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Express News Service
ST PETERSBURG: While Croatia was playing against Russia in the quarter-finals of the World Cup in Sochi, a woman in the National Team jersey celebrated all her achievements in the VIP category. President Gianni Infantino and Russian Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev watched in stoic silence.
After the match on penalties, this woman, Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, entered the locker room and celebrated with the players, While the optimists would have watched the antics of Grabar-Kitarovic and seen only his boundless love for the sport, many others saw it as a rather squeaky attempt worthy of earning political brownie points, with the presidential election in just eighteen months
If such was the case, Grabar-Kitarovic could not have chosen a better step to try to earn these points; Football in Croatia has always been more than twenty-two players behind a ball. Is there a country born from a football match? For many Croats, the Yugoslav wars – which ended with the formation of their country – started with one.
In 1990, a riot broke out at Maksimir Stadium in Zagreb, during a match between Croatian club Dinamo Zagreb and Belgrade.
Zvonimir Boban, future captain of Croatia and one of the heroes of the World Cup semifinal in 1998, kicks a policeman while he's trying to save a fan of Zagreb. Today, a plaque in front of the Maksimir stadium represents police in riot gear. His inscription is: "For all the fans of Dinamo, for whom the war began May 13, 1990."
Of course, this is not quite true. The Yugoslav wars began a year later, and the Red Star and Dinamo played the entire season of the first Yugoslav league.
But many Ultras from Dinamo Bad Blue Boys and Delije – their Red Star counterparts – fought that night. continue to fight for opposing sides in the Yugoslav conflict, including the infamous Serbian war criminal Arkan
The team's semifinal of 1998 was another unifying exercise for a nation that had then barely half a century. Like Grabar-Kitarovic on Saturday, the first president of Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, had lunch with the players during their match against France and saw them in their locker room before the match.
Tudjman saw football as a central element of national exercise. building; he has often described Croatian athletes as their greatest ambbadadors. Fast forward twenty years, and the semifinal of Boban and Davor Suker was dubbed by Luka Modric and Ivan Rakitic. Once again, football has turned out to be much more than just a game for the Croats.
Before the start of the World Cup, Croatian football was grappling with a corruption scandal that saw Modric and his team-mate Dejan Lovren perjury. If the reaction of supporters to Belgrade face the penalty of Rakitic had already pbaded, they have already been forgiven. The team's race also comes at a time when Croatian nationalism is rising again; his qualifying match for the 2014 World Cup against Serbia saw a return to the dark days of the Yugoslav wars, with "killing the Serbs" shouted from the stands.
"The images we are currently seeing from all parts of Croatia suggest that nationalist frenzy has begun, and everyday life is subordinated to football," says Dario Brentin, a researcher at the University of Graz, who is currently working on a thesis entitled "Sport and nationalism in post-socialist Croatia"
"This reminds me personally 1998, the first World Cup that I really consciously followed.I do not remember the last time the national euphoria on football was so palpable. "It's perhaps no wonder that the biggest cheerleader of their World Cup is their president, who will be re-elected in a little more One year
A ploy could help him keep his office.After all, it's Croatia, a country born from a war unleashed by a football match. [19659004] [email protected] om
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