A Game That Divides Cities
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Who would have thought that a football match would have so much importance put on it by it's supporters. At the end of the day it is just a game and not a life and death situation. The "Old Firm Derby" as it is known is the game played between Glasgow Rangers and Celtic in Scotland. This was the game that everyone used to wait and see who won it as normally the winner would come out on top of the league.
I still don't know if it is the case with the make up of the supporters for each club as Rangers were backed by the Protestants and Celtic the Catholics. This was more like a holy war between supporters who used to have a few skirmishes with each other in the past before and after the game. Thank fully those times seem to have disappeared and the few that caused the mayhem have either got too old or have been singled out by technology and banned.
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The match never took place as it was just too dangerous for the players.
There is a game that didn't divide a city, but a country. This game was played in 1990 in what we knew as Yugoslavia between Dynamo Zagreb and Red Star Belgrade. Dynamo is a Croatian team and Red Star is a Serbian team today, but then they were all mixed up in one country. Red Stars supporters are somewhat extreme and that day in 1990 crossed the line that some consider was the spark that ignited the future civil war.
Red Star supporters believed that Yugoslavia needed to be controlled by the Serbians in Belgrade and showed that day how serious they were. More than 3000 Red Star supporters hit the streets before the kick off and then took the fighting into the stadium. Dynamo supporters thought their treatment was unfair as the local policemen ignored the Red Star supporters and targeted Dynamo fans as well. It became apparent that there was an "us" and a"them" and the authority was on the "them" side. It was rumored long before this incident that the local police force was Serbian backed. This must go down as the bloodiest football match in history and it wasn't about football at all. The game never even took place as it was deemed way too dangerous.
In reality Yugoslavia was a cauldron bubbling ready to explode and was babysitting over a half a dozen states all looking to break out on their own. The match was played just two weeks after the Yugoslav Communist Party had lost elections to the Croats. This wasn't about football, but what was happening in the country politically. The Yugoslavian President trying to hang on to power started mixing areas of different ethnicity and religions incorporating Serbia as part of Croatia and that is why the place went nuts. The game of football was just a powder keg allowing Serbian fans to come and show their displeasure on anything that was a Croat.
It may sound crazy to blame a game of football for what happened as the following year civil war broke out and it ended in the total break up of Yugoslavia. The Serbians who wanted to control the country ended up with their own much smaller country where the local derby is between Red Star Belgrade and Partisan Belgrade and is known as "The Eternal Derby" and is not for the feint hearted.
Hi @cryptoandcoffee,Violence, violence, has always existed, here in Colombia, the whole cause, the happiness of the winner makes the celebrations end in death, and those who lose, kill others simply by for being dressed the shirt of the opposing team.
Blessings:(
can i presume that you guys have both seen "the Football Factory?"
It addresses this very thing
You might want to change this bit around or some Scottish person might kill you, on either side. Rangers were backed by the English and the protestants. Celtic were backed by the Irish and the catholics. The whole fued went back to the clubs origins and is rooted in history and wars between england, scotland and ireland. Some things go beyond the actual sport and just give people a place to voice their other issues.
Lol. Just made the change. I am sure I read it somewhere that it was the other way around. Thanks for that though as it is a big thing to some people.
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From @hertz300
That "game" was indeed the spark that ignited the tinderbox ex-Yugoslavia already was at that time.
The Old-Firm is a different game, it's also about religion, but luckily with less bloodshed. But there are more derbies in the world that divide a city or a nation. Like in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where Boca Juniors and River Plate supporters can drink each others blood. And Lazio Roma - AS Roma, can have some pretty insane scenes from outside the stadium... Derbies need to be fun, and have rivalry of course, but no fighting
West Ham and Millwall fans don't get on very well. Luckily Millwall don't have a very good team, so they don't do this often now
can i presume that you guys have both seen "the Football Factory?"
It addresses this very thing
Great movie. There is also green street hooligans as well. It was a big rivalry back in the day.
I haven't and need to look that one up. I take it that it is around hooligans and the stuff they get up to?
yes, and more specifically it focuses on Milwall and West Ham. It's pretty decent, has some of the stars from Lock Stock in it too.
I nearly mentioned them as Millwall were notorious for their fans. I worked in South London so know that rivalry very well.
I suspect it will be impossible to ever completely separate politics from sports. It's simply too lucrative for at least authoritarian regimes to use sports as a propaganda tool. In the west, it's different because professional sports is a commercial industry. But during the cold war the Soviet Union and the NHL held the Summit Series and that was, while an event where the best ice hockey had ever been played until then, also a clash of systems, if you will.
Thing is, big players did not want yugoslavia because it was a really decent socialist country. They found people who were made rich in the process and were willing to start spreading the hate. Fans were manipulated by some leaders who also ended up full of money at the end of it all. And all the countries ended up poorer and in the worst state than before and still not recovered.
Sport also suffered, because than you had 5-6 big clubs and now everyone ended up with 1 derby and a bunch or blah games.
I can believe the manipulation as the leaders could use it as an end to their means.
Sports supposedly unite nations and make friends.
It is supposed to. Doing a follow up to this later as maybe they have a sense of humor now.
We have similar rivalry games like this between colleges and things like that. Most of those are within the same state though, not within the same city. I think there are some more regional rivalries though on a High School level for sure. Actually, the city I grew up in has two large high schools and they are probably each others biggest rival even though they are in the same city and part of the same school district.
High Schools don't kill each other though so there is a little difference. Having a rivalry with another school is good as long as you consistently beat them.
Ah, but you forget this is the US. They do sometimes kill each other over much less...