Svašta-RA

[Sjevernokorejskipas]

RŠD Velež osnovan je pod uticajem KPJ, kao i Abrašević istih dana, zbog okupljanja radničke omladine Mostara i Hercegovine i širenja revolucionarnih ideja. Činjenica povijesno/historijska, sviđalo se kome ili ne. Danas došlo doba ne samo iznošenja svoga mišljenja nego i svojih činjenica, bez obzira na istinitost istih pa eto ti ga četnici i ustaše borci protiv fašizma a partizani i saveznici redom koljači i zločinci. Petokraka zvijezda je iz samog središta pakla izašla, ti užasni Jugosloveni nosili su je na zastavi. Fuj,pljuc.....A šta tek reći za Amere u njih ni manje ni više 50 tak istih....Onomad nazovi novinar Pavković piše kako su u Mostaru nogometom ugasili tu rugobu od znakovlja aludirajući na titulu HŠK Pepeljara iz Međunožja.Nema Veleža, nema Starog mosta, samo ustaše i UZP Herceg Bosna. I sad kaže on meni nema Veleža...Ima ima dok je nas koji pamtimo. Zato proklet bio ko u grb dirne, ko zamijeni dres. Da budem jasan, ne treba politika u butigu nikako ali niti ne pomislite da mijenjate tradiciju ovog kluba. Veliki Buda je učio da zlato treba uzeti i od neprijatelja a otrov ni od majke pa ako je na tom tragu onaj prijem kod zlatnog kašikara eventualno prolazi, možda kani napraviti tribinu, ali uvijek imati na umu da nas je politika dovela do ponora i neka njih podalje. Kažem ja!

[Sjevernokorejskipas]

Sjevernokorejski pas podnio ostavku !!! Preuzeo funkciju samostalnog navijača.....
(Meha Cojla Press)

[Tracy1]

Sto si stao pisi malo

[Sjevernokorejskipas]

Čekam novog kouča....a i ima dosta teksta za pročitati, za razliku od ostalog foruma, ima nekog smisla i pronicljivosti. Što se mene tiče, Karačić - Ivanković pravo riješenje. Oba su gospodina, sa znanjem i manirima a ako dovuku i Pavkovića top.
P.S. Upravo, čitaš li?

[Tracy1]

Čekam novog kouča....a i ima dosta teksta za pročitati, za razliku od ostalog foruma, ima nekog smisla i pronicljivosti. Što se mene tiče, Karačić - Ivanković pravo riješenje. Oba su gospodina, sa znanjem i manirima a ako dovuku i Pavkovića top.
P.S. Upravo, čitaš li?

Citam i slazem se

[Sjevernokorejskipas]

Sto si stao pisi malo

Razmišljao sam o ostavci a sada razmišljam da još više pišem!

P.S. Džemile, poslao sam ti zahtjev za prijateljstvo na FB. Jaaaaaavi se!

[Sjevernokorejskipas]

A ljepote..gledate li vi ovo?
Skijaši rade gang bang sa Hrčcima! Prvo ga metno Srbin, pa onda Slovenac a sad i orginal jodler ....

[Sjevernokorejskipas]

Baš dobar pornić u gradu pobratimu. Osek. Od večeras. Pao.
Mi Hrvati. Čepin, Zagreb, Nuštar,Posušje, Vukovar,Mikleuš,Tenja. I pazi ovo:Imocki. Hrvacki Imocki u kojem garant žive Rvati. Liga nacija. Ispravak krivog navoda: Liga felacija. Plače lik na TV: oh ne, Vlašić mekano primanje, oni vade svoje adute, jako neugodno za Dalića, naši se potpuno predali (užitku?) .A Fricel ko Fricel taslači nevinu, slobodnu, neovisnu, ne vadi nikako.

[Sjevernokorejskipas]

Dobro, ovo je bilo lijepo za opustiti se. Vraćamo se malo na našu crvenu zemlju.
Sve više mi se dopada stav Kluba jer sam upoznat kako se počelo balahati s (ukradenim?) parama u ostalim sredinama. Evo pitari se dali u lov i na Brandaa, poslali ženu u Brazil da mu dohaberi da je paštu skuhala. Mujaga Visočak, stari i mudri bosanski Faraon, je davnijeh dana rekao da je onaj koji stoji sa dvije noge na zemlji stabilniji je od onoga sa jednom. Koga možemo mi privoliti da dođe igrati u crvenom dresu? Osim igrača iz nižih liga u obzir dolaze igrači iz Montenegro prve lige. Po podacima Inteliđens sporta njihova godišnja zarada je deset puta manja od one u BiH.
Radar mi pokazuje dva lika: našeg Adnana, koji je doduše fizički slabašan ali zabija, i željeni stoper, likom i proporcijama crnogorac, Igor Čuković.
Pa eto....

[Sjevernokorejskipas]

Iz provjerljivih izvora:
- Brko na Arenu
- Toni pod BB
- Ibrin mali na Rujevicu

[StarmoUnited]

Baš dobar pornić u gradu pobratimu. Osek. Od večeras. Pao.
Mi Hrvati. Čepin, Zagreb, Nuštar,Posušje, Vukovar,Mikleuš,Tenja. I pazi ovo:Imocki. Hrvacki Imocki u kojem garant žive Rvati. Liga nacija. Ispravak krivog navoda: Liga felacija. Plače lik na TV: oh ne, Vlašić mekano primanje, oni vade svoje adute, jako neugodno za Dalića, naši se potpuno predali (užitku?) .A Fricel ko Fricel taslači nevinu, slobodnu, neovisnu, ne vadi nikako.

I na ljepotici što komunisti sagradiše za Mediteranske igre, a nevina, slobodna i neovisna ne zna ni održavati ni donositi trofeje na nju, opet Imocki pa redom Bobanova Draga, Grude, Žepče, Roško Polje (između Posušja i Duvna, ne bih znao bez google maps), Podhum Livno.
I Feral Tribune je bio vizionarski kad je objavio naslovnicu Knin se Livnom izbija.

[Sjevernokorejskipas]

Jako dobro uočeno....sve zemljopis BiH...i što bi rekao Bora Čorba, naravno Imocki...Rvacki...puši, samo puši, rvacko pepeljaro....

[Sjevernokorejskipas]

Gdje ima ovo:
dobili licencu a ne mogu igrati kod kuće ????
Kad mi je jedna rekla da je napola nevina, kao nije joj do jaja ušao, tada se još znalo šta je šta. A ovo?

[Sjevernokorejskipas]

[Sjevernokorejskipas]

[OnlyLeft22]

Grande Livorno

[OnlyLeft22]

Gledaj ove dominacije. Peta liga ali njih libo racku

[Sjevernokorejskipas]

