I haven't had a TV for almost two years. It's nothing statement, a demonstrative criticism of a bad program or anything like that, but simply a combination of circumstances. I don't think that the lack of televisions indicates some kind of elitism. A few decades ago, when Susan Sontag liked to declare that she didn't have a television, Camille Palja noticed in a polemic that the one who doesn't have a television openly admits that he doesn't want to know what kind of world he lives in. That is no longer true today. Possibly, but only possibly, it could be applied to someone saying they don't have an internet connection.
I don't have a television, I say, and I don't miss it, except sometimes, when I find myself at home on Monday, at eight fifteen in the evening. Then I would like to have a television. Then I want to look at Zveita.
Maybe there are football fans who, not knowing German, don't even know what it means Das ist Walter, but I don't think there is a single football fan who does not know German and does not know that Zweita stands for the second German football league, Bundesliga 2. Eighteen clubs play in it, which means that there are nine matches in each round. Eight games are played from Friday to Sunday, and the last in each round is on Mondays at 20:15.
Recently, I heard on the radio that a total of 228.928 fans watched the matches of the first round of this year's Cvaita in the stadiums, which is an average of 25.436 per match. It seems to me that the announcer said that the average of Cvajta per match is higher than the average of the First League of Serbia per round.
If you say that you like to watch matches of the English Premier League, the Spanish Primera or the first Bundesliga, to enjoy the matches of Liverpool, Sevilla, Borussia Dortmund (or Mönchengladbach, anyway), Roma or Olympique Marseille, it does not necessarily mean that you like football. We live in a time where, like never before, watching football has become a popular hobby. Players flirt with singers, actresses and models, tabloids write about them in the "celebrities" column. Both geeks and sponsors generally know what "stoppage time" is and what "passive offside" is. In that context, I will not even talk about watching the Champions League, that is, the European and world championships. It's hard to tell football fanatics from pacers here; both of them must follow all that. Real fans can now be detected by some "ticks". They, for example, follow Zveita as a rule.
The last match of each regular round of Cvajta, the one played on Mondays at 20:15, is not only a farewell to that particular competition, but also to the European football weekend. From Friday evening (first Bundesliga) to Saturday afternoon (both first Bundesliga and English Premier League) and Saturday evening (Primera) to Sunday afternoon (Calco) to Sunday evening (French and Primera), several games have already been watched. Someone is always passionately rooting for someone, someone has bet on something, the stake is always higher than the game. When the time comes for the last match of Cvajta, the passions calm down and finally only football remains.
As a rule, good football is played in Zvajta. Good clubs are permanent squealers which sometimes reach the first Bundesliga: Bochum, Cottbus, Kaiserslautern, Paderborn, Karlsruhe, Munich 1860, St. Pauli, Dynamo from Dresden, Fortuna from Dusseldorf... Good matches are played on Mondays at 20:15, good and uncertain. There is almost always a player whose last name ends with "ić" in at least one team. Sometimes the cheering is adjusted according to it, if you don't have a ticket in your pocket on which all the previous matches have already been scored and now only this one is waiting. Then he cheers pragmatically.
I recently had a discussion in a pub with two acquaintances born in the late eighties about the possibilities of a renaissance of local club football. We easily agreed that a regional league, similar to the basketball one, is needed, but I was surprised by their conviction that the First Regional (YU) League makes no sense if there is not a Second. It is not a project that concerns only Belgrade, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Maribor, Niš, Rijeka, Tuzla, Novi Sad, Osijek, Skopje, Ljubljana, Podgorica, Split, etc.; we should also think of Kikinda, Bor, Trebinje (Leotar), Bitolj (Pelister), Banja Luka (Borac), Čačak (again Borac), Zrenjanin (Proleter), Bugojno (Iskra), Šabac (Mačva) and other cities from which stable second league players came. These acquaintances of mine do not remember SFRY, but they know that there is no system without order and at the levels below the highest, in football terms - without (local) bloom.
Germany is (again) the world champion in football and everyone is talking about Bayern, about Borussia Dortmund, about the famous Lineker dictum about 90 minutes, 22 players and the necessary winner. However, this is not the secret of German success. Coffee is not good because of the cream, nor is beer good because of the foam. The secret is somewhere down there, somewhere below. When it comes to football, the secret is in - Cvajta.
