Stage Set for Political Theater at Belgrade Soccer Match
The hottest ticket in town is for a seat to watch Yugoslavia and Croatia settle old scores tonight in their national soccer teams’ first match since the Yugoslav federation began to break up eight years ago.
Seats for the game are so hard to come by that die-hard fans are paying up to $30--about double the official price--on the black market. But this time they’re not blaming the shortage on scalpers.
Most people believe that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s political allies bought up a block of 20,000 seats in the 52,000-seat stadium so his supporters can try to drown out jeers of protest against the regime that are certain to come from the stands.
Coming so close to the Serbs’ defeat in Kosovo province after 11 weeks of North Atlantic Treaty Organization airstrikes, and with domestic opposition to Milosevic building, the soccer game is likely to be as much political theater as it is a sporting event.
Protests, such as whistling and sitting down during the national anthem, singing a monarchist anthem “God of Justice” or perhaps worse, “is something that cannot be avoided,” said one soccer fanatic, Dragan Curcic.
“The country is in a very bad situation. This is a matter of prestige,” said Curcic, 36, a leader of the Partizan Belgrade club’s supporters, who will be out in force at tonight’s match in the Serbian and Yugoslav capital. “Nobody can cheer up people like the national soccer club can.
“But even a victory will be celebrated briefly,” he said, “because we are in such a bad situation overall.”
By mutual agreement, the Croatian team wasn’t allowed to bring its fans here. Memories of the war between the two countries earlier this decade are still too painful, hatreds too deep.
Many Serbs and Croats still see each other as mortal enemies, and if the Yugoslav team looks headed for defeat, police will brace for a riot by local fans hoping to end the match early.
Win or lose, the Yugoslav supporters have a lot bigger troubles to deal with, such as their war-ruined economy and the opposition’s struggle to get rid of Milosevic.
Hours after the game ends, at least 100,000 anti-Milosevic protesters are expected to rally here. The Thursday protest will be the first mass rally against Milosevic here since the NATO bombing campaign ended two months ago.
Milosevic, who has been indicted on war crimes charges by an international tribunal, has shown no sign of giving in to demands that he resign, and Yugoslav Justice Minister Petar Jojic warned that the government will come down hard against “even the slightest incident” at Thursday’s rally.
“Vagabonds and hooligans were destroying Belgrade once before,” Jojic said. “We won’t let it happen again.”
Vuk Draskovic, a popular and unpredictable opposition leader, took some of the steam out of the rally by announcing Tuesday that he won’t be one of the speakers.
He was in a snit because the loose coalition of groups trying to remove Milosevic, including the Serbian Orthodox Church, wouldn’t give Draskovic the honor and influence that comes from speaking last.
Ousted Yugoslav army chief of staff Gen. Momcilo Perisic, who recently formed an opposition party, also reportedly is staying away from the rally.
The opposition’s defections and infighting feed a growing cynicism among Serbs who are angry with Milosevic but can’t see a worthwhile alternative among his enemies.
Tonight’s match may be the best chance for the folks in the bleachers to show what they think of the whole lot.
There is little that Yugoslavs take more seriously than soccer--except perhaps war--and there are often frightening similarities between the two in Yugoslavia.
Serbian police had to break up a riot among rival fans in the heavily bombed city of Cacak last month, as soccer thugs kicked and clubbed their victims on the field in full view of TV cameras.
Arkan, a notorious Serbian paramilitary leader whose real name is Zeljko Raznjatovic, once led Red Star Belgrade’s fans and is believed to have recruited some of them for his militia, which has fought in more than one Balkan conflict.
Several of the men lining up against each other tonight in Belgrade’s Red Star stadium once played together on Yugoslavia’s championship junior team, before the country broke up. They include a number of stars from European professional teams.
Serbian player Sinisa Mihajlovic, a star with Rome’s Lazio professional club, is a hero on the Yugoslav squad for more than just his powerful left foot. He was born in the Croatian village of Borovo Selo, near Vukovar, and lost his family home when Croatian forces battled the Serbs in 1991.
Zvonimir Boban, captain of the Croatian team, became a hero by taking a stiff kick at Yugoslav police as they beat fans during a riot at a 1990 match.
Some soccer faithful here, in fact, might even imagine that Yugoslavia would not have disintegrated into an eight-year blood bath if not for a bad penalty kick in the 1990 World Cup quarter-finals in Italy.
That Yugoslav national team, which featured players from all of the federation’s republics in almost equal proportion, lost to Argentina in a 4-3 penalty shootout.
Argentina went on to the finals, and lost to Germany, 1-0. To those nostalgic for the days when Yugoslavia was whole, the national pride of being in a World Cup final--not to mention winning--might have been magic enough to save Yugoslavia.
Tonight’s match between Yugoslavia and Croatia is part of a qualifying round for next year’s European championship.
It was originally scheduled for March 27, but NATO began bombing three days earlier and the game was postponed. A rematch is set for October in Zagreb, Croatia’s capital.
Milosevic’s Socialist Party of Serbia and the neo-Communist Yugoslav United Left led by his wife, Mirjana Markovic, answered the opposition’s ticket-hoarding charges without directly denying them in a polemic published in the pro-government newspaper Politika.
“Even if it were so, that only means [the two parties] have in their ranks real supporters who managed to book seats in time to attend the game,” the commentary said.
Milosevic rarely goes out in public, even at the best of times, so no one expects him or his wife to show up at the stadium tonight.
“That would be an even greater sensation than if we won 5 to nothing,” Curcic said.
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Special correspondent Boris Mitic in Belgrade contributed to this report.
