FOOTBALL SUCCESS - PRESENT FOR TUDJMAN
AIM Zagreb, 14 July, 1998
By winning the game against the Netherlands, the Croatian national team has completed an unusual star-lit journey which without any doubt is the most glorious sporting achievements of this country, but also one of the biggest successes Croatian sportsmen have achieved in the past eighty years, regardless of the colours they competed with. The success is all the greater when one takes into account that the Croats quite unfortunately lost the game against the French, while they won with such superiority against the Dutch, probably the most impressive team of this World Cup, as if they had played with Japan or Jamaica again. Players who had not been very successful last year in their clubs and who had very often sat on benches for spare players, at the World Championship, at certain moments played brilliantly, and some of them, like Mario Stanic or Dario Simic, have reached the very top of the Championship. Even Drazen Ladic, the goal-keeper who last year amused the audience with his blunders and catastrophic defence, all at once became a player who is rightfully compared with Croatian and ex-Yugoslav stars among goal-keepers by connnoisseurs in coffee-shops.
But, an even greater miracle is that the team ranking third in the world is a politically controlled crew in which not a single member fails to express loyalty to president Tudjman and the current regime and which with its ideological discipline and pathetic statements reminds more of an eastern German women's 4x400 relay team from the eighties than a modern football national team. The coach of the Croatian national team, Ciro Blazovic is a protege of Franjo Tudjman himself, and therefore irreplaceable. He admits that he obeys each and every president's suggestion and says that the latter has an ingenious talent for football which is unique in the whole wide world. Blazevic also says that he loves and respects the president more than his own father, and that he would "immediately jump in the fire for his sake". Captain of the team, Zvonomir Boban, says that all the players "adore Tudjman and hypocoristically call him Nyofra", and that his presence in the box at the stadium is the greatest support they can imagine. Davor Suker devotes his goals to the Croat people and absolutely all of them salute the national anthem with their hands on their hearts which is in fact the party salute of the Croat Democratic Community (HDZ) in Croatia, and nobody except football players and members of this party uses it.
President of the "Croatia" football team, picturesque history teacher from Zagorje, Zlatko Canjuga, says that we owe this success to the flawless "football policy" of the ruling party which was resisted by the opposition parties and certain independent intellectuals. President of the Croatian Football League, Tudjman's favourite and intimate "friend" of Tudjman's daughter, Branko Miksa, stresses that placing in semi-finals is the greatest Croatian success after operations Storm and Flash and that we will realize fully what our football players have done in a few years time.
The triumph of the regime is additionally stirred up by media, especially Croatian Television which in its festive mood never fails to mention Tudjman's name, and regularly appeals on and stimulates fans to celebrate the success in the streets and squares. Indeed, that is what they are doing, by waving Croatian flags, fireworks, shooting, singing patriotic and Ustashe songs and cheering football players and Dinko Sakic. Croatian media have not uttered a single word about Ustashe pranks among football fans. It is neither politically correct nor desirable that they defend such songs and chanting, but it is desirable in the current constellation of political relations. It is clear to the regime that the people do not want to express love to the HDZ and Tudjman any more, and that this is the reason why football fans do not even mention them, but every Ustashe outburst and cheering to the former commander of the concentration camp in fact mean political support to the ruling party. Those who, after Croatian goals at the World Championship, have Dinko Sakic at heart simply have nobody else to vote for but the HDZ.
After the winning games with Romania, Germany and the Netherlands, there were demolished trams, broken shop-windows, a few lightly and a few seriously wounded citizens, but this did not concern anybody much, least of all the police. The tram drivers resolved the problem in the most efficient manner possible. After demolition of their vehicles after the first game with the Germans, they simply stopped driving half an hour before the end of each game that followed. And since city transportation is not important for survival and operation of the regime, nobody except perhaps people who had to walk to Novi Zagreb, even wondered how come the trams simply stopped running.
The evening after the game with France was also interesting. Instead of dispersing in sorrow and disappointment, there was trumpeting again, singing and shooting, less than after a victory, but nevertheless enough to make a casual observer conclude that in the Croatian football hysteria, winning is not important any more. And although there were broken shop-windows again as well as injured persons, regime-controlled newspapers carried titles such as: "Citizens of Zagreb Dignified Even When Defeated". That evening and such titles can take us back to the beginning of the story on football and sporting celebrations in Croatia.
In the seventies and the eighties, at the time of the greatest success of Yugoslav basketball players and a victory of football players here and there, it was not customary (and the police was not tolerant like today), to celebrate victories by racing around the city, trumpeting at small hours, organize gambolling and gathering on city squares and shoot from small arms. The precedent happened in 1990 during the World Championship in Spain when mostly organized by taxi-drivers and citizens who clutched at Yugoslavia as the last straw, Sarajevans celebrated victories of the national team in the streets. They were joined by citizens of Belgrade, Podgorica and Skopje, but it was all mostly cynically presented in Zagreb media. Then, defeat in the game with Argentina came. Taxi-drivers went out in the streets of Sarajevo again, people shouted and waved flags, and the next day, Zagreb Vjesnik carried a commentary in which surprise was expressed with the people who celebrated even defeat, and the commentator could not but link the affair with the celebration of 600th anniversary of the defeat in Kosovo that had taken place a year before that. Only eight years have passed since the World Championship in Spain, and the Croats in Zagreb celebrated the defeat against the French, which this time for the very same Vjesnik was a sign of dignity. Unfortunately, nobody remembered the battle in Kosovo.
Football success has instilled an enormous amount of self-confidence in the ruling party. Certain Dinko Cutura, a prominent member of the HDZ, who plays a similar role to that of Gorica Gajevic of the Socialist Party of Serbia, has already announced early elections and victory of the HDZ, although it is not quite certain whether the third place in world football is sufficient to make the Croats forget their own survival, lose their senses and vote for Franjo Tudjman again. There is one thing that even the most reasonable people, and reason is something that speaks against the HDZ and its leader, must admit to Tudjman - this man seems to be better versed in football than in history, and he is much more skilful in football personnel policy than in forming governments.
After in 1978 Argentina brought the title to general Videlli, this is the first world football success which threw itself at the feet of another general. There is something depressing in this fact. It means that the era still has not passed in which dictators, at least in unimportant things, achieve world success, it is quite possible that Slobodan Milosevic will receive this summer the gold medal of the Basketball World Championship from the hands of the Yugoslav national team. And the fact that people are still dying in Kosovo or that after the victory against the German team, for more than one hour, the Croats from western Mostar shot at eastern part of the city, does not seem to be important at all.
MILJENKO JERGOVIC