Thirty-One Nil

by James Montague

  Both men starred in their respective away matches. Štimac was the rock at the heart of the defence in Belgrade, if he does say so himself, where Croatia secured a 0-0 draw. ‘I remember the first game in Belgrade. I played it. I was one of the best players on the pitch.’ His other big memory from that game was a floodlight failure that plunged the stadium into darkness. Štimac still suspects it was a deliberate attempt to intimidate the team. ‘The lights went off, just like that,’ he smiles. ‘You didn’t know what is going to happen next. It was kind of intentional to bring us into shock.’ The return fixture saw Mihajlović arrive back in Zagreb. When the home fans hung a flag with ‘Vukovar’ on it, Mihajlović fell to his knees in front of it. He maintained it was to show respect to all those who had died, but it incensed the crowd, who were further infuriated when the game ended 2-2, despite the Yugoslav team having played with ten men for the entire second half. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia finished top of the group and qualified for the European Championships. Croatia was eliminated. ‘I didn’t play because I had two yellow cards but we had five players out injured, Prosinečki, Boban, Bilić …’ Štimac says by way of explanation for the failure, but clearly still smarting from the humiliation. Especially the fact that, in his opinion, a perfectly good goal had been disallowed. ‘One of the balls was put behind their goalkeeper. It was behind the line by thirty-nine centimetres.’

  Today’s game has been singled out as a potential flashpoint ever since the 2014 qualification draw was made. It was agreed that away fans from both teams would be banned, for both matches. It was also, arguably, the toughest group of all in European World Cup qualification. Belgium was in the group, as well as a third former republic of Yugoslavia: Macedonia. Scotland and Wales would have their say on the outcome, too. ‘We are favourites,’ says Štimac before he leaves to get back to his players. He talks about protecting them from the storm that is about to hit them. Many of them were born after the war and have no memory of it. To them the war stories are largely second-hand tales. For some, like Australian-born defender Josep Šimunić, the war was filtered through the enlarged lens of a refugee family’s experience many miles from home. Others now played with Serbs in their club teams with no problems. ‘I will take this on to my chest,’ Štimac says of the expectation that will bear down on his team at kick-off. ‘We are grateful to God that we are the generation that has the opportunity to win the game on Friday and give our nation happiness and joy. But that does not mean,’ he says, correcting himself so as not to sound overly nationalistic or triumphalist, ‘that we need revenge against someone.’

  **

  Novi Sad, Serbia

  The Football Association of Serbia’s brand new training complex can be found thirty kilometres north of the capital, Belgrade, near the city of Novi Sad. Stickers on the glass of the automatic sliding doors at the complex entrance warn visitors of articles that may not be brought in: cigarettes, guns and, most importantly, ice cream. Inside, frightening looking security guards prowl the lobby, ready to pounce on any forbidden frozen dairy products. Siniša Mihajlović is giving his daily press conference before Belgrade’s sports journalists. Serbia hasn’t enjoyed the same success as Croatia in recent years, but that hasn’t stopped them producing players who star at top European clubs. Nemanja Vidić is one Serbian player, at Manchester United; Branislav Ivanović, at Chelsea, is another. Still, Mihajlović is now trusting in youth and has constructed, as he will say on numerous occasions over the course of the next week, the youngest squad in Europe for Serbia’s World Cup qualification campaign. Perhaps he has learned from his time at Red Star Belgrade, when a team of players barely out of their teens managed somehow to win the 1991 European Cup. But those players were old before their time and had thrived in a poisonous atmosphere. Like Štimac’s team, almost all of Mihajlović’s current side of youngsters were born around or after the war. Either way, they are too young to remember. While Mihajlović, Štimac, even the Kosovar midfielder Fadil Vokrri, who played for Partizan Belgrade, had been raised on inter-republic rivalries, none of this generation of players would have played in a match steeped in the kind of hatred that engulfed Croatia v Serbia. Most of them had probably never even set foot in Croatia before. Yet in a few days they will travel to the Maksimir Stadium in Zagreb.

