DJ’S JOTTINGS – NUMBER 12 (SERBIA
At the end of September six of us headed out for a long weekend to the Serb capital of
Our trip is organised by the Bursar of an international school in the
Just as well that we had a good evening meal as the hotel breakfast is basic to say the least. Only one drink and one item from the food menu are allowed. The coffee is of the up-standing spoon variety and the bacon as in bacon and eggs is smaller than a postage stamp in size. Omelette is generally the best option. Someone is even brave enough to request butter with their bread.
Spend the Saturday morning sightseeing, mainly around the Fortress of Belgrade where the two rivers,
The three matches we see over the weekend are all in the top division, starting on the Saturday afternoon at FK Vozdovac for the local derby with league leaders OFK Belgrade. Our local contact has organised tickets for us and on arrival we are ushered into the office of club Secretary, Svetlana where we are given complimentary tickets and team sheets as well as the lowdown on who’s not playing: “he has 5 yellow cards, he has broken something, a leg I think” and so on. Also get introduced to the Manager / Coach.
The Vozdovac Stadium is an unusual two and a half sided ground with lots of white stone walls and red plastic seats. The only cover is for the central section at one end and for two sections of seats on the near side located beneath the backs of shops and houses that have their frontages on the main road outside! Vozdovac are second bottom in the 12-team Prve Savezne Lige but threaten an upset by taking the lead. OFK look the better side but only manage to convert one chance from a stream of second half crosses to draw the match. There is no programme produced and the crowd is estimated at about 750 although they do create a reasonable atmosphere with several songs being sung by the supporters of both teams together.
Sunday afternoon provides a trip to Zemun, a fishing town on the Novi Beograd side of the River Sava and used by many locals as a weekend retreat from the city centre. The 12,000 capacity Gradski Stadium is a quite large slightly sunken bowl round an athletics track. Plastic seats all round except for behind one goal that has just a fence. The ‘ultras’ opt to stand in their seated section. The only cover is provided by the overhang from an elevated press / VIP cabin. The Secretariat and other offices are set back on one side with ornamental flowerbeds leading up to them. The open-air club café set in one corner to the rear of the seats provides a good view of the game while waiters serve refreshments. Entrance costs less than £1, no programme but team sheets are eventually tracked down.
FK Zemun was formed in 1945, originally as a factory team called Galenka. They spent a long time battling to stay in the first division before relegation in 1967. They recently returned to the top flight and even qualified for the Intertoto Cup on one occasion. Going into today’s match with mid-table Bezanija they are bottom of the league with just one point. In a fairly dull game Zemun have a penalty saved on the hour mark and concede the only goal 3 minutes from time in front of an estimated crowd of 670. As a footnote to the game, I later find out that Bezanija’s President and his bodyguard are blown up and killed by a car bomb on the following day. Early reports stated that the motive for his murder remained unclear but that he had been seen arguing with a Zemun official after the game! Goran Mijatovic had however been investigated for a couple of murders and cocaine smuggling and had recently served 10 months for extortion. Apparently several teams have owners with dubious backgrounds.
A wild taxi ride across town gets us to our final match with plenty of time to spare. The Crvena Zvezda, or Red Star stadium is also used as the national ground and can hold about 51,500 although capacity was close to 100,000 at one time. It’s a fairly ugly graffiti ridden concrete bowl from outside, but more impressive once inside with a sunken pitch and continuous seating all round. About 30 rows around most but sweeping up to 50 rows with Press and VIP areas above that at the centre of the main stand side. Most of this side is covered but the continuous roof round the rest would only protect about the rear 10 rows. Four tall concrete floodlight pylons. About £3.50 for a seat anywhere but still no sign of a programme and they had not even issued for their European games.
Red Star were formed in 1945 as either the police or university team, depending who you believe, taking over from the pre-war Jugoslavija club. One of the biggest clubs in
Disappointing crowd of about 3,500 witnesses a decent game with visitors FK Buducnost Banatski Dvor putting on a good display with only the final ball letting them down. Red Star play some nice football themselves and go on to win with two second half goals, one converted by Brazilian Ailton. Red Star move to the top of the table and the home fans create a reasonable atmosphere for such a small crowd, their extremely loud fireworks ensuring that no spectators could possibly fall asleep. Probably just as well we had not been there a week earlier when the whole of
Final meal of pork steaks with chips and salad washed down with Montenegran wine to end an excellent trip.