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Europe-Asia Studies
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Velež Mostar Football Club and the
Demise of ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ in
Yugoslavia, 1922–2009
Richard Mills a
a
University of East Anglia
Available online: 09 Aug 2010
To cite this article: Richard Mills (2010): Velež Mostar Football Club and the Demise of
‘Brotherhood and Unity’ in Yugoslavia, 1922–2009, Europe-Asia Studies, 62:7, 1107-1133
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2010.497018
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Velezˇ Mostar Football Club and the Demise of
‘Brotherhood and Unity’ in Yugoslavia,
1922–2009
RICHARD MILLS
IN 1972 JOSIP BROZ TITO—PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIALIST Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia—addressed members of Velezˇ Mostar Football Club on the occasion of
the club’s fiftieth anniversary:
Comrades, you are on the right path, not only since yesterday, but from your
origin . . . Furthermore, you have remained politically united. I want the future to foster
brotherhood and unity, which is needed to steadily become stronger and to be consolidated. I
want especially that you, the young generation that follows sport, become the first soldiers of
those who will guard against every nationalist assault . . . You must be united; you should
cherish and strengthen the brotherhood and unity of our nation. That is our socialist way.
(Sˇkoro 1982, p. 6)
These carefully chosen words provide a brief insight into the esteem in which Velezˇ
Mostar Football Club was held in communist Yugoslavia. In fact, as this essay will
demonstrate, Velezˇ not only may claim quite legitimately to have been ‘in step with the
revolution’ in Yugoslavia (Sˇkoro 1982, p. 10), but also to possess impeccable
communist credentials stretching back as far as 1922. However, from the perspective
of today’s ethnically riven and physically shattered post-communist Mostar, Tito’s
1972 speech also contains a haunting element. This essay will argue that in attempting
to fulfil Tito’s request to guard ‘brotherhood and unity’—and therefore preserve the
multiethnic character of Yugoslavia and subsequently of the Republic of Bosnia &
Hercegovina—Velezˇ became a distinct target for divisive ethnic nationalists during the
Bosnian civil war of 1992–1995. Moreover, it is argued that the decentralising policies
of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (Komunisticka Partija Jugoslavije , KPJ), along
with its subtly evolving stance on nations and nationalities during the final decades of
its rule, bear a great deal of responsibility for the fratricidal war that carved Bosnia &
Hercegovina into ethnically homogenous territories during the 1990s, and resulted in
the ethnic cleansing of Velezˇ Mostar—newly **** as a ‘Muslim’ club. Viewed in
EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES
Vol. 62, No. 7, September 2010, 1107–1133
ISSN 0966-8136 print; ISSN 1465-3427 online/10/071107-27 ª 2010 University of Glasgow
DOI: 10.1080/09668136.2010.497018
Downloaded by [University of East Anglia Library] at 07:28 17 May 2012
this light, Tito’s plea that Velezˇ should continue in ‘guarding and developing a
sporting spirit’, and especially in preventing ‘nationalist tendencies’ (Miladinovic´ 2009,
p. 8), stands both as evidence of the club’s prominent role in the development of
Yugoslav socialism and as a poignant reminder of how swiftly ‘nationalist tendencies’
ripped the country apart in the wake of communism’s demise.
Duke and Crolley (1996, p. 3) argue that ‘the extent of overlap between the state and
nation in a given country is crucial to an understanding of the politics of football in
that country’. It will be argued that in the particular case of Velezˇ it was actually the
club’s attempt to transcend the complex overlapping ethnic boundaries of both the
Republic of Bosnia & Hercegovina and the Yugoslav Federation which eventually
resulted in the persecution of the club by ethnic nationalists. This is because the
conflict of the 1990s resulted in the destruction of a multiethnic solution to politics and
the state, to which the club had been an active adherent, and its replacement by
narrow monoethnic successor states and statelets. As a formerly proud adherent of
brotherhood and unity within Tito’s Yugoslavia, Velezˇ was faced with an identity
crisis as it was effectively left without a state. With its own ideology and ‘nationalism’
based upon a country that no longer existed, the club was unable to avoid becoming
the victim of ethnic categorisation and the subsequent ethnic cleansing that this
invoked (see Figure 1).1
FIGURE 1. REMINDERS OF VELEZˇ’S PAST GLORIES CAN STILL BE SEEN THROUGHOUT WAR-TORN
MOSTAR TODAY. HERE, A FOOTBALL BEARING THE CLUB’S NAME ADORNS A HEAVILY SCARRED
BUILDING IN TODAY’S ‘MUSLIM’ EAST OF THE CITY
1
All photographs included in this essay were taken by the author during 2008 and 2009.
1108 RICHARD MILLS
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However, the identity shift that was enforced upon Velezˇ both by the collapse of
Yugoslavia and by the specific targeting of it by ethnic nationalists, has bestowed great
symbolic meaning upon the club in the period since the civil war. For whilst Velezˇ’s
members continue to advocate a multiethnic solution in the form of a united Bosnia &
Hercegovina, the plight of the club has tied it deeply to the Mostar Muslim community
which de facto it has come to represent. In the preface to a 2009 book about the club,
the prominent Bosnian literary figure and Oslobodenje journalist Alija Kebo stated
that in a time when ‘almost everything is destroyed, demolished and ruined’, Velezˇ
continued to inspire love in generations of people from Mostar. ‘Without Velezˇ and its
stars and legends’, he continued, ‘Mostar would be two cities, bitter cities. They are a
symbol of [the city’s] stability and tradition’. Then, in order to emphasise the symbolic
value of the club to Mostar’s inhabitants, Kebo paid Velezˇ a deep compliment by
equating its importance to the city with that of the legendary Mostar Bridge
(Miladinovic´ 2009, pp. 3–4). Hence, whilst it is virtually impossible not to view
modern Mostar as an ethnically partitioned and ‘bitter’ city, these sentiments highlight
the fact that during the post-conflict period the club has become a beacon of hope for
those—predominately but not exclusively Muslim—inhabitants of Mostar who
support a multiethnic state solution. In this respect, Velezˇ must be viewed as far
more than a mere football club, a helpless victim of collateral damage. As this essay
will demonstrate, the club’s very survival in the face of adversity, its newly forged
identity and its dogged determination to remain an integral part of contemporary
Mostar society, have given refugees hope in an eventual return to their West Mostar
homes and has enabled many to embrace some level of continuity between the heritage
of a cherished past and a belief in a brighter future.
This essay draws on interviews with individuals holding prominent roles in the club,
including former player and current club director Avdo Kalajdzˇic´, club employee of 30
years standing Enes Vukotic´, and Coke—a life-long supporter and current member of
the leadership of the Velezˇ supporters’ group Red Army Mostar.2 Whilst there has
been some academic research into the interaction between football and nationalism in
a number of former Yugoslav republics (Cˇolovic´ 2002; Mills 2009; Sack & Suster 2000;
Vrcan 2002), to my knowledge there has not been any work conducted in the English
language for Bosnia & Hercegovina. However, Rolland’s ethnographic study (2007)
into the nature of post-war football rivalry in Mostar examines the extent to which
confrontation between the city’s two football clubs is utilised in forging conflicting
ethno-national identities. The importance of sport to the former socialist regime has
been partially demonstrated via the pre-dissolution work of a number of Yugoslav
scholars (Eterovic´ 1989; Tomic´ 1983).
It is only on the basis of an understanding of the unique development of Bosnia &
Hercegovina itself that one can begin to trace the origins of the founding of Velezˇ
Mostar by the prohibited KPJ during the period of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, or the
2
This article utilises group interviews with a total of three supporters’ groups, alongside one
interview with FK Velezˇ employees. The supporters’ group interviews were conducted with
representatives of each group, all of whom have been involved within their respective organisations
for many years. These individuals are referred to using only their first names. The exception to this rule
is the interview with FK Velezˇ employees Enes Vukotic´ and Avdo Kalajdzˇic´, as they were interviewed
because of their prominent and public positions within the club.
VELEZˇ MOSTAR FOOTBALL CLUB 1109
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club’s embrace of brotherhood and unity as it emerged from the violent crucible of the
Second World War into a revolutionary socialist state, or the historical circumstances
which made it possible for Croat nationalists to brand Velezˇ a ‘Muslim’ club during
the early 1990s. Moreover, only by examining the club’s complicated past will it be
possible to appreciate the value of its survival into the present and the esteem with
which Velezˇ is now held by many of Mostar’s inhabitants.
A multiethnic Bosnia & Hercegovina
Whilst the specific ethnic composition of Bosnia & Hercegovina has constantly shifted
through time as a result of the processes of war, migration and religious conversion
among others, the final Yugoslav census is indicative of the Republic’s diversity. In
1991, Bosnia & Hercegovina consisted of 43.7% Muslim, 31.4% Serb, 17.3% Croat
and even included 5.5% who saw themselves as Yugoslav (Lampe 2003, p. 337).
Urban centres were particularly diverse and the city of Mostar is a perfect example of
this, with its 1991 population incorporating 35% Muslim, 34% Croat and 19% Serb
inhabitants (Yarwood et al. 1999, p. ix).
Since the nineteenth century such diversity has been complicated by the fact that
Bosnia & Hercegovina’s Serbs and Croats have largely conceived of themselves as
extensions of their respective national groups beyond the borders of Bosnia &
Hercegovina. In an attempt to combat such centrifugal forces, along with the largely
unsuccessful assimilationist ideologies which accompanied them (Banac 1994, p. 134),
the majority of post-Ottoman Muslim politicians offered their support to large
heterogeneous states (Donia & Fine 1994, p. 105). Bougarel (2003) argues that this
tactic resulted in Bosnia & Hercegovina’s Muslims becoming loyal adherents to the
Yugoslav nation-building projects of the twentieth century, as a powerful Yugoslav state
was deemed to be the most effective solution for the preservation of a territorially integral
and multiethnic Bosnia & Hercegovina. These conflicting national interests of Bosnia &
Hercegovina’s principal ethnic groups, further aggravated by external occupiers and
revanchist nationalisms, undoubtedly contributed to the ferocity of fighting following the
outbreak of World War II. In a series of conflicts that featured hegemonic nationalist
extremists intent upon the acquisition, retention and forcible nationalisation of ethnically
diverse territories, one multiethnic programme—that of Tito’s communist Partisans—
became increasingly attractive to people of all ethnic denominations.
Seeking a durable solution, the Partisan war effort was based upon Tito’s unifying
policy of brotherhood and unity (bratstvo i jedinstvo). Aiming at the creation of a
Federal Yugoslavia based upon six autonomous republics and ‘bringing freedom,
equality and fraternity to all the nationalities of Yugoslavia’ (Tito 1942, p. 50), the
Republic of Bosnia & Hercegovina was to be an integral part of this strategy. For whilst
the other five republics were each based upon one specific national group, a 1944 edition
of Oslobodenje , a communist newspaper, explained that Bosnia & Hercegovina was
‘neither Serbian nor Croatian, but rather equally Serbian, Croatian and Muslim. Serbs,
Croats and Muslims live blended within it, with equality among themselves’.
The same article argued that Bosnia & Hercegovina would no longer be a coveted
object of Greater Serbian or Greater Croatian ‘plundering cliques’, but in fact would
come to form an ‘object of wedlock and the cornerstone of Serbo–Croat relations in
1110 RICHARD MILLS
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Yugoslavia’.3 Tito’s concept of brotherhood and unity must thus be viewed as a
genuine attempt to solve the complex nationality problem, both in Bosnia &