  The Maksimir has a special place in both Croatian and Serbian lore. It is often referred to as the site of the first battle of Croatian independence. It was here that, in 1990, a match between Dinamo Zagreb and Red Star descended into a riot between Red Star’s Delije ultras, led by Arkan, and Dinamo’s Bad Blue Boys. Famously, Dinamo’s star striker Zvonimir Boban launched a kick at a policeman who was allegedly attacking a Dinamo Zagreb fan, cementing his legend for ever with Croatian nationalists; Boban’s was the first kick of the Croatian War of Independence. Never mind that Dinamo Zagreb played the whole of the next season in the Yugoslav league, nor the fact that the ‘Serbian’ police officer Boban attacked was in fact a Bosnian Muslim. But the stadium was still a sacred space. Outside the Maksimir a shrine has been built to commemorate the members of the Bad Blue Boys who died fighting in the civil war. Serbia’s current crop of young players will be walking into a time machine. They will be on their own, too, because of that ban on travelling fans. The only Serbians allowed into the ground, other than the players and the officials, will be a busload of journalists. Special precautions are being taken in case a ‘welcoming party’ of Croatian fans is waiting for them at the Serbia/Croatia border. The Serbs even have their own armed security guards.

  It has taken me far longer than it should to get to Serbia. The two countries may be neighbours, but links between the two are kept to a bare minimum. A handful of half-empty buses set off on the seven-hour drive from Zagreb to Belgrade. On arrival in the middle of the night, a Serbian taxi driver in his fifties vents his fury at me about the US, England, Tony Blair and NATO. He only stops when I convince him with the few phrases I know that I am in fact Polish. His face turns from hateful scowl to beaming happiness in a heartbeat. The Poles are acceptable. He believes we are in fact now brothers. On the drive from Belgrade to Novi Sad it is clear that Serbia is visibly poorer than Croatia. While Croatia is preparing to join the European Union in a few months’ time, Serbia’s sense of injustice has festered in isolation. It is partially understandable. Serbia has endured two wars, a period of UN sanctions and seen its territory shrink with every successful secessionist claim. The next in line is Kosovo. I thought of Fadil and the Kosovar FA. He had played here, in Belgrade, just as Slobodan Milošović was rolling back the autonomy Tito had granted Kosovo in the 1970s. He would play his home games at the Partizan Stadium, the same stadium at which that famous Marshal Tito Cup final had taken place in 1991. By then he had long gone, and was playing for Fenerbahçe in the Turkish league.

  Siniša Mihajlović is now sitting in a back office after finishing his press conference. He looks older, wiser and greyer. His mop of long hair that opposition players would frequently tug has long gone. Also absent is the rage. He is calm and friendly. ‘I don’t want to open old stories,’ he says when I ask him about that match in 1991. ‘I know what I said and he [Štimac] knows what he said. And only the two of us know what was really said in that moment.’ Over the years both Mihajlović and Štimac had made various claims as to what was said, and Štimac also made his views known. ‘Here is a man who spread lies about me such as that I was gay, he also said he could strangle me with his bare hands,’ Štimac had explained in an interview long before he became Croatia coach. But now both men were national team coaches. They had responsibilities and their actions could have far greater and far more inflammatory repercussions than a single player’s indiscretion ever could.

