the protection of Bulgarian state security and of the Bulgarian football club FK Lokomotiva in the 1990s (Adžić).

In drafting legislation to combat organized crime, Serbia has looked to Italy, for example the law to confiscate undocumented assets, which took effect on 1 March 2009 (Poligraf, “Obračun”).

Johannson was allegedly targeted for assassination by Arkan (Pravila, episode 1).

In particular, the radio station and news agency B92 and the staff of the magazine Vreme, led by veteran journalists such as Jovan Dulović and Miloš Vasić.

Ceca's sister, Lidija, was also arrested. Ceca was originally arrested on suspicion of involvement in the assassination of Prime Minister Đinđić. A police raid of her house revealed large caches of weapons and ammunition. Despite unauthorized possession of these firearms, Ceca was not charged with any criminal acts and was released (Pravila, episode 3). Ceca's broader significance in the context of “turbofolk” music, cultural nationalism and the Milošević regime has been explored by Gordy and in the B92 documentary series All That Folk (Vuletić).

At the end of this episode, a clip is shown from Ceca's New Year's concert in January 2007. Among those in attendance were then prime minister of Serbia Vojislav Koštunica, his advisor Aleksandar Nikitović, Minister of Internal Affairs Dragan Jočić, Minister of Infrastructure Velimir Ilić and the prime minister of Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik.

The 12 March 2008 resignation letter of Zvezdan Terzić is available on the website of the Serbian Football Association.

The non-arrest of Ceca prompted an impatient B92 talk show host to ask Serbian public prosecutor Slobodan Radovanović whether Ceca enjoyed political protection. Radovanović asserted that all persons were equal before the law. The incredulous host replied with a rhetorical question. “How are those cases [of Ceca and Džajić] different, other than that Dragan Džajić has not sung at the Serbian New Year's [concert] in front of the prime minister and the entire elite?” (Poligraf, “Obračun”).

On the dominant political narrative in Serbia in the 1990s see Gordy and Milivojević.

The most recent incident occurred in Igalo, Montenegro, in July 2009, when Marko Vesnić, a leader of the Delije and the owner of a private security company, was killed in an apparent financial dispute (Vijesti).

Two other Delije were convicted and sent to prison for shorter sentences for the same attack. The Serbian Prosecutor's Office declared that it was also investigating the role of the management of Red Star and its stadium in the incident.

The threats against the judge took place against a backdrop featuring several assassinations and assassination attempts against judges in Serbia (B92, “Atentat”).

Sadly, there is a precedent for such fan violence against players. Veljko Mijailović, the President of the Police Union of Serbia, asserted that such behavior was bound to continue as long as Serbian clubs did not respect FIFA's regulations (Poligraf, Interview; Foer 7–8).

The Serbian police are investigating pro forma the “T-shirt incident” (Georgijev, “Divljanje”; B92, “Šavija”). The impact of large fines and tougher prison sentences on football hooliganism has been debated. Some argue that, rather than deterring violence, such penalties instead ritualize and coordinate, or simply relocate or export it (Williams, Dunning, and Murphy 364).

The reference is to the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party.

The “construction mafia” (građevinska mafija) is the subject of a forthcoming B92 investigative documentary series called Official (Ab)use [Služena (zlo)upotreba]. These “mafias” should not necessarily be construed as separate entities, as intertwining links characterize them.

This is not to say that such incidents do not occur at all in other sports. Thus, in 2003, Croat and Serb water polo fans faced off in Slovenia, and the Croatian embassy in Belgrade was defaced, and in 2007 Serbs and Croats clashed at the Australian Open tennis tournament. Matches in the Adriatic League of basketball have occasionally also featured nationalist incidents. And a disconcertingly large percentage of those accused at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia were avid practitioners of judo. For a consideration of football violence compared to fan violence in other sports, see Ward. See also, with respect to water polo, Tracy and Loza.

Of the former Yugoslav republics, only Croatia has competed well at the highest level, finishing third at the 1998 World Cup. Basketball fans engage in similar fantasies regarding a former Yugoslav “dream team” (Perica 273).

As reported by Georgijev, some of the Delije's leaders are well aware that fan-based management is not a long-term solution (Georgijev, “Javi”)