One kick too many in the Balkans
When Jeremy Atiyah watched a grim derby
clash beween Croatia
You often hear that the Slavs of
eastern Europe are a tormented lot, oppressed by poverty, nightmares, history,
bad weather and long distances. My experience of this torment was a Croatian
football match.
It was odd enough, on a summer morning
in a quaint Mediterranean port, to see football fans asleep under every hedge
and bush. But this was Split, and it was derby day: the sleeping visitors were
fans of Croatian rivals Dynamo Zagreb, here to visit the stadium of Hajduk
Split. I decided to go to the match as a variant on the normal holiday routine.
And the stadium, on the edge of town, turned out to be the most impressive
sight in the city: architecturally this was Split
Once inside though, I was not at ease.
I found myself jammed in far above the pitch, seated amid thousands of
unaccompanied smoking males, all wearing singlets, stretch- denim jeans and two
or three days of black stubble on their chins. The only exceptions were the
scattering of uniformed people from various branches of the armed forces. I sat
up and looked over the top of the stand at the jagged Dalmatian coast which was
turning purple as the sun sank into the sea.
But the bitter faces around me were
intent on the pitch, where a struggle of strength and menace was about to
begin. The warm-up amounted to players from both teams competing against each
other in 100-metre sprints, while military music swept around the stadium. There
was no chat or humour, just a tense shuffling in the seats.
The game itself did not progress
according to plan. Presented with a first half full of fouls but no goals, the
local fans decided enough was enough. The mass letting off of flares and rockets
from one end of the ground began. In minutes, half of the pitch was enveloped
in a body of rolling purple smoke. The entirety was made luminous by the
flashes and fires from what sounded like an exploding arms dump. I wondered,
idly, how so many sacks of fireworks could have been sneaked into the ground
without anyone noticing. This was no celebration: this was an attempt to
stimulate - to demand - the conditions of victory.
The referee's first reaction was to
throw up his arms and run for shelter. The game ceased, the players fled. A
petulant public announcement followed, presumably to the effect that the public
had better behave themselves or else. It made no difference.
By the time the ammunition supply had
been exhausted, and the smoke had cleared away, the atmosphere of mob violence
and timorous officialdom had triumphed. In this mood after the restart, Hajduk
Split successfully hacked their way to an unhindered 4-0 victory in the final
half-hour.
At the whistle, no one left their
places. Fifty thousand pairs of shoulders were shaking in an almighty ovation.
As I made my way back through the dark streets I saw the stadium lighting up
the city night, resounding with marching music. Back in town I tried to get a
comment on the match from a little brown-suited waiter in my restaurant, as he
translated the menu for me.
"We have very good prstaci with
spinach or chicken," he began. "...and hot spices in rice with a
little salad, we have a little pork with lamb and bacon marinated on a bed of
rice..." It seemed for a moment as though football talk did not enter his
repertoire - until he pointed one finger to the sky and announced: "Yes,
it is very promising, we performed with great spirit! The referee could not
stop us winning today!" Franjo Tudjman could not have put it better.
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