  As a player Mihajlović had been blessed with a sublime left foot. He still holds the record for the most number of goals scored from free-kicks in Serie A, where he played for Lazio and Sampdoria. But in 1991 he was an angry, talented young man conflicted by the world around him. Yet his
early life in Vukovar was happy; idyllic even. ‘I had a great childhood, we never asked someone if they were Serbian or Croatian,’ he recalls when I ask him about those early days growing up in Croatia. ‘You only recognised that by their name or which club they supported. Hajduk and Dinamo, you are Croatian. Red Star, Partizan, Serbian. Nobody asked which country you are from until one day. And then everything changed.’ His talent was spotted in the smaller clubs around Vukovar that had produced a slew of incredible players. Many of the future Croatia national team, including Slaven Bilić, had been born from the same teams. Mihajlović also very nearly signed for Dinamo Zagreb in 1987, but his stubborn nature got the better of him. As the Guardian’s Jonathan Wilson wrote in a profile of Mihajlović, ‘he was told by Mirko Jović, the Croatian coach of the Yugoslavia Under-20 side, that he would be selected for the youth World Cup only if he signed’ for Dinamo Zagreb. Incensed by what he saw as blackmail, he instead chose to sign for FK Vojvodina. It was to prove a pivotal moment in his life. Rather than joining the other Croatian players who went on TO star at the 1998 World Cup – a moment every bit as important to Croatians as independence itself – Mihajlović eventually moved to Red Star and embraced the growing Serbian nationalism at the club. It was here he met and befriended Arkan and watched from Belgrade as his home city was destroyed. ‘My mother is Croatian, my father was Serbian, I was born in Vukovar and I remember one Vukovar,’ he says when I ask him about his home city. He has only returned once, after the war, but the experience was so harrowing he has not been back since. ‘Everything was crushed. I met some soldiers after the war. They had some instruments, to detect bombs, and showed me a way to my old house,’ he recalls of his return. The bomb detection devices were necessary because his neighbourhood had been heavily mined. ‘There was nothing. Mine was the first house in Vukovar that was crushed.’ He toured the city but nothing existed of the old life he remembered. ‘I tried to walk to my school and I could not recognise the way,’ he says. ‘I had lived there eighteen years. Someone had to show me the way. It was crushed. There were no houses, nothing. It’s a totally different city now. For me it is too hard to be there.’

  As the careers of Mihajlović and Štimac progressed, the war ended, new ones began and new countries were formed. Both retired and found their way back to their respective national teams. They remained the best of enemies, until a chance meeting a few months ago when the pair were at a UEFA conference that brought together the national team coaches of all fifty-three members. It was the first time in twenty-three years that they had spoken to each other, the first words since that match in May 1991. ‘We had a coffee, sat down and discussed a few things,’ Štimac had said, coolly, when we spoke back in Zagreb. ‘As national team managers for our countries we have responsibilities to act responsibly. Not to bring tension. Not to put gasoline on the fire.’ Did you get on, I asked Štimac. Did you like him? ‘I didn’t have a problem with him,’ he replied non-committally. Mihajlović, though, was cautiously positive. ‘We cleared something between us,’ he said. ‘I can say he has respect for my side and I feel some respect for his side. Now our relations are clear. That old story stays history.’ Mihajlović believed that now was the time for peace. He knew what the match meant to the Serbs and the Croats. The national team, he says, was very important for his country, especially after the wars and the sanctions and the current financial hardships that Serbia is currently experiencing. ‘We have additional obligations to give something more, to give victory in Croatia so they may be happy with the win. But if we lose,’ he says, ‘it is like a knife.’

  Both coaches believe that, if they could bury the hatchet, others can follow suit. ‘I will be peaceful during the game and we must put aside what has happened between our nations, between our countries,’ Mihajlović says. ‘What I can guarantee is full respect from our side for our opponents. We will show the highest level of fair play. I suspect they will do the same and I suspect sport and fair play will win. I want to show that we are a civilised people.’ For many of Serbia’s players the old stories are indeed history. ‘I asked the players: “Where were you born? Have any of you ever been in Croatia, in Zagreb or Split?” The answer was no,’ he says. ‘The players are so young they don’t know what we had and what we lost. They live today in a new world with a new country. They do not have the impressions or memories that we have who were born in Yugoslavia.’

  **

  Zagreb, Croatia

  Ban Jelačić Square in central Zagreb has been filled with fans drinking since the morning of the game. The white and red checked shirt of the Croatian national team can be seen on all sides, but the main throng of supporters are gathering around the statue of Josip Jelačić, a nineteenth-century Croatian nationalist leader who had fallen out of favour with Yugoslavia’s rulers but who had been rehabilitated since independence and his statue restored to his position, on his horse, sword in hand, on the square. Around him a few dozen skinheads are singing nationalist songs while letting off smoke bombs. Several of them give Nazi salutes as they sing, a reminder of the nastier edge of Croatian ultra-nationalism.

