Victory in a game that has never been played

None of us realized that the unanimous game of Dinamo and Red Star at Zagreb's Maksimir was an introduction to the bloody war.

On the thirteenth of May, 1990, another derby of the "big four" of Yugoslav football was to be held - a match between Dinamo and Red Star. Perhaps this would be just one of the numerous matches of these clubs before the first multiparty elections in Croatia were held and that the Croatian Democratic Union, led by Franjo Tudjman, who was previously retired from Tito's League, was not beaten by the Croatian Democratic Union general and for some time the president of the Yugoslav sports club Partizan from Belgrade.

On the one hand, as a trainer, the legendary player of Dinamo, Josip Kuja, and on the other hand, the second of the five great "Stars" Dragoslav Sekularac. In the years before 1990, the formation of football clubs of "accidental names" began to form, and thus formed "Grobari", "Bad Ble Boysi", "Horde zla", "Armada", "Manijaci", "Fukare", " "," Delije "...

There are those who only followed football at that time and we did not think that even football could symbolize, on the one hand, the winner of the election in Croatia - HDZ and its leader Tudjman, and on the other side never stronger Slobodan Milosevic, who was a year earlier Gazimestanu, on the occasion of the 600th anniversary of the Kosovo Battle, showed that as a joke in one place, almost one million people and peaceful souls can gather: "We are again in the battles and in battles. They are not armed, although they have not yet been excluded."

Heroes and war criminals

With this speech, Milosevic became an absolute Serbian leader, and that famous sentence from another speech "No one should beat you" may have claimed more than 3,000 "Delija" who went to Zagreb for the match. Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan, then pretender to the position of the fans' leader, appeared on the bench, and a year later, and a fierce war criminal. By entering the stadium they started a crusade of the eastern stadium of the stadium Maksimir.

I believe that all older fans of football are still in the memory of the fan conflict scene, the police attack on only one group of fans and the blow of Zvonimir Boban, a Dinamo football player, sent to the policeman Refik Ahmetovic.

None of us at that time realized that this game was, in fact, an introduction to the bloody war that took place in our area. We, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, were still peaceful. Our multiparty elections were planned only for the end of 1990 and we could not figure out what was happening in the minds of people who had taken up such a degree of nationalism and hatred towards each other.

The match has never been played. Zvonimir Boban was proclaimed a national hero on one side, while the other (Football Association of Yugoslavia) suspended him for six months and even charges were raised against him for an attack on an official person.

The final epilogue of this football match was 79 injured policemen and 59 spectators. Although it remains somewhat unclear how many policemen were fitted with batons, and some even with guns, from fans without any weapons.

And we were not even aware that politics has long since entered the sports fields, fan groups, and in the militias.

As in the years that came, so at that time there were at least two versions of the same event. For one event, Serbian nationalists were deployed, and for other HDZ and Croatian services, in order to clear police lines from Serb cadres. Both of them later celebrated the victory in a game that has never been played.

When granting you a 'guarantor of peace'

The US CNN ranked the fourth place among the five football games that changed the world. I'm not sure if it changed the world, but it's certainly the country we were born into and where we grew up and grew up.

Exactly 20 days later, Yugoslavia's soccer team played a friendly game with the Netherlands in the same stadium as part of preparations for the World Championship in Italy in 1990. His indignation at the previous events and suspension of Boban, fans at Maksimir showed a tremendous whistle on the intonation of the Hymn Slovene, the whistle blows to the Yugoslav national team and insulting the selectors and players.

And we? We still somehow believed that it was just the current situation and that everything would be settled soon. After all, we then had a strong militia, and the Yugoslav People's Army, as a guarantor of peace. We did not even dream that the "guarantors of peace" only two years later would demolish Sarajevo and parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina from all possible weapons and weapons.

• 13 May, 2018
• 1544 views