The human race is prone to jerks. This is a fact that cannot be denied. And in the last decades, one of the biggest is a phrase that has taken root like a norm among the population of the former brotherly nations and nationalities and it reads - former Yugoslavia. This coin, designed by triumphantly intoxicated politicians, participants in the bloody destruction of a solidly designed and above all successful state, within which peoples who had been treated as slaves for centuries from the fringes of great empires were emancipated with lightning speed, penetrated through the media even into the intellectual and scientific circles that have, to the shame of the intelligence they represent, accepted it, like absurd expressions and neologisms of the type all sorts of things or autochauvinism. At the same time, none of the users of that term would dream of saying the former Ottoman Empire, the former Austria-Hungary, the former Carthage and everything in that sense.
It's about fashion and nothing more, there's no big story here, it's important to show a deviation towards Yugoslavia so that it doesn't accidentally turn out that you're outside the trends. And just in case, ensure long-term participation in government/administration/state affairs of all kinds, from education and healthcare to our favorite police forces and their accompanying services, and there are proud armies with waiter lieutenants and lieutenant generals. Because, brother, there is only one life, it passes, and where can you find greater privatization than leading the state in the name of the people, better known as citizens.
Fuck Yugoslavia.
THIS IS HOW IT WAS
Well, you see, dear reader, this is where we come to a problem for all those who feel like winners in the past wars for the creation of the former Yugoslavia. Here, for example - the Turks, a great power, came to Pirot. A man would say, God behind his feet. And now the empire, like an empire, likes to list what it has, now they are the ones in charge of collecting taxes, and in 1498 they wrote in the city register that there were three shops owned by people from Dubrovnik operating in the city. The names are also known - the first two, Radoje Stjepanović and Miliša Radičević, developed a large business in the city itself as part of their own company, having many debtors in the city and the surrounding area, especially in Dubočica. The third, Miho Žila, worked independently as an intermediary between the people of Dubrovnik in Dubrovnik and Vidin, the big book of the Starostavna.
That's roughly when Leonardo da Vinci painted one of his most famous works, the monumental mural The Last Supper in the refectory of the Milanese monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Some 70 years later, in 1568, at the time when Titian was at his peak, it was published in Venice Fishing and fishing complaints Petar Hektorović, a narrative song in three parts in which Hektorović describes his three-day journey from Hvar to Brač and Šolta, a journey on which he was accompanied and kept company by Hvar fishermen Paskoje Debelja and Nikola Zet. The fishermen, passing the time, among other things, sang two Bulgarian songs, as they said in the 'Serbian way'. One mentions Marko Kraljević's quarrel with his brother Andrija, and the other mentions Radoslav Siverinc, who was killed by Vlatko, duke of Udinski.
Here is a somewhat younger example, which I heard from my father and which you will not find anywhere, not even on the Croatian or Serbian Wikipedia, but surprisingly it is on the English one. Namely, in the time of turmoil in 1848, when Marx and Engels issued the Manifesto of the Communist Party in London, it was decided to restore the Croatian Banovina. The ban is enthroned in the Parliament, the ban swears in front of the church prelate, God's envoy on earth who holds the Holy Scripture in his hand. Sorry, please., but things were a bit more complicated. Namely, the bishop of Zagreb, a Slovak and a Germanophile, set himself on fire while his legs were carrying him from that revolutionary fervor, and Josip Jelačić took the oath in the Parliament and was enthroned under the title of ban before the patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Josif Rajačić, no less, no more. By the way, Jelačić is from Petrovaradin in Srem, and Rajačić is from Lucan near Brinje in Lika. From Sremski Karlovac, where Rajačić dined, to the Varadin fortress is a ten-minute ride or an hour's walk, whichever you prefer. And not only that - Njegoš from Cetinje sends a letter to Jelačić on that occasion, in which he says: "Secret destiny has placed you at the head of the Southern Slavs, luck has married you with wonderful advancements..."
THE BIRTH OF A LEGEND
In a year marked by the March demonstrations in Kosovo, the apparition of Our Lady in Medjugorje and the performance gang of four in the Sports Center in Zagreb, the son of Šefik and Jurka (née Gravić) was born in the home of Ibrahimović in Rosengard, the immigrant ghetto of Malmo. A father from Semberija and a mother from Ravni Kotar, typical offshoots of the folk culture of oral tradition that has been bearing fruit here for centuries, named him Zlatan. Along with three sisters and two brothers, the boy with a cheerful character spends summers with his mother's parents in the village of Prkos near Zadar, until the war broke out. The consequences of that pandemonium are multiple, mostly tragic, and the diaspora experienced it just as painfully. However, like never before, she was forced to integrate into the society in which they had been living as guest workers until then, because god knows what was waiting for them "down there". It would be difficult to repeat the story of Robbie Prosinecki, born in Willingen-Schweningen, who spent the summers with his mother's parents in Ježevica near Čačak, that because of his father's love for the South, he came from Stuttgart to Zagreb, played for Dinamo, then transferred to Zvezda and won the Champions Cup , played for the national team, transferred to Real, Barça, Oviedo, Sevilla, Portsmouth. That movie flopped spectacularly, for a long time.
That's how the hero of our story shaved his head in the local Malmo BI club in the early nineties, surrounded by Swedes. Then he started playing alternately for the newly formed FK Balkan.
"In BI Malmo, the Swedish fathers are watching the game and shouting: 'Come on, guys.. It is good!' In FK Balkan, fathers shout: 'Fuck you motherfucker!' I thought: 'perfect, just like at home. I'm fine here.!' I took care of myself as a child, There was no one around me., absolutely no one. But dad also did amazing things, also. However, he was not like other fathers. He didn't watch my games or encourage me about school. He had his own 'booze, my war and my Yugoslavia music. "
And then the old man finally came to watch him.
"I couldn't believe it.! This guy was a real father.. He came to watch the game., and I was completely dumbfounded. I dreamed about it and I started to play with some unreal sick power: Shit, The old man is here.! That's not smart.. ‘Look 'here!', I wanted to scream.. ‘Check.! Your son is the cruelest player in the world!' I think that's one of my greatest moments. He came back to me.. Not that I haven't had one before. But like this... It was something completely new.. After the game, I would run up to him 'Let's chat for a bit., it's like it's only natural that my father is there. "
BELIEVE IN YOURSELF
Those old people of ours... Mine was like that, my uncle was like that, my uncle was like that, the fathers of my peers were like that, famous directors, philologists, painters, sculptors, architects. I don't know a single person to whom this description is not close. Alone, epically alone, each of us, and yet, some strange warmth emanated from those father figures, as if they were carrying a primordial burden not to be blamed for our possible failure. Ancient drama of a climate. They actually did us a favor. You learn early that you can only rely on yourself in life.
In the dedication of his autobiography "I, Zlatan" it is written: "I want to tell all children to think, especially children who feel that they are different and different from others, who do not always fit in the middle or are rejected in some way. It's okay not to be like others. Keep believing in yourself. It paid off for me, despite everything."
What does it look like in practice? You have a footballer from Sweden, a nation that is relevant in world football because in 1958 a 17-year-old kid from Brazil showed up at the World Cup on its soil and turned the game upside down.
His name was Pele. The biggest planetary names that came from there to its appearance were Henrik Larson and Thomas Brolin, whom even their mothers hardly remember. And then there appeared a brash and nimble dribbler from, from all sides, the despised Jugo-Pečalbar milieu, who in the first 20 years of the 21st century thundered through Ajax, Juventus, Inter, Barcelona, Milan, Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester United and picked up 19 (!!!) different titles, some championships, some cups, some European Cups. He also reached the LA Galaxy by surfing the fields of America, to the general delight of the precariat there. And at the age of 39, he returned to Milan, with whom he competes for the Scudetto, thereby ending Juve's streak of nine consecutive titles. What more can I say? It's all unrealistic.
photo: screenshotIN CELEBRATION OF FOOTBALL AND LIFE: Zlatan
I don't know if there is a player in the history of football who has been at the top all the time from the start, playing for nine different clubs, eight of which are the world's top, and in four decades, scoring over 500 goals in his career, of which the one given to the English at Wembley probably the most attractive in the history of football and the sublimate of the game as such. And this is a man who did not win the Ballon d'Or of France football.
A QUESTION OF ATTITUDE
This is where we come to the real story, about the magnificent feat of a fundamentally disenfranchised, truly brave man who does not bend his personality neither on the field nor off it, with heroic determination. When Gareth Bale moved from Tottenham to Real for a then incredible 100 million euros, Ibrahimovic said: "No footballer is worth that much. So there they booed Zidane, who in my opinion is the best football player of all time. All this reminds me of my move to Barça. I dreamed of coming to Barcelona. Although, after all, I think it's best that some dreams stay that way. However, it is the media that made a big story out of everything and influenced the amount of the transfer. Also, it is not negligible how desperate Real were to bring in a sound name." And? What? Well, nothing. They just screw you up for this honor or that voted trophy, and then a decade later, last week to be precise, Barcelona's recent leading man Bertomeu was arrested on charges of hiring multiple social media companies to create fake accounts through which they were discredited. people he considered his enemies. Sound familiar?
He never hesitated to say what he thought, clearly, openly, articulately, with arguments. It would confuse the interlocutors to such an extent that they would be left speechless, like Arrigo Sacchi in a live broadcast on Italian television, to whom he snapped that he should talk less given that he had spat at him while he was playing in Catalonia. With Pep Guardiola, he never managed to have a humane conversation about his game and his position in the team, he avoided like the devil from the cross. The problem arose immediately at the start, when Zlatan was placed in the center and Messi on the wing, which caused tons of goals worth 40 million euros of reinforcements, which brought the latter's colleague to the brink of despair, and he immediately complained to the coach to return him to the old position, which he did. Realizing that he was surrounded by eggheads, after just one season he packed his bags and headed back to Lombardy. It's a matter of attitude, not money.
That attitude was seen recently in a tweet-clip of the celebration of the five hundredth and 501st career goal. Zlatan plays in a hotel room while blaring in the background It's morning Nade Topčagić, compatriot from Bosnian Posavina. With the same instrumental introduction, he appeared on the stage of San Remo as a guest of the evening. It's not a small message, not at all naive. The morning is smarter than the evening, they say in the area where it comes from. The longing for the fulfillment of the wish for the presence of someone who is constantly absent is the greatest trauma of the Yugoslav life space, and everyone recognizes this in one form or another. And therefore, forgive, great man, that recently the dredge showered you with shameful insults from the lodge fourth pillar (you can think), which, like an overblown brat, you didn't even look back on, with not a single word, not a single comment, as if it didn't even happen, even though the world media was buzzing about it. It is a real lesson in true greatness, a public lesson in grandiose gestures devoid of spectacle.
It's an honor to grow old with you.