  During the Second World War, a prototype Croatian state was run by the puppet Ustaše regime, a fascist movement that butchered hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Roma until the Axis fell. Their chants and salutes can still be heard at the Maksimir, rehabilitated and repackaged as no more, many fans claim, than an expression of nationalist pride. The straight-arm salutes, though, are impossible to misconstrue. The riot police stationed nearby lean against a shop window, viewing their behaviour impassively. Every Croatian town and city seems to be represented here. Their names have been carefully written over the white strip in the middle of the Croatian flag. One place has been honoured more than any other: Vukovar. On the road towards the Maksimir Stadium thousands of fans can be seen all the way to the horizon. They have taken over a main junction near the stadium and have laid a Croatian flag with the word ‘Vukovar’ emblazoned across its centre. The crowd crouches low, shaking the huge flag as they chant the city’s name before raising it up above the throng. A female blow-up doll decked out to look like a Serbian player, its front and back orifices prised open, is passed above the crowd, too. ‘We will fuck them!’ a fan screams with a smile on his face, holding the blonde, big-lipped rubber doll by the ankle as I take a picture. At the nearby shrine to the Bad Blue Boys who died in the fight for Croatian independence fresh flowers have been laid and candles lit.

  The great and good of Croatian society are sitting in a VIP tent outside the stadium watching a traditional folk band play on stage. An obscenely large gourmet buffet has been laid out as beautiful girls, employed for the occasion ostensibly to give directions, stand in pairs looking moody. Davor Šuker is moving effortlessly between tables, cracking jokes and chatting up any woman who appears to be on her own. Šuker had played in the same Croatia team as Štimac. While two of the abiding memories of the 1998 World Cup were Croatia’s incredible run to the semi-finals, and Slaven Bilić’s hilariously faked facial injury, successfully engineered to get France defender Laurent Blanc sent off, it was Šuker who had scored the six goals that had taken them there in the first place, winning him the Golden Boot in the process. He has a reputation as a party animal and a ladies’ man, but is now chairman of the Croatian Football Federation and appears to be on his best behaviour. ‘We are old people in football and this match means more than football, of course. It means a lot in the Balkan regions,’ he says of the game. For Šuker it is vital that the game goes ahead peacefully. The world is watching. Croatia will be joining the European Union in July and the match offers a chance for the outside world to see how the country is dealing with the intolerance that has blighted the terraces of Croatian football since independence. ‘I am sure there will not be one problem in the crowd or on the pitch,’ he says defiantly. ‘I am the chairman and I need to be calm. We need to bring this game to an end. We want the three points but we don’t need them. It is more crucial for Serbi
a.’

  Croatia’s success in recent years has obscured an important point about their improbable rise. The country’s population is just five million yet they qualify regularly for the finals of major championships and their players can be found in Europe’s best sides. ‘We qualified for Euro ’96 and France ’98 and made a big pride to be a Croat,’ Šuker says, revealing the importance of the national team in projecting his country’s identity on to the world stage. ‘We are just five million people. Everyone recognises us now, our small country. It is not easy to beat Italy, to beat England, to beat Germany. But Croatia always does this. I think we made a great introduction for Croatia in the world. And now we have a new generation of players like Modrić and Mandžukić.’

  As the night draws in and kick-off approaches, the remnants of the old world that Štimac and Mihajlović both know, but hope to counter, are in the ground. The freezing Maksimir Stadium is packed on all sides. It is strange-looking: all four stands are uncovered thanks to a botched attempt at renovating it. Three tiers rise into the sky, yet only the top two are accessible. The bottom tier has been hidden behind thick blue material, no doubt a measure aimed at preventing a repeat of the pitch invasion and riots that took place here during the match between Dinamo and Red Star in 1991. The songs of the crowd move through the air like an electrical current. Every inch of space at the front of the stands is covered in flags and banners. As the teams walk out on to the pitch, and each Serbian player’s name is announced, a roar rises from the stands in a frenzied crescendo, reaching a peak when that of Siniša Mihajlović is called out. Two sections of crowd chant ‘Vukovar, Vukovar’ when he appears. Later they will chant ‘Kill the Serbs’. A huge banner, covering three stands, is brought out as the whistle is blown to start the match. It translates: