Serbian football - home and abroad

Although Hugo Buli, a student returning from Germany, introduced Belgrade to football in 1896, the Serbian national football didn’t play their first match until 1911, where they lost 0-8 against HASK (Hrvatski akademski sportski klub). After the 1^st World War the Slavic people of the South came together and formed The First Yugoslavia. The Yugoslavian football organization was founded in 1919 and has been a member of FIFA since 1921.

During the the First and Second Yugoslavia the best achievement was 4^th place in the World Cup in 1930 and 1962, in the European Championship they became Runners-Up in both 1960 and 1968. After the break-up of the country in 1991 Belgrade continued as the head-quarter for the Yugoslavian football association. Due to war and sanctions the team was banned from international competition until the qualification for the World Cup 1998, where they eventually lost to the Netherlands in the Round of 16.

In the qualification for the WC 2006 the team competed as SCG. Serbian friends have told me that they were wondering: “What the hell is this SCG???” It turned to be an abbreviation for Srbija I Crna Gora – Serbia and Montenegro. Even more strange was the fact that when the World Cup started this country didn’t exist anymore, due to Montenegro’s independence achieved at the 3^rd of June 2006.

Since 2006 the name of the team has been Serbia. One by one the former republics of Yugoslavia, now independent countries, has parted with the Serbs and today the Orlovi – Eagles – has just started the qualifier for 2012’s European Championship in Poland and Ukraine. After beating the Faroe Islands away, they made a disappointing draw against Slovenia at Marakana Stadium,nick- named after the famous once 200 000 capacity stadium in Brazil and homeground for Crvena Zvezda – Red Star. This ground used to take 110 000 spectators, but today’s capacity is just the half.

Club football

Crvena Zvezda is the only Serbian club to ever win the European Cup. They beat Marseille on penalties after a 0-0 draw in Bari in the 1990/91-season, which were the last season of the SFR Yugoslavian league. During the SFRY the club won the championship 19 times. The runner-up is Partizan with 11 titles. In this period the all-time top-scorer was Slobodan Santrac who played for Partizan, OFK Beograd and Galenika Zemun making a total of 218 league goals between 1965 and 1983.

After SFRY the two clubs of Red Star and Partizan has continued the hegemony of Serbian football, with the former winning 6 Championships and the latter 11. This makes them natural rivals and the derby has been ranked by English Newspaper Daily Mail as the 4^th most prestigious in the World after Old firm in Glasgow, Fenerbahce – Galatasaray in Istanbul and the Argentinian clash of Boca Juniors and River Plate in “El Classico”.

The origin of the clubs are to be found at the end of the Second World War when the army established FK Partizan and Crvena Zvezda was initiated by members of the Serbian United Anitfascist Youth League, which were a fraction of the Communist Party.

It could have been an addition to these two clubs if FK Obilic could have continued what was started by Arkan’s ambitions to create a new club which could compete on the International arena. The para-military leader recruited fighters in Bosnia from the hardcore fans of Red Star (more about Serbian football-fans in another blog article). When he wasn’t awarded the post as director of the club he went on to create his own club named after the Serbian hero Milos Obilic who pretended to be a deserter and presented in front of the Ottoman sultan Murad the First, Obilic stabbed the latter to death and was shortly killed himself.

The football-club won the National Championship the season 1997/98 and became runners up the following season, much due to a rather original tactic; the opposition’s players were given an offer they seldom could refuse…  Some players might also have been a bit nervous in front of the fans at Milos Obilic stadium in Belgrade where they could risk being pointed at with guns. After the death of Arkan in 2000 the club was run by Ceca, which probably didn’t care much about football. Today they are playing in Zonska liga which equals 4^th division.

Serbian teams in Europe

When missing some of the advantages Obilic had from playing in their National League their only attempt at getting a place in the UEFA Champions League resulted in a 1-5 loss on aggregate to Bayern Munich in the season 1998/99. But Serbia in Europe is more than the glorious victory of Red Star in ’91. They have reached the semi-finals on several occasions and became Runner-up of the UEFA Cup in 1978/79. Red Star have also played in the group-stage of the UEFA Cup/Europa League.

Partizan’s European campaign had its best moment when beating Manchester United in the European Cup’s Semi-Final in 1965/66. They played Real Madrid in the Final at the Heysel Stadium where they scored the first goal, but after two Spanish goals Partizan lost 1-2. In the season 2003/04 after Lothar Matheus had brought the League title to Partizan stadium they eliminated Newcastle, which had reached the third place in the Premier League season 02/03. In the last qualifying match Partizan advanced on penalties, after a dramatic 1-1 after two times 90 minutes. Both teams won their away matches… In the following CL-group stage the Crni-bele – black and whites – made decent results, just failing to qualify for the play-off.

Now Partizan have a new chance to achieve a good result in Europe. After miraculously beating Anderlecht after a poor performance at home in the first leg, also advancing on penalties, they draw the teams of Braga, Arsenal and Shakhtar Donetsk. The latter team is tonight’s host in Donetsk of Eastern Ukraina. Shakthars best achievement in Europe is winning the 2008/09s UEFA Cup, todays Europa League, by beating Werder Bremen 2-1 in Istanbul.

Tonight the men of Aleksander Stanojevic will have to fight bravely and show improvement from the matches so far in the season. Maybe the 3-0 win over FK Rad in the domestic league show indication of this? Will the Moreira, Mladen Krstajic and Sasha Ilic be able to back up Cleo for a surprising win 1800 kilometres from home? Follow the match at Radio-televizija Srbije – RTS – or in any other possible way. Hajde Partizan!!!