Hercegovina and the state as a whole. By restoring Bosnia & Hercegovina to its
historical borders and offering equality to all of its ‘constituent peoples’, brotherhood
and unity offered Bosnia & Hercegovina’s Muslims security against Serb and Croat
expansionism, whilst enabling the Serbs and Croats of Bosnia & Hercegovina to unite
with their fellow nationals in Serbia and Croatia within the overarching institution of
the Yugoslav Federal state.
Whilst Bosnia & Hercegovina’s Muslims were not recognised by the communists as
a distinct ‘ethnic’ nation at this stage, Tito and his party were careful to acknowledge
both their equality and unique status within Yugoslavia (Banac 1994, p. 144; Donia &
Fine 1994, pp. 148–49). As a result of such policies the KPJ succeeded in mobilising
Bosnian Muslims for its own Yugoslav project (Bougarel 2003, p. 105). Indeed, Djokic´
(2003, p. 7) notes that this community eventually became one of the most enthusiastic
supporters of the new Yugoslav Federal State. Yet as will become apparent, within
one particular organisation located in the small city of Mostar in Hercegovina, such
enthusiasm and ethnic solidarity predated the wartime emergence of socialist
Yugoslavia by a number of years.
Red Velezˇ
Sitting at a small, cluttered desk in front of an imposing black and white photograph of
the 1939 Velezˇ Mostar squad with large five-pointed stars emblazoned on their football
shirts, Enes Vukotic´—a man who has worked at the club in various capacities for 30
years—explained that ‘Velezˇ was formed in 1922 as a workers club, and most of the
players and people inside of Velezˇ were communists’.4 This opinion is supported by a
1982 history of the club produced to coincide with its sixtieth anniversary celebrations,
which also served to demonstrate the extent of Velezˇ Mostar’s loyalty and devotion to
Tito, Socialist Yugoslavia and the concept of brotherhood and unity (Sˇkoro 1982).
Within this book, numerous photos feature Velezˇ members with prominent leaders such
as Edvard Kardelj and even Tito himself, whilst another shows an elaborate stadium
celebration for Tito’s official birthday. Moreover, such affection was not merely the
routine action of any prominent organisation within the confines of a one party
dictatorship; this is confirmed in Tito’s extensively reproduced speeches concerning the
special position of Velezˇ within the socialist pantheon (Sˇkoro 1982). The club history
proudly notes that, by the decree of Tito, Velezˇ was awarded ‘the order of brotherhood
and unity with a gold wreath’ in 1972 for, among other services, ‘massive participation
and contribution in the national liberation struggle, and for spreading brotherhood and
unity among our nations’ (Sˇkoro 1982, p. 4; see also Miladinovic´ 2009, pp. 12–13).
Perhaps it will be easier to comprehend why a small Bosnian football club came to
be held in such esteem and showered with praise by Yugoslavia’s socialist leaders if we
examine its pre-war origins. The club’s own history Velezˇ 1922–’82 (Sˇkoro 1982)
3
‘Bosna i Hercegovina u Federativnoj Jugoslaviji’, Oslobodenje , January 1944. 4
Enes Vukotic´, Avdo Kalajdzˇic´ and Mirza—FK Velezˇ, group interview with author, Mostar, Bosnia
& Hercegovina, 22 May 2008.
VELEZˇ MOSTAR FOOTBALL CLUB 1111
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recalls that following the prohibition of all ‘disobedient’ political parties, associations
and clubs by the Kingdom of Yugoslavia’s government in 1921, Velezˇ was formed in
the following year by the outlawed KPJ in order to ‘gather workers and other devotees
of football in Mostar and together present one of the powerful locations which will help
to strengthen the organised revolutionary struggles of the working class’ (Sˇkoro 1982, p.
12). Carefully disguising its involvement in the club, in order to avoid the unwanted
attention of the authorities, the KPJ placed Party members in key administrative and
managerial positions. Noting the pre-war success of Velezˇ in binding and strengthening
the ranks of workers and of all progressive forces in Mostar, the official history goes on
to state that via club activities, ‘the KPJ policy that workers’ sport must be an integral
part of the revolutionary struggle of the working class was immediately realised’ (Sˇkoro
1982, pp. 13–15). However, such activities, along with the involvement of high-profile
communist activists, ensured that throughout this period VelezˇMostar came under close
scrutiny by the authorities, and in 1940 the club was finally prohibited, following a large
anti-fascist demonstration. This prohibition continued during the occupation of Bosnia
& Hercegovina by the fascist Croat Ustasˇa regime of the Second World War NDH
(Independent State of Croatia, Nezavisna Drzˇava Hrvatska) (Sˇkoro 1982, pp. 22–25;
Rolland 2007, p. 192).
The pre-war period of communist activity within the club ensured that with the
outbreak of the Second World War, former Velezˇ members swelled the ranks of the
Partisan resistance units and were involved in numerous underground activities at the
request of the KPJ. Glenny (1996, p. 160) states that the city of Mostar became famous
over the course of the war because its mixed Serb, Croat and Muslim population
largely resisted the temptation to indulge in ethnically motivated violence. He notes
that ‘Mostar Croats saved Serbs, Serbs protected Moslems and communal life revived
in Mostar faster than almost anywhere else’ in Bosnia & Hercegovina after the war.
That Velezˇ was an integral part of this phenomenon is demonstrated by the fact that
nine of its former footballers and functionaries were subsequently proclaimed national
heroes for their contributions to the liberation struggle. Alongside their photographs,
the club history declares these men ‘the pride of Velezˇ’, but it is also keen to stress that
‘the list of names for history, really of all those who, in the pre-war and wartime years,
appeared in the shirt with the five-pointed star or were activists of the club, is very
long’ (Sˇkoro 1982, pp. 26–28). Following this statement the book lists a further 77
footballers and 21 functionaries who died during the course of the war as Partisan
fighters or camp inmates, whilst noting that a further six members had already lost
their lives in forced labour camps before the war had even begun. In memory of these
individuals the club erected a monument at its Bijeli Brijeg Stadium in honour of all of
its members who had fallen in the National Liberation Struggle (Miladinovic´ 2009, p.
13). During the 1990s this monument would be singled out for desecration by Croat
extremists (see Figure 2).
Whilst Velezˇ was by no means the only sporting association with both inseparable
ties to the KPJ and a record of revolutionary activity and wartime sacrifices, with
clubs such as Hajduk Split also held in high esteem in this respect, it is possible to see
why the club—representative of the ethnically diverse Mostar—became a vehement
supporter of socialist Yugoslavia and Tito’s principle of brotherhood and unity.
For this pre-war organisation, which unlike many other contemporary sporting
1112 RICHARD MILLS
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associations was not founded upon an exclusive ethnic basis, the revolutionary
victory of socialism in Yugoslavia served to legalise communist activity which Velezˇ
Mostar had been involved in since its founding in 1922. In promoting ethnic
tolerance and the unique status of Bosnia & Hercegovina within the Federation, the
revolution also provided both Velezˇ and the city of Mostar with a sense of stability
that had been lacking in previous years. This enabled the club to flourish during
the heyday of Tito’s Yugoslavia, establishing itself in the First Federal League in
1954, and remaining there until the country’s violent dissolution nearly 40 years
later.
The decentralisation of Yugoslavia
The development of socialist Yugoslavia in the 1960s and 1970s saw a gradual move
away from the theme of brotherhood and unity, as ever more power was devolved
away from the centre to the individual republics. Jovic´’s thorough article on this
subject explains that at the root of continuing decentralisation was an ideological
debate between Tito, who upheld a concept of brotherhood and unity that envisaged
Yugoslavia as a state for South Slavs, and the revisionist Edvard Kardelj, who saw
the Yugoslav state as an ideological, rather than an ethnic project (Jovic´ 2003,
FIGURE 2. THE NOW DESECRATED SOCIALIST MONUMENT TO THE FALLEN FOOTBALLERS AND
FUNCTIONARIES OF THE NATIONAL LIBERATION STRUGGLE
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pp. 157–58).5 Kardelj’s views on this matter were principally formed in the belief that the
greatest threat to a post-Tito Yugoslavia would be the renewal of some form of heavily
centralised state (Jovic´ 2003, p. 168). Jovic´ (2003, pp. 157–58, 160) argues that the
resulting victory of Kardelj’s ‘Yugoslav socialist patriotism’—embodied in the 1974
constitution—and consequent relegation of Tito’s position to a ‘tolerated exception’,
enormously weakened the state. The constitution declared that republics rather than
nations were its subjects, and effectively granted those republics the right to secession.
This ensured that with the collapse of the socialist project in the late 1980s, Yugoslavia’s
better off republics, harbouring national ambitions of their own, saw little reason to
remain in a Yugoslav Federation in which they felt economically exploited (Pavlowitch
1992, p. 79). These constitutional changes would eventually prove extremely detrimental,
not only for the survival of Yugoslavia as a whole, but also for the stability of multiethnic
Bosnia & Hercegovina, Mostar and even Velezˇ itself. The logical conclusion of Kardelj’s
progressive theory, which equated Yugoslavism with socialism, and which declared that
the Yugoslav state was only necessary for as long as it furthered the common interests of
all of its constituent republics, was that following the demise of socialism, the need for
this emasculated version of Yugoslavia also swiftly vanished (Jovic´ 2003, pp. 169–70).
The principal problem with Kardelj’s well meaning attempts to grant the maximum
possible autonomy to Yugoslavia’s constituent nations was that republican boundaries
were by no means contiguous with national ones, as the case of Bosnia & Hercegovina
demonstrates only too well. Hence, in the event of Yugoslavia’s dissolution, in the name
of its constituent nations, but actually along republican lines, the Kardelj-inspired
amendments to the constitution had made Bosnia & Hercegovina’s position untenable.
This problem was unintentionally exacerbated by the recognition in 1968 of the Bosnian
Muslims as a fully fledged nation in the ethnic sense. Bougarel has noted that the
unsurprising outcome was that the Muslim population at large ‘became strongly
committed to Tito’s Yugoslavia’ (Bougarel 2003, pp. 107–8, 111). Although the act of
recognition merely constituted the official acknowledgement of a patent fact, it
underlined the existence of three official nations within Bosnia & Hercegovina, the
newest of which—unlike the Bosnian Serbs and Croats—did not enjoy a republic of its
own beyond Bosnia & Hercegovina’s frontiers. Evolving socialist policies thus
paradoxically provided both a platform for Bosnian Muslims to emerge as a distinct
national group, and at the same time—by promoting the rights of national groups to
self-determination—fundamentally weakened the heterogeneous state structures that
enabled the Muslims to thrive within a complex and fragile multiethnic environment.
Moreover, the pace of urbanisation in Bosnia & Hercegovina had ensured a blurring
of the ethnic boundaries in the cities of that republic, which meant that by the
beginning of the 1990s 40% of all urban couples were ethnically mixed (Donia & Fine
1994, p. 186). This, along with strong loyalties for the Yugoslav state and a deep
reverence for President Tito, meant that by the final decade of Yugoslavia’s existence,
5
As early as 1962 Kardelj stated: ‘Our Yugoslav socialist community will . . . be the stronger, the
more deeply conscious it is that its unity rests not on any kind of nationalistic ideology but on its
socialist self-management, humanist, internationalist and universal conception’ (Kardelj 1981,
pp. 137–40). Jovic´ (2003, p. 171) notes that for Tito on the other hand, the ideology of socialism
was a tool for securing the unity of Yugoslavia. Tito’s views on the national question in Yugoslavia,
whilst sharing many similarities with Kardelj, contain important differences (Tito 1983).
1114 RICHARD MILLS
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Bosnia & Hercegovina’s cities not only had more self-declared Yugoslavs than any
other republic,6 but unquestionably, they also had the most to lose in any narrowly
ethnic settlement. ‘In many respects the republic of Bosnia & Hercegovina became the
last bastion of genuine Yugoslavism’ and ‘Bosnians from all three major national
groups supported the preservation of Yugoslavia against the forces of division and
fragmentation’ (Donia & Fine 1994, p. 194). The ethnic tapestry that constituted
Bosnia & Hercegovina was much better suited to Tito’s unifying policies than to
Kardelj’s promotion of national self-determination, which unwittingly encouraged
chauvinistic and separatist tendencies. As Glenny has pointed out, those people who
best understood the implications of Yugoslavia’s disintegration ‘were most concerned
about the impact it could have on Bosnia’ (Glenny 1996, p. 143). Meanwhile, urban
Velezˇ, having also invested deeply in both Yugoslavia and Tito’s brotherhood and
unity, would be left without a state to call its own.
Velezˇ Mostar—the last of the Yugoslavs
Research has demonstrated that as the divisive politics of ethnic nationalism began to
spread across Yugoslavia over the course of the 1980s, many of the country’s football
supporters—particularly those from Serbia and Croatia—zealously backed the
political ambitions of their own ethnically based republics (Cˇolovic´ 2002; Mills
2009; Sack & Suster 2000; Vrcan & Lalic´ 1999). However, it is important to note that
contrary to the findings of this body of research, some of Yugoslavia’s supporters’
groups were initially not swept along in the prevailing trends of extreme ethnic
nationalism. In particular, in Bosnia & Hercegovina, groups from the large
multiethnic cities initially adopted a pro-Yugoslav stance, before moving towards
support for a multiethnic Bosnia & Hercegovina when the survival of Yugoslavia
became politically unrealistic following the events of 1991. Such a stance was necessary
for supporters’ groups like Velezˇ Mostar’s Red Army and Zˇeljeznicar Sarajevo’s
Maniacs, not least because the ethnic make-up of these groups was so diverse. Coke
and Mirza, two longstanding members of Red Army, recalled that because Velezˇ was
Mostar’s sole representative in the Yugoslav league, all nationalities supported them.7
Enes, a long serving club employee, also recalled that support for Velezˇ existed far
beyond the suburbs of Mostar, and that ‘it did not matter from which nation they
came from . . . Serbs and Croats and Muslims’ all followed the team.8
This multiethnic outlook closely reflects the pre-war diversity of cities such as
Mostar and Sarajevo, and supporters from more ethnically orientated groups from
6
A total of 7.9% of Bosnia & Hercegovina’s total inhabitants declared themselves Yugoslav in the
1981 census (Bougarel 2003, pp. 107–8). 7
Coke and Mirza—Red Army, FK Velezˇ Mostar Supporters’ Group, group interview with author,
Mostar, Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008. 8
Enes Vukotic´, Avdo Kalajdzˇic´ and Mirza—FK Velezˇ, group interview with author, Mostar, Bosnia
& Hercegovina, 22 May 2008. In Sarajevo the situation was very similar. Maniacs member Zˇeljko
stated that his group ‘consisted of different religions, different nations—and they did not differentiate
between which ethnicity people came from, or what type of praying people did’. Zˇeljko, Hamo and
Lelja—The Maniacs, FK Zˇeljeznicar Sarajevo Supporters’ Group, group interview with author,
Sarajevo, Bosnia & Hercegovina, 23 May 2008.
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Yugoslavia’s other republics corroborate the existence of this phenomenon in Bosnia
& Hercegovina during the 1980s. For example, members of the Red Firm Supporters’
Club, fans of FK Vojvodina, based in Novi Sad, noted that the aforementioned
Bosnian groups ‘were practically Yugoslavian’.9 These Serb interviewees thought that
such groups adopted a pro-Yugoslav stance because it kept their multiethnic groups
together. They also remembered a popular song: ‘Serbia and Croatia hear that Bosnia
is a community of brothers’.10 For the Red Army Supporters’ Group the name of Tito
meant even more than it did for Velezˇ (Didic´ 1989) and they came to view their former
president as the embodiment of such ethnic tolerance. A similar phenomenon is also
demonstrated by Red Army graffiti throughout Mostar to this day (see Figure 3).
Unfortunately however, for both Velezˇ Mostar and its supporters’ group,
Yugoslavia’s deteriorating political situation made the maintenance of such ideas of
brotherhood and unity ever more difficult. In the aftermath of the KPJ’s collapse in
1990, subsequent democratic elections and referenda resulted in declarations of
independence by the republics of Slovenia and Croatia in June 1991. All football clubs
from those republics subsequently withdrew from the Yugoslav First Federal League
FIGURE 3. RED ARMY MOSTAR GRAFFITI DECLARING POSTHUMOUS ADMIRATION AND DEVOTION FOR
PRESIDENT TITO VIA THE USE OF SLOGANS SUCH AS ‘TITO WE LOVE YOU’ CAN STILL BE SEEN ON
SHATTERED BUILDINGS ACROSS THE CITY
9
Miroslav from the author’s group interview with Ognjen, Miroslav and Nebojsˇa—Red Firm, FK
Vojvodina Supporters’ Group, Novi Sad, Serbia, 8 November 2007. 10Ognjen from the author’s group interview with Ognjen, Miroslav and Nebojsˇa—Red Firm, FK
Vojvodina Supporters’ Group, Novi Sad, Serbia, 8 November 2007.
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in July and August 1991, following the outbreak of full-scale war on Croatian
territory.11 Whilst voting in Bosnia & Hercegovina’s first democratic elections of 1990
also reflected the republic’s ethnic composition, the three victorious ethnic parties
initially agreed to govern by means of a coalition (Donia & Fine 1994, pp. 210–11).
These political developments placed Velezˇ under increasing pressure, as many Mostar
Croats demanded that the club also withdraw from a competition which was now—
devoid of Croat and Slovene teams—branded the ‘football league of Serboslavia’
(Parovic´ 1991a). The situation swiftly began to deteriorate and in early August 1991,
as Croat and Serb forces fought over the territory of neighbouring Croatia, Croat
extremists threatened to blow up the club’s Bijeli Brijeg stadium unless a decision was
made to withdraw from the rump Yugoslav league (Parovic´ 1991a). Despite such
threats the Velezˇ management, along with their counterparts from all of Bosnia &
Hercegovina’s leading clubs, decided to continue competing in a league that still
contained teams from Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia as well.
Yet, only days after the initial threats were issued, the Belgrade based daily newspaper
Sportski Zˇurnal led with the alarming headline: ‘Explosion in Mostar before the Match
of Velezˇ–Partizan: Dynamite in the Stadium!!!’12 Noting that whilst nobody had been
injured in the early morning attack, the newspaper stated that threats had become reality
and went on to conclude that ‘members of the extreme organ of the Mostar HDZ
[Croatian Democratic Union, Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica]’ were assumed to be
behind the bombing (Parovic´ 1991b). This early ethnically motivated targeting of the
club as a result of its refusal to bow to Croat nationalist demands, over six months
before Bosnia & Hercegovina’s own descent into war, must be seen as the initial blow to
Velezˇ’s inclusive heterogeneous identity. Just four days after the explosion the Croat Vid
Cˇuljak resigned from his position as club president, an act which was rumoured to be
directly related to both the bombing and Velezˇ’s continued presence in the Yugoslav
First Federal League (Parovic´ 1991c). In the aftermath of these events a Velezˇ Mostar
team, which still included footballers from all three ethnic groups, continued to
participate in the league throughout the winter of 1991–1992. However, by the following
spring politics once again began to dictate events.
The abrupt exodus of Bosnian teams from the First Federal League came as a result of
direct military conflict. Although violent incidents had taken place sporadically across
Bosnia & Hercegovina in the aftermath of the republic’s independence referendum of 29
February and 1 March 1992, the conflict did not really begin until a week before an
independent Bosnia & Hercegovina was due to be recognised by the international
community, against the will of Bosnian Serbs (Glenny 1996, pp. 161–71). The northeastern town of Bijeljina was attacked by Serb paramilitaries on 1 April, and in the
following days the war spread across the republic (Silber & Little 1996, pp. 167–78).
Over the weekend of 4–5 April 1992 Politika noted that many clubs from both the
First and Second Federal Leagues experienced problems where a Bosnian team was
involved, and a number of matches were cancelled. According to this newspaper the
‘disruption of transport on the territory of this republic by countless road blocks from
which justice is carried out by masked members of the Moslem, Serb or Croat
11Sportski Zˇurnal, 3 August 1991; Mihajlovic´ (1991). 12Sportski Zˇurnal, 19 August 1991.
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nationalities, also stopped the players’ (Simeunovic´ 1992a, p. 13). Club employee Enes
remembered that Velezˇ Mostar played an away match against Spartak Subotica in
Serbia’s Vojvodina province over this weekend.13 A contemporary newspaper report
on this fixture noted that Velezˇ had to field an extremely inexperienced team as eight
first team players boycotted the match (Inic´ 1992), whilst Enes recalled that the only
Croat who travelled to Serbia for the game was the first team coach Franjo Dzˇidic´.
14
Following a post-match interview with Dzˇidic´, Sportski Zˇurnal, sensing the magnitude
of the occasion as Bosnia & Hercegovina descended into war, stated that for Velezˇ
in the most difficult days of its own history . . . to make its way to the northern remnant of
Yugoslavia is at least symbolic that it gave all of itself for the survival of Yugoslav football.
And for that, great recognition must really be bestowed upon the people from Mostar. (Inic´
1992)
Enes recalled that this away trip to Serbia turned out to be ‘the last game in the
Yugoslav league which Velezˇ played’:
After that last game, while the club was travelling back from Subotica, Red Star Belgrade
offered Velezˇ, as did Buduc´nost Titograd—Podgorica now—to stay on with them. This was a
very friendly offer to stay there as the war was starting across all of Bosnia & Hercegovina
and also in Mostar during those days, but the team did not accept this offer. Football Club
Velezˇ wanted to come back to Mostar, but all of the Serbian players—when they returned to
Mostar—stayed in Nevesinje in Eastern Hercegovina because it had a mostly Serbian
population. So they stayed there because they did not want to return to Mostar.15
Sportski Zˇurnal reported that the Velezˇ squad had been forced to divert to the
Montenegrin city of Podgorica whilst returning from the Subotica match, as Mostar’s
airport had been closed to traffic as a result of the incipient conflict.16 The newspaper
went on to explain that on arrival in Podgorica the people from Mostar were indeed
greeted by FK Buduc´nost, which provided lunch for its guests. In a statement with
deep echoes of the communist sentiments from Velezˇ’s past, the newspaper concluded
that this hospitality proved that ‘the aspiration of sport still lasts and this flame of
companionship and friendship, evidently, no one and nothing can extinguish’.17
As it quickly became apparent that the war left Velezˇ—and the majority of Bosnia &
Hercegovina’s other clubs—unable to complete the season, the club announced its
withdrawal ‘from the Yugoslav football order’ just days after the outbreak of
hostilities (Simeunovic´ 1992b, p. 12). Whilst the streets of Mostar became a frontline
in the fighting, a number of Velezˇ’s better players swiftly relocated to the rump
13Enes Vukotic´, Avdo Kalajdzˇic´ and Mirza—FK Velezˇ, group interview with author, Mostar,
Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008. 14Enes Vukotic´, Avdo Kalajdzˇic´ and Mirza—FK Velezˇ, group interview with author, Mostar,
Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008. 15Enes Vukotic´, Avdo Kalajdzˇic´ and Mirza—FK Velezˇ, group interview with author, Mostar,
Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008. 16Sportski Zˇurnal, 8 April 1992. 17Sportski Zˇurnal, 8 April 1992.
1118 RICHARD MILLS
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Yugoslavia, joining clubs in Belgrade and Novi Sad (Andus 1992; Gavrilovic ´ 1992;
Simeunovic´ 1992b). One announced that he had decided to do so because Velezˇ, the
club ‘which I am tied to heart and soul, no longer exists’ (Gavrilovic´ 1992).

[VR6_LION]

Gdje ima ovo:
dobili licencu a ne mogu igrati kod kuće ????
Kad mi je jedna rekla da je napola nevina, kao nije joj do jaja ušao, tada se još znalo šta je šta. A ovo?

Klub i stadion imaju posebne licence koliko sam skontao.
Klub licenca(finansije itd)
Stadion(tribine,wc,reflektori,..)

[Sjevernokorejskipas]

Even in these difficult periods however, when Velezˇ was targeted by ethnic
extremists, endured player boycotts, and was finally torn apart as Bosnia &
Hercegovina submerged into ethnic warfare, the club attempted to remain loyal to
its communist origins. Photographs in an August 1991 edition of Sportski Zˇurnal
clearly showed that large portraits of President Tito still hung proudly in the Velezˇ
club offices, while on the terraces of the Bijeli Brijeg stadium supporters could be seen
holding up the red flag of the KPJ just hours after the ethnically motivated bombing of
the stadium.18 These demonstrations of loyalty to the former communist regime, in a
period when Tito’s personality cult had already been thoroughly deconstructed
(Pavlowitch 1992, pp. 87–94), demonstrate that many of those involved at the club
harboured deep preferences for a return to the era of brotherhood and unity, rather
than for an uncertain future based upon exclusive ethnic nationalisms.
Zrinjski reformed—the ethnic identity challenge
In many respects, the conflicts that engulfed the Hercegovina region and its principal
city of Mostar can be viewed as a reasonably accurate microcosm of the wider Bosnian
war. With the outbreak of fighting across Bosnia & Hercegovina in April 1992, the
situation in Hercegovina followed the general pattern, with the predominantly Serb
Eastern section of this region seceding as part of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia &
Hercegovina (Maric´ 1992). Mostar was bombarded by the ubiquitous combination of
Serb paramilitaries and the Yugoslav People’s Army, which aimed to partition
Hercegovina with the Neretva River—which dissects both the city and the region—
forming a new border. By June 1992 however, Croat forces were able to repel the
attack, forcing both the Serbian military formations and Mostar’s Serb inhabitants,
out of the city altogether (Silber & Little 1996, p. 293). Yet, although the ethnic
composition of Hercegovina partly reflected that of Bosnia & Hercegovina as a
whole—with Muslims forming a majority in the main urban centres (Glenny 1996, pp.
229–30)—the existence of an absolute Croat majority in Western Hercegovina,
comprising of over 200,000 Croats, provided a significant additional complication.
The presence of such a homogenous group over a territory which is contiguous with
Croatia proper was always likely to incite calls for border change, and the nature of
Hercegovian Croat nationalism in this region meant that further conflict was always a
likely outcome (Goldstein 1999, p. 244; Silber & Little 1996, p. 293).
The extreme nationalism which was present amongst the Hercegovian Croat
community is well recorded. During the conflict one Croat solider explained that
Western Hercegovians are ‘the most radical Croats. We are, if you like, more Croat
than the Croats’ (Glenny 1996, p. 156). The existence of such nationalism led to the
founding of the self-proclaimed autonomous ‘Croat Community of Herceg-Bosna’ in
November 1991. Hence, although war between Bosnia & Hercegovina’s Croat and
Muslim communities was avoided until 1993, portents of conflict along this particular
18Sportski Zˇurnal, 20 August 1991.
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fault line were present before 1992, as the aforementioned stadium bombing incident
suggests (Goldstein 1999, p. 244; Silber & Little 1996, p. 291). Ominously for the city’s
Muslim majority, Mostar was proclaimed the capital of the ‘Herceg-Bosna’ in August
1993 and the city quickly became the focal point of the Muslim–Croat conflict when it
finally erupted (Goldstein 1999, pp. 246–47). Members of Red Army Mostar mourned
the fact that Velezˇ became ‘a symbol of the war between the Army of Bosnia &
Hercegovina and the Croatian Defence Council [Hrvatsko Vijec´e Obrane, HVO]’;19 the
reasons for such an observation are intimately entwined with the re-emergence of
ethnic nationalism and the direct challenge to Velezˇ’s identity that this entailed.
The Croatian Sports Club Zrinjski Mostar (Hrvatski Sˇ
portski Klub Zrinjski
Mostar), which had been prohibited at the beginning of Tito’s socialist regime, was
reformed by Croat nationalists in 1992. During the Second World War Zrinjski
Mostar became heavily associated with the fascist Ustasˇa-led NDH, participating in
the regime’s football league in 1941.20 The club’s nationalist credentials, along with
this association with the NDH, were the principal reasons why Tito’s victorious
regime put a ‘large black stop’ to its activities in 1945.21 The fact that Zrinjski Mostar
was a Croat nationalist club was shown by the content of its officially sanctioned
online History. The opening 400 words of this short document contain no mention of
football whatsoever, but instead focus on the importance of the club in the
preservation of Croatian nationalism in Mostar in the face of historic adversities
such as ‘ostensibly pro-Yugoslav but essentially Greater-Serbian rule between the two
world wars’ and ‘nearly 50 years of Communism ingloriously fallen together with the
vampire Serbian hegemonism’.22 Finally, this History leaves the reader in no doubt as
to the task of the club following its 1992 resurrection: ‘We hope and trust in God that
Zrinjski shall again spread the glory of the Croats of Mostar’.23 Both the name of the
club and the club badge, which features the distinctive red and white chequered
sˇahovnica emblem that is an important element of Croat nationalist symbolism, also
underscore a Croat identity for Zrinjski Mostar (see Figure 4). Even the name
‘Zrinjski’ is steeped in the colours of Croat nationalism, as it is derived from a noble
family which championed the cause of Croats against both the Ottomans and the
Austro-Hungarians in the seventeenth century (Goldstein 1999, pp. 43–45).
19Coke and Mirza—Red Army, FK Velezˇ Mostar Supporters’ Group, group interview with author,
Mostar, Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008. 20HSˇK Zrinjski Official Website, HSˇ
K Zrinjski History, available at: http://www.hskzrinjski.ba/
index.php?option¼com_content&task¼view&id¼12&Itemid¼35, accessed 21 May 2008; for a league
table of this 1941 NDH Championship see, Podnar (2006, p. 152). 21HSˇK Zrinjski Official Website, HSˇ
K Zrinjski History, available at: http://www.hskzrinjski.ba/
index.php?option¼com_content&task¼view&id¼12&Itemid¼35, accessed 21 May 2008; Rolland
(2007, p. 197). This ban on the activities of all nationally orientated clubs also resulted in the closure
of the Serbian team Slavija Sarajevo, which was also subsequently re-established with the collapse of
communism in the early 1990s. Zˇeljko, Hamo and Lelja—The Maniacs, FK Zˇeljeznicar Sarajevo
Supporters’ Group, group interview with author, Sarajevo, Bosnia & Hercegovina, 23 May 2008. 22HSˇK Zrinjski Official Website, HSˇ
K Zrinjski History, available at: http://www.hskzrinjski.ba/
index.php?option¼com_content&task¼view&id¼12&Itemid¼35, accessed 21 May 2008. 23HSˇK Zrinjski Official Website, HSˇ
K Zrinjski History, available at: http://www.hskzrinjski.ba/
index.php?option¼com_content&task¼view&id¼12&Itemid¼35, accessed 21 May 2008.
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Regarding the refounding of Zrinjski, Rolland (2007, p. 198) explains that the
‘rebirth of the club with the collapse of communism and Yugoslavia symbolised
the strength of will which had enabled the Croatian people to survive despite the
vicissitudes of history’. However, it is important to note that the resurrected
ultra-nationalist Zrinjski also maintained a strong association with its fascist past,
especially as far as its supporters’ group—Ultras Zrinjski—were concerned. In the
opinion of Mirza, a member of the rival Red Army Mostar Supporters’ Group, Ultras
Zrinjski consisted solely of Croat nationalists who:
. . . are proud to be Ustasˇe. You know, the Ustasˇa were fascists who were with the Nazi
Germans during the Second World War . . . And they all hail like this now [raises his arm in a
Nazi salute]. . . . They hail like this with crosses . . . all in black uniforms.24
This view of Zrinjski supporters as fascist is corroborated both by the findings of
Rolland’s anthropological study of the group (2007, p. 199) and by those of the Helsinki
Committee for Human Rights, which found that Zrinjski supporters displayed
swastikas and a portrait of the Ustasˇa leader Ante Pavelic´ at a football match against
Velezˇ in 2002.25 The openly nationalist ideologies of the club, along with the nationalist
and fascist orientation of a section of its supporters are thus beyond doubt.
The existence of such an ultra-nationalist organisation left Velezˇ, with its long
tradition as a non-ethnically orientated club with a proud communist tradition forged
in the struggle against fascism, in an extremely difficult position. The resurrection of
FIGURE 4. THE EMBLEM OF ‘CROATIAN SPORTS CLUB ZRINJSKI MOSTAR’, COMPLETE WITH THE
CHEQUERBOARD SHIELD OF CROAT NATIONALIST RENOWN, ON THE WALL OF THE BIJELI BRIJEG
STADIUM
24Coke and Mirza—Red Army, FK Velezˇ Mostar Supporters’ Group, group interview with author,
Mostar, Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008. 25The Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Report on the State of
Human Rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina—Analysis for January–December 2002 Period, available at:
http://www.bh-hchr.org/Reports/reportHR2002.htm, accessed 25 May 2008.
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Zrinjski amounted to an explicit challenge to Velezˇ’s identity. Indeed, according to
Wilson (2006, pp. 179–80), certain individuals involved with Zrinjski argued that the
principal reason for the club’s re-establishment was because ‘Croats accuse Muslims of
having hijacked Velezˇ, the club that once represented the whole community’. It is
perhaps in Velezˇ’s initial refusal to succumb to nationalist threats and abandon the
Yugoslav First Federal League in August 1991 that the seeds of this idea were sown.
Donia and Fine (1994, pp. 262–63) also note that, at least in the opening years of the
war, it was inaccurate simply to equate the forces which advocated a unified Bosnia &
Hercegovina as ‘Muslim’, as this body also contained considerable numbers of urban
non-Muslims who favoured ‘the perpetuation of a multiethnic state’.
Nadim Hasic´, a Sarajevo-based journalist, stated that ‘Zrinjski was a product of the
war’ between Muslims and Croats (Hasic´ 2000). Such an opinion was certainly held by
Coke and Mirza, members of Velezˇ’s Red Army Supporters’ Group, who commented
that the Ultras group which followed Zrinjski ‘exist only because of us. If we did not
exist then Ultras would not exist either’.26 The logic behind such a statement derives
from the idea that Zrinjski, and other ethnically orientated clubs, were resurrected
solely in the pursuit of ethnic separation, or in other words, as another vehicle from
which Croat nationalists could challenge the inclusive and multiethnic values of
brotherhood and unity which Velezˇ had always claimed to uphold. Such a policy
would coincide with the twin goals of Serbian and Croatian extremists to eradicate ‘the
pattern of ethnic intermingling’ whilst ‘promoting hatred and intolerance among
Bosnia’s nationalities’ in their attempt to destroy the legitimacy of the emerging
independent Bosnia & Hercegovina as a genuinely multiethnic successor to Yugoslavia
(Donia & Fine 1994, pp. 245, 266).
In this respect, Hasic´ has noted that Bosnian football became ‘just another forum to
exercise and reconfirm existing ethnic divisions’ (Hasic´ 2000). The fact that Velezˇ was
also a prominent symbol of a communist regime which many nationalists viewed as
repressive, only served to increase its value as a target. Regardless of whether such
tactics were intentional, the immediate result, in the aftermath of the war, was a
migration of supporters of Croat ethnicity away from Velezˇ to newly emerging Croat
clubs such as Zrinjski Mostar and Sˇiroki Brijeg.27 Coke stated that all of the fans at
these new clubs ‘supported Velezˇ before the war’ because ‘before the war there was
only one club in the town’, but that today hardly any Croat supporters of Velezˇ
remain.28 The creation of Zrinjski has thus led to a direct challenge to the values which
Velezˇ always stood for. As Mirza noted:
I mean—Football Club Velezˇ—if you speak to officials from Zrinjski and their fan
members . . . they would say that Velezˇ is a Muslim club. They want to create this, and they
want to explain to the people that it is like that, but it is not like that, and it should not be like
26Coke and Mirza—Red Army, FK Velezˇ Mostar Supporters’ Group, group interview with author,
Mostar, Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008. 27Coke and Mirza—Red Army, FK Velezˇ Mostar Supporters’ Group, group interview with author,
Mostar, Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008. 28Coke and Mirza—Red Army, FK Velezˇ Mostar Supporters’ Group, group interview with author,
Mostar, Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008. The interviewees noted that Velezˇ does still have a
number of Croat supporters and that Zrinjski, likewise, enjoys the backing of some Muslims.
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that. I would not be a fan of Velezˇ if it was . . . Really! I would not cheer for a Muslim club—
that is fascism, it would be stupidity. If I was a Croat I would not be a fan of Zrinjski—really
I would not. What does it mean? Only us Croats and nobody else!29
Enes, the long term employee of Velezˇ, also went to great lengths to explain that unlike
‘Croatian Sports Club Zrinjski’, his club is not ethnically exclusive: ‘We do not have
any prefix that Velezˇ is more Muslim or more Serbian, it is only ‘‘Football Club
Velezˇ’’’.30 In a similar vein, the club published another book about its history in 1997
(Dervisˇevic´ 1997), which—echoing the previously cited 1982 edition (Sˇkoro 1982)—
eagerly underlined Velezˇ’s multiethnic values and the prominent role which it had
played in the struggle against fascism, both during the Second World War and the
wars of the 1990s.
However, as Rolland’s critical findings make clear (2007, p. 200), even though Velezˇ
still considered itself to be a defender of multiethnicity, as a result of the advent of
Zrinjski, post-war changes in public perceptions and the changed political situation in
Mostar, the club had become—reluctantly—the de facto Muslim team of the city.
Velezˇ Mostar has found it virtually impossible to alter public perceptions on these
issues. This is underlined by the fact that the same Serbian supporters who stated that
Velezˇ’s Red Army Supporters’ Group were ‘practically Yugoslavian’ during the 1980s,
went on to note that such Bosnian groups later ‘declared themselves as Muslims’,
causing their Serb and Croat members to leave.31 Although this opinion is much
disputed, some members of the Bosnian groups in question undoubtedly severed ties
on ethnic grounds.32 However, both Red Army Mostar and Zˇeljeznicar Sarajevo’s
Maniacs were keen to stress that the ‘Muslim’ label was largely imposed upon them by
their adversaries, rather than zealously adopted from within.33
Bijeli Brijeg and ethnic cleansing
Whilst the re-emergence of Zrinjski served as a symbolic attack upon the values of
Velezˇ, the unfolding events in the military conflict over the city of Mostar quickly
resulted in Velezˇ becoming a physical target as well. Following the commencement of
hostilities against West Mostar’s Muslim community, Croat military forces utilised
Velezˇ Mostar’s Bijeli Brijeg Stadium as a temporary detention facility. As shown by
the transcripts of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
(ICTY), Muslim civilians were initially rounded up into the stadium, prior to their
29Coke and Mirza—Red Army, FK Velezˇ Mostar Supporters’ Group, group interview with author,
Mostar, Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008. 30Enes Vukotic´, Avdo Kalajdzˇic´ and Mirza—FK Velezˇ, group interview with author, Mostar,
Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008. 31Ognjen, Miroslav and Nebojsˇa—Red Firm, FK Vojvodina Supporters’ Group, group interview
with author, Novi Sad, Serbia, 8 November 2007. 32The Maniacs Official Website, Joint Union History, available at: http://www.themaniacs.org/
index.php?option¼content&task¼view&id¼511&Itemid¼99, accessed 21 May 2008. 33Coke and Mirza—Red Army, FK Velezˇ Mostar Supporters’ Group, group interview with author,
Mostar, Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008; Zˇeljko, Hamo and Lelja—The Maniacs, FK Zˇeljeznicar
Sarajevo Supporters’ Group, group interview with author, Sarajevo, Bosnia & Hercegovina, 23 May
2008.
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expulsion or transfer to the infamous Heliodrom concentration camp.34 Witness
testimonies in the case against Bosnian Croat Commanders Mladen Naletilic´ and
Vinko Martinovic´ recall the harrowing events of 9 May 1993:
On 9th of May, early in the morning, I was awakened by shooting, intense shooting, which
could be heard in the city. I turned on the radio, and on the radio, people of Bosniak
[Muslim] ethnicity were called to put out a white cloth in the sign of surrender and nothing
would happen to them . . . they took us to the Velezˇ stadium in a van. In the stadium itself
there were a lot of people, including women and children. And several hours later, they took
us from the stadium to the Heliodrom.35
From such evidence it is impossible to differentiate between this case and other
similar situations which were happening in sports stadiums across Bosnia &
Hercegovina. However, it was not solely the Muslim population who the Croat
forces were determined to cleanse from West Mostar. In virtually all other instances of
ethnic cleansing across the former Yugoslavia, culture had been targeted, with the
extensive destruction of religious buildings, libraries and monuments, yet in this case it
was the symbolic resident of the Bijeli Brijeg itself that was an object of the cleansing
operation.36
Velezˇ Mostar’s Bijeli Brijeg stadium, as it was located in the heart of ‘Croat’ West
Mostar, made an ideal home for the resurrected Zrinjski club. Hence Velezˇ—which
as we have seen had come to symbolise both the former socialist regime and a
multiethnic identity which was problematic for chauvinistic nation building
projects—was now **** as ‘Muslim’ and forced to endure the fate of the
community to which it had been forcibly assigned. Enes recalled that his club was
violently cleansed from the Bijeli Brijeg along with the rest of West Mostar’s Muslim
inhabitants:
During the war they practically erased everything that was concerned with Velezˇ. All of these
trophies and pictures of Velezˇ were thrown into the garbage. And all of these trophies which
34Case IT-98-34-T, Mladen Naletilic´ and Vinko Martinovic´ Amended Indictment, 28 November 2000,
available at: http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/engli ... 01204e.htm, accessed 5 July 2008;
Naletilic´ and Martinovic´ Transcript, available at: http://www.un.org/icty/transe34/011210ED.htm,
accessed 5 July 2008, pp. 7251–52; Naletilic´ and Martinovic´ Transcript, available at: http://www.un.org/
icty/transe34/010925ed.htm, accessed 5 July 2008, pp. 2926–31; Naletilic´ and Martinovic´ Judgement, 31
March 2003, available at: http://www.un.org/icty/naletilic/trialc ... /index.htm, accessed 7 July
2008. The transcripts of the Hague Tribunal reveal that Bosnian Serb forces also made extensive use of
football stadiums as detention facilities, execution sites and burial grounds across the territories which
they controlled. Case IT-00-39 & 40-PT, Momcilo Krajis ˇnik and Biljana Plavsˇic´ Amended Consolidated
Indictment, 7 March 2002, available at: http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/engli ... cai020307e.
htm, accessed 3 July 2008; Case IT-00-39-T, Momcilo Krajis ˇnik Transcript, available at: http://
www.un.org/icty/transe39/040421ED.htm, accessed 24 July 2008, p. 2385; Honig and Both (1997,
pp. 59–60). 35Anonymous witness, Naletilic´ and Martinovic´ Transcript, available at: http://www.un.org/icty/
transe34/011210ED.htm, accessed 5 July 2008, pp. 7251–52. 36Cultural architecture was specifically targeted by ethnic cleansers on all sides of the conflict
(Riedlmayer 2002; Bevan 2006).
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you see now [adorning the shelves in his office] are what people found and illegally took, and
brought here after the war . . . [L]ots of these things are still missing. What you can see is not
even 10% of what there was, but these are the only things which were found.37
Velezˇ supporter Mirza explained why it was not possible to protect the historical
objects inside the stadium, chillingly combining the plight of his club and the Muslim
community in the process:
[D]uring the war the people who lived on the west side of the town were actually thrown out
of their homes, with only what they had. They could not even bring anything to eat, and
certainly not trophies and everything, or pictures . . . And as for all the offices in the stadium,
they [the Croat forces] wanted to really erase all of the history . . . it was truly fascism.38
The ruling Croat municipal council of West Mostar subsequently leased the Bijeli
Brijeg Stadium exclusively to Zrinjski Mostar for a period of 99 years (see Figure 5).39
Velezˇ, banished to the Muslim controlled east side of the city, became homeless.
The dispute over the Bijeli Brijeg has become a major factor in Muslim–Croat
relations in Mostar. Klemencic (2000, p. 103) notes that this situation ‘represents a
clear example of the symbolic significance of particular pieces of territory, in this case
a piece of territory the size of a football ground’. In their work on territorial politics
and football in Northern Ireland Bairner and Shirlow (1999, pp. 157–58) argue that
football stadiums ‘consistently emerge as sites for the reproduction of a sense of
alienation from the Other’, and that in terms of the ethno-sectarian divide, stadiums
can become ‘alien’ or ‘hostile’ territory where members from the opposing group are
unwelcome. These venues have become ‘quasi-religious sites, important in their own
right but also as metaphors for the political territory which is regarded as being in
need of defence’ (Bairner & Shirlow 1999, p. 162). In the case of Mostar the disputed
territory in question—the Bijeli Brijeg—was representative of what advocates for the
preservation of a centuries old multiethnic Mostar strove to defend and lost—
symbolised here by the expulsion of West Mostar’s Muslim community and its losses
in terms of territory, possessions and multiethnic communal life. But it is also
representative of what has been taken away from Velezˇ Mostar itself, for the latter was
not only forced to abandon its stadium, along with aspects of its history, but it was
also forced to become a symbol of the very concept which those involved with the club
always endeavoured to distance it from—a monoethnic identity. This process began
when both the club and the Muslim community were simultaneously targeted for
expulsion, with the Bijeli Brijeg standing as a poignant monument in both cases. The
memory of Velezˇ’s fallen socialist heroes was also attacked, as the plaque on the club’s
aforementioned war memorial was removed whilst the monument itself has now been
37Enes Vukotic´, Avdo Kalajdzˇic´ and Mirza—FK Velezˇ, group interview with author, Mostar,
Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008. 38Enes Vukotic´, Avdo Kalajdzˇic´ and Mirza—FK Velezˇ, group interview with author, Mostar,
Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008. 39Enes Vukotic´, Avdo Kalajdzˇic´ and Mirza—FK Velezˇ, group interview with author, Mostar,
Bosnia & Hercegovina, 2008; Rolland (2007, p. 197) notes that the lease was granted for 109 years.
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adorned with the red and white chequer pattern of Croatian nationalism—a pattern
which was extensively utilised by the fascist Ustasˇa regime (see Figure 2).
Militarily and politically the Muslim–Croat conflict was brought to an end by the
Washington Agreement of February 1994. The Agreement created a fragile Muslim–
Croat Federation in Bosnia & Hercegovina and constituted an important step towards
ending the Bosnian War as a whole (Malcolm 2002, p. 248). Whilst this political
development signalled an end to the fighting in Hercegovina, it did little to reintegrate
the two communities, leaving Mostar effectively divided between a Croat west and a
Muslim east. Red Army members noted that virtually everything in the city remained
separated, including schools and universities,40 whilst Rolland (2007, p. 201) has
described Mostar as ‘a city characterised by the cloning of all institutions’. As this
study has demonstrated, football reflects this general trend of ethnic cleavage.
However, the advent of the Muslim–Croat Federation did eventually pave the way for
an interethnic football league (Rolland 2007, p. 189). This ensured that in 2000 Velezˇ
Mostar returned to the Bijeli Brijeg for the first time since they were removed from it
FIGURE 5. THE DILAPIDATED BIJELI BRIJEG STADIUM IN WEST MOSTAR
40Coke and Mirza—Red Army, FK Velezˇ Mostar Supporters’ Group, group interview with author,
Mostar, Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008.
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in 1993 (Klemencic 2000, pp. 103–5; Rolland 2007, pp. 190–91). However, they
returned to their traditional home as guests, for the Bijeli Brijeg had become the
residence of the Croatian Zrinjski Mostar.
Club secretary Enes recalled that Velezˇ’s return to the Bijeli Brijeg occurred ‘with a
great amount of fear. Amongst the supporters and the club staff there was a fear that
there would be an incident’.41 Over 2,000 Velezˇ supporters crossed the ethnic divide by
bus for this historic match, whilst Muslim newspapers bitterly evoked parallels with the
harrowing events of 9 May 1993 when Muslims had ‘walked on the grass of the stadium
west of the Neretva’ as victims of Croat ethnic cleansing (Rolland 2007, p. 191).
Regarding the atmosphere surrounding derby matches in the city, Coke, a
member of Velezˇ’s Red Army Supporters’ Group, stated that: ‘When there is a
derby it is like war in Mostar’.42 Although the level of violence at these matches has
been relatively insignificant—principally because of extensive security measures—
games held at the Bijeli Brijeg between Zrinjski and Velezˇ are understandably highly
symbolic (Rolland 2007, p. 186). Coke underlines the importance of these clashes:
‘Now all of the confrontation actually takes place between the football clubs—due
to the war. These two clubs have actually become symbols of what was left over
from the war’.43 Regarding a derby in 2002, the Helsinki Committee for Human
Rights recorded that ‘the supporters of Zrinjski’ goaded Velezˇ by displaying a
‘banner reading that Velezˇ would never be allowed to return’ to the Bijeli Brijeg.44
In such a statement it is also implicit that Muslims will never be able to return to
their homes in West Mostar either. Football in Mostar has thus become a
continuation of the carefully cultivated Croat–Muslim conflict by other means—a
kind of war by proxy. For individuals associated with Velezˇ Mostar, matches at the
Bijeli Brijeg do not provide catharsis; on the contrary, they are painful affairs
providing an opportunity to contemplate both what they have lost and what has
replaced them. With a sense of bitterness, Coke, who had grown up in West Mostar
and for whom the Bijeli Brijeg ‘was practically a playground’ in his childhood,
conveys his emotions with the following simple words: ‘That stadium where Zrinjski
plays—it is our stadium’.45
Velezˇ Mostar is by no means the first historical example of a cleansed or
refugee football club. The research of Duke and Crolley (1996, pp. 76–81) has
highlighted a similar phenomenon in Cyprus, where hostilities led both Greek and
Turkish Cypriot teams to flee, along with their ethnic communities, to the
south and north of the island respectively. Indeed, the plight of one Greek Cypriot
41Enes Vukotic´, Avdo Kalajdzˇic´ and Mirza—FK Velezˇ, group interview with author, Mostar,
Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008. 42Coke and Mirza—Red Army, FK Velezˇ Mostar Supporters’ Group, group interview with author,
Mostar, Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008. 43Coke and Mirza—Red Army, FK Velezˇ Mostar Supporters’ Group, group interview with author,
Mostar, Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008. 44The Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Bosnia and Hercegovina, Report on the State of
Human Rights in Bosnia and Hercegovina—Analysis for January–December 2002 Period, available at:
http://www.bh-hchr.org/Reports/reportHR2002.htm, accessed 25 May 2008. 45Coke and Mirza—Red Army, FK Velezˇ Mostar Supporters’ Group, group interview with author,
Mostar, Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008.
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club, Ethnikos, is particularly analogous to that of Velezˇ, for as Ethnikos’ home
town of Akhna was divided by the partition of Cyprus, the club had to relocate
from its traditional stadium in the Turkish north to a new one in the Greek south
of the town (Duke & Crolley 1996, p. 78). Unlike the Velezˇ Mostar case, the
ethnicity of these Cypriot refugee clubs was never in question—they had always
been either Greek or Turkish. However, what all of these teams shared in common
with Velezˇ were the considerable difficulties of beginning from scratch in times of
post-war austerity, having been separated from their stadiums, finances and training
facilities.
‘A phoenix from the ashes’—Velezˇ is reborn
According to Velezˇ supporter Mirza, ‘since the break-up of Yugoslavia Velezˇ is 100%
the club which has suffered the most . . . it lost almost everything—if not everything’.46
Current club director Avdo played for Velezˇ both before and after the war, and he
recalled the dire situation facing those who re-established Velezˇ in 1994:
. . . it was really bad because after the war Mostar was destroyed, all of the town was
destroyed—well, half of the town—and Velezˇ was destroyed as well. But it rose like a phoenix
from the ashes. When we first started training we did not have any football boots to play in.
That was the bottom—there was nothing else.47
Secretary Enes vividly remembered the meeting at which Velezˇ Mostar was reborn.
He recalled that ‘we found one devastated house where we could gather together all of
the former players and people who had worked in the club during the past period’.48
Following this seminal meeting the club was able to utilise a field at Mostar’s former
Yugoslav Army barracks. The field was the wrong shape for a football pitch and the
grass was in bad condition, but it enabled the team to start working with a football
again. Economically, Velezˇ struggled through this difficult period; the club’s director
noted that his club remained ‘on a drip, like in the hospital’, to this day.49
Eventually in 1996, Velezˇ found a football pitch that was good enough for
competition. Located in Vrapcic´i, several kilometres away from Mostar, the pitch
belonged to a factory and had previously been used by the factory workers.50 The
mountainous backdrop however, is stunning, and whilst it may be compact, Velezˇ now
at least has a ground to call its own again (see Figure 6).
46Coke and Mirza—Red Army, FK Velezˇ Mostar Supporters’ Group, group interview with author,
Mostar, Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008. 47Enes Vukotic´, Avdo Kalajdzˇic´ and Mirza—FK Velezˇ, group interview with author, Mostar,
Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008. 48Enes Vukotic´, Avdo Kalajdzˇic´ and Mirza—FK Velezˇ, group interview with author, Mostar,
Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008. 49Enes Vukotic´, Avdo Kalajdzˇic´ and Mirza—FK Velezˇ, group interview with author, Mostar,
Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008. 50Enes Vukotic´, Avdo Kalajdzˇic´ and Mirza—FK Velezˇ, group interview with author, Mostar,
Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008.
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Enes noted that negotiations regarding a potential return to the Bijeli Brijeg had
continued since the end of the war—‘everyday’—but that the political situation in
Mostar rendered such a development an impossibility.51 Avdo, the club director,
mourned that ‘Velezˇ can never be what it was playing in Vrapcic´i’, and that ‘of course
everybody in Velezˇ would like to get back to playing in the Bijeli Brijeg Stadium, but
due to the political situation it is practically impossible for us to play there’.52 Others,
such as Velezˇ supporter Mirza, look at the situation practically: ‘Why struggle for
something which is impossible?’53 One thing that everybody connected with Velezˇ was
able to agree upon was that the crumbling communist era Bijeli Brijeg was now so
dilapidated that it actually needed to be demolished. This highlights the fact that
Velezˇ’s attachment to the Bijeli Brijeg is grounded in sentiment and history, rather
than in financial or infrastructural practicalities (see Figure 7).
The political failure to find some way to accommodate Velezˇ back at the Bijeli
Brijeg, even in terms of a ground-sharing arrangement with Zrinjski, underlines a
FIGURE 6. VRAPCˇIC´ I, THE NEW HOME OF FK VELEZˇ MOSTAR—SMALL BUT BEAUTIFUL
51Enes Vukotic´, Avdo Kalajdzˇic´ and Mirza—FK Velezˇ, group interview with author, Mostar,
Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008. 52Enes Vukotic´, Avdo Kalajdzˇic´ and Mirza—FK Velezˇ, group interview with author, Mostar,
Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008. 53Enes Vukotic´, Avdo Kalajdzˇic´ and Mirza—FK Velezˇ, group interview with author, Mostar,
Bosnia & Hercegovina, 22 May 2008.
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much more serious political failure across the entire territory of Bosnia &
Hercegovina. Under the terms of the Dayton Accords, which brought the Bosnian
war to an end in 1996, refugees were to be allowed to return to their homes (Silber &
Little 1996, pp. 378–82). However, the means by which Dayton achieved peace was
through the recognition of an ethnically divided, federal Bosnia & Hercegovina,
consisting of Serb controlled Republika Srpska and the Muslim–Croat Federation.
Silber and Little (1996, p. 380) have commented that the Dayton Accords ‘embodied
a contradiction: sanctioning two ethnic statelets within one unified whole and calling
for the right of the refugees to return’. This statement is equally valid when one
considers the fragile partnership within the Muslim–Croat Federation, which—as
previously discussed—remains deeply riven between the two constituent ethnicities.
This contradiction within Dayton underlines a serious misunderstanding of the war’s
principal objective—from the beginning it had been a conflict ‘fought in the pursuit
of ethnic separation’ (Silber & Little 1996, p. 382). It is thus unsurprising that the
majority of the former Yugoslavia’s two million refugees have been unable to return
to their pre-war dwellings, and in this respect Mostar is no exception (Goldstein
1999, p. 248; Silber & Little 1996, p. 378). Therefore, the plight of Velezˇ can also be
viewed as symbolic of the plight of the Muslim community that it has reluctantly
come to represent, and aspirations for an unlikely return to the Bijeli Brijeg offer
FIGURE 7. AN OVERGROWN SET OF TURNSTILES AND A DIRT TRACK AT THE ANTIQUATED, BUT MUCH
LOVED BIJELI BRIJEG STADIUM
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West Mostar refugees some hope of an eventual return to their homes (Rolland
2007, p. 195).
The fate of Velezˇ Mostar Football Club was inseparably entwined with that of the
socialist regime which it helped to bring to power. Since the club’s creation in 1922 it
served as a vehicle for the furtherance of a revolutionary project, culminating in the
victory of Tito’s communism, based upon the powerful slogan of ‘brotherhood and
unity’. This slogan, along with the multiethnic society that it symbolised, was zealously
supported by both Velezˇ and the heterogeneous city of Mostar. However, as Yugoslav
socialism developed, these unifying aspirations were implicitly dropped by the regime
in favour of Kardelj-inspired policies which elevated the status and autonomy of
Yugoslavia’s ethnically based constituent republics. Eventually, these developments
fundamentally weakened not only Yugoslavia, but also Velezˇ Mostar’s native Bosnia
& Hercegovina. In a sincere attempt to preserve the rich multiethnic society around it,
the club continued to cling to Tito’s brotherhood and unity long after divisive ethnic
nationalisms had begun to destroy the Yugoslav Federation. Finally losing the battle
to preserve its multiethnic composition when Mostar itself was consumed by conflict,
the club was specifically targeted by nationalist extremists as a prominent symbol of
the heterogeneous and formerly socialist society which these forces endeavoured to
destroy. Newly **** as a solely ‘Muslim’ club by its attackers, Velezˇ was cleansed
from its traditional home and replaced by Zrinjski Mostar—a monolith to an
ethnically exclusive Croatian nationalism that was fundamentally opposed to the
principles of the former socialist regime.
Yet, as we have seen, since the post-war reformation of Velezˇ, the club has once
again attempted to promote itself as a non-ethnically based representative of the city
of Mostar. Those involved with Velezˇ have also demonstrated a reluctance to abandon
its socialist roots, a phenomenon which is highlighted both by the modern presence of
pro-Tito graffiti throughout the city (see Figure 3) and by the fact that during a derby
match against Zrinjski in 2000, Velezˇ supporters proudly chanted: ‘We are Tito’s and
FIGURE 8. A RETURN TO SOCIALIST ROOTS—THE CHANGING NATURE OF THE VELEZˇ MOSTAR EMBLEM
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Tito is with us!’ (Rolland 2007, p. 185). Perhaps the best example of the club’s
unwillingness to be severed from its past is illustrated by the plight of its symbolic fivepointed star (petokraka). This red star, which since 1922 had been the club emblem
and had symbolised Velezˇ’s unmistakable alignment with ‘the revolutionary workers
movement of the world’ (Sˇkoro 1982, p. 16), was removed from the club’s badge in
1994. Explaining the reasons for this, club employee Enes recalled that ‘the wounds
were still fresh, and just after the war nobody had the courage to put the star back
because it was a symbol of communism’.54 This action underlines the extent to which
the disintegration of communist Yugoslavia had deconstructed the principles upon
which Velezˇ had previously thrived. However, just 10 years after the end of the
Bosnian conflict this politically loaded symbol was proudly reinstated as the club’s
emblem, emphasising the extent to which those involved with Velezˇ were finally ready
to emerge from a turbulent period of identity crisis and uncertainty (see Figure 8). The
modern presence of the petokraka on Velezˇ shirts, symbolic both of a return to the
club’s founding multiethnic principles and of the reclamation of a proud socialist era
history, serves as a poignant reminder of how—against all the odds—Velezˇ Mostar
Football Club zealously battled to protect the communist legacy. In this respect, the
club has faithfully fulfilled Tito’s command to defend the socialist principle of
brotherhood and unity against every nationalist assault.
University of East Anglia
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VELEZˇ MOSTAR FOOTBALL CLUB 113