Football, Fascism and the Tale of the Broken Region
Nothing is simple in the Balkans. Nothing is unpolitical. Haunted by its bitter past, the region is riven by deep-rooted biases, destroyed trust and seemingly insurmountable divides. Everything is subjected to the process of intense politicization; it then came as no surprise that the Croatian football adventure quickly turned into a political issue, with grim shades of primitivism displayed across all the Western Balkans — for here, one does not simply root for his neighbour. Mired in the stagnancy of the post-war realities, the region is swamped with populists and propaganda, anger and resentment — hate is encouraged, cooperation less so.
In the Western Balkans, it is not so much about who you cheer for, but rather who you cheer against. Football is politicized and militarized, used as an extension of the past war and a mean to legitimize fascism, give a platform to right-wing nationalists and glorify violence. This is especially true for Croatia.
In the last decades, Croatia’s uneasy past was most clearly exhibited on the football matches and Thompson’s concerts. There, a large number of fascist sympathizers would gather, shouting unsettling fascist greetings and slogans of the Ustashe movement, that ruled the Independent State of Croatia from 1941 until 1945 and was responsible for murdering hundreds of thousands of people — Serbs, Jews, Roma and political dissidents.
In 1996, Croatian striker Davor Šuker, at the time playing for Real Madrid, took a photo on the grave of the fascist Ustashe leader and war criminal, Ante Pavelić. The photo surfaced in 2010, much to the dismay of the international community and media that condemned the act. In Croatia, however, the fact that prominent player was publicly honouring the pro-Nazi collaborator and murderer, was, it seems, of little importance. In 2012, Šuker became the President of the Croatian Football Federation and continued to freely (and with impunity) express his sympathies with fascism. In 2014, he declared that the Croatian team, then participating in the World Cup, was playing in the honour of the player Joe Šimunić, who was banned for 10 matches by Fifa for shouting the Ustashe slogan “Za dom spremni” (For home, ready).
The Croatian football fans have also obtained a special kind of reputation abroad. During the Euro 2012, several incidents of nationalistic supporters brought the issue to the forefront. Uefa president Michel Platini was aghast by some of them. “They are a good team,” he said of Croatia, “but it’s unacceptable when you’ve got a hundred or so arseholes among the crowd.”
This year, the fans managed to sail through the World Cup without major incidents; players, on the other hand, were less tactful. After they had bested Argentina, the war-time song of Marko Perković Thompson, ‘Bojne cavoglave’, could be heard in the lockers; one that starts with a compromised Ustashe greeting and glorifies the killings of Serbs.
The players did not stop there and have instead continued to document their provocative conduct. After the win over Russia, the atmosphere in the lockers was especially festive; players, joined by the president of Croatia, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, sang Thompson’s song ‘Lijepa li si’, the unofficial anthem of the team that just so happens to revere the entity “Herzeg-Bosnia”, which never constituted part of Croatian territory. Moreover, its leaders were convicted by The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for war crimes against the non-Croat population of Bosnia and Hercegovina.
Player Domagoj Vida and vice trainer Ognjen Vukojević also created a video of their own, in which they dedicated their victory to Ukraine and Kiev Dinamo. Vida also exclaimed “Slava Ukrayini” (Glory to Ukraine), