Somewhere at the beginning of Ljutica Bogdana Street in Belgrade, when you turn left from Trg Oslobođenja towards "Marakana", there was a white fast food kiosk.
It was called the "Eternal Derby", and that's where I ate fries with my friend from the younger categories of FC "Crvena Zvezda" after every training session. Potatoes were served to us in a standard pepper bag, the kind that are still used today in fast food restaurants when they pack a burger; it was white and there were two players on it - one in red and white and the other in black and white.
At the end of the eighties, when I went to train football in the pioneers of "Crvena Zvezda", led by Žota Antonijević, the biggest thing was that they let us onto the field of "Maracana". I remember when, after one training session, the coach took the rest of us, including me, from the dressing room from the top of the south stand to the "west" and down the stairs, all the way down to the field. We went down to the track and they let us touch the grass. It was a bigger experience than fries after training.
I was small and didn't go to "big games", but that stadium was something important without knowing why.
After the 180th championship derby, which was played in Belgrade last week, I will never enter that stadium again.
And it's not like I didn't go.
ONE LEVEL OF HATE
The first big derby in 1989, I'm 13 years old, I'm going with my neighbor Buca, an old fan of "Zvezda". His own brother Života and his son Jovan, two years older than me and already a "Partizan" cadet player, in the generation with Albert Nađa and Dragan Ćirić, are going to the "south", and we are going to the north of "Marakana".
That game is remembered for the late goal of Zvezda, the scorer was Vladan Lukić, but "referee Šipka" marked the game. "Patrizan" and its fans still remember him almost 40 years later. I remember that derby because it was so crowded in the "north" that we could barely fit halfway into the stand and we were standing on the stairs, which was never a good choice. At one point, a wave started from the top of the stand and in a second I flew five meters down the stand. Luckily for me, I fell on someone and didn't break anything. Those who were down to the canal were falling into the canal, bringing out children with broken arms and bloody arcades.
It was a derby level, a level of hatred between two neighboring clubs, I understood that live then.
USTASHES AND CHETNIKS
A year later, I was at the same place when "Zvezda" welcomed the powerful "Dinamo" from Zagreb.
"Delije", then a new and united group of "Zvezda" fans, lit over 600 torches at the beginning of the game, so it was said, which was a concept for Europe at that time. 'Come on, they lit so many torches in the crowded "North", but, I later found out in "Tempo", the torches were lit in the shape of 4S - the symbol from the Serbian flag. In the cross and "four S" in four fields, over 600 torches, truly extraordinary.
I remembered that there was so much smoke that I didn't even see the first 15 minutes of the game, and the crowd in the "north" was such that I had to save my head. Who cares what is being sung, chanted, what are the messages.
I later understood that it was another level. It wasn't like the derby: hatred erupted here because they are Croats, because they are Ustasha, and in the "north" there were Serbs, Chetniks. It was still unbelievable to me that I was in that crowd, in that noise, that I could "support" the team I support.
MILITARY RECRUITMENT CENTER
During the nineties, the matter became serious. "Sever" became a recruiting center for paramilitary formations, but also for paramilitary politicians. I began to understand that over time. All kinds of things happened in that stadium and in that "north".
I was there when they threw tear gas on the stand, I was there when Uroš Mišić set fire to a policeman, I was there when one of Dunjić was shot.
They sang to Serbia, Draža, chanted for and against Milosevic, and in the last ten or fifteen years - Russia, Putin, Kosovo, anti-EU, anti-gay.
After that, because of that extreme group from the "north", I stopped going to that stand, and then less and less to the games in general. However, there were bright moments: the match with "Lazio" at the beginning of the 2000s, Žigić's goal against "Roma" in 2005, three goals and an own goal by the forgotten Dejan Lekić against "Dinamo" from Tbilisi in 2009...
However, what has been and remains constant throughout the years and generations is the militarism of the "North". Maybe Serbia wasn't at war in the nineties, as we were told, maybe it wasn't at war with NATO in 1999 either, maybe Serbia returned to the world after October 2000. But the "North" is always at war, and all the time they are some kind of military formation - that's how they behave, that's how they govern, that's how they sing and threaten.
UNPRECEDENTED PAGANISM
Someone will say, why are you surprised that "Zvezda" fans developed a gigantic photo of convicted war criminal Ratko Mladić and together with "Grobari" chanted his name? If it was just that, no one might even react. Like - they already did that and now what?
But all of that was spiced up by what was written under that picture, that pagan cry "The direction of Potočari". It is about the most disgusting thing that ever appeared in that stand and in that stadium. Therefore, it should be closed for all time.
"Potočari Direction" is a new killing of the murdered and insulting victims of the most heinous crime in Europe after the Second World War. That cry, its highlighting, which was done in agreement with the club management led by Zvezdan Terzić, and which was approved by Aleksandar Vučić and which the club itself "proudly" published on its social networks, is a new level of dishonor and shamelessness. Literally no normal person would do that. And what they did, and what they initiated a moment of silence "for the deceased general" is a clear political position that is impossible to justify.
I can already hear them saying: "Doesn't it bother you when they chant 'Za dom spremni' at 'Poljud' in Split"? I heard and we heard. But if your goal is to compete in the magnitude of genocide, then go ahead, but in closed institutions. The stadium and the club that Sead Sušić, Sulejman Halilović, Husref Musemić, Refik Šabanadžović, Ibrahim Gaj played for - to mention only a few - can never allow what happened. These do not know anything else, nor do they admit anything else.
What intelligence, what brain decided to put up such a genocidal slogan on that playground - some investigation should show. Those "Delia" who celebrate their "Orthodoxy", that Terzic who kisses the hands of bishops whenever he meets them in the city, should know that there are some things that should not be done, on the contrary.
BLOOD DONORS
In Potočari, the bones of innocent people who were killed by the army led by Ratko Mladić, "for the justice of God" and out of pure greed, were collected. Those bones have been collected for thirty years and only a non-human can mock them, make fun of them and belittle them. You can only bow to the victims in Potočari - for example, as well as the victims in Prebilovac - and nothing more. When people don't know this, they don't know anything.
"If there is no God, it means that everything is allowed", is the nihilism of Russian fanatics from the 19th century, which we are now seeing live in the management of "Zvezda", the top of the Serbian state and, finally, in the stands of the stadium.
And that's why the few civilians who go to "Crvena Zvezda" matches should stop doing so. No one should go there anymore. It is no longer a stadium, but a crime scene, which has nothing to do with sports. Finally, even today in "Zvezda" footballers of the Islamic faith play, but it is no longer "Zvezda", but one of the factions of Vučić's loyalists. He satisfied them with construction and other jobs, and they pay him back with campaigns like this.
If, as they say, the war in Yugoslavia started in the stadiums, this case shows that it is still going on with the support of the club administrations and the state and that they are just waiting for an occasion to start a new round of "donating other people's blood".
I don't know what UEFA will do, I don't know what FSS will do, but this is definitely not for "sports forums". It is a question for the criminal police and psychiatry.
Now something else needs to be done on that space. For example, a monument to sports and a club that once existed and was the champion of the world and Europe. And then they kidnapped him and made him a party toilet. That is why it should be washed and cleaned. Well, Job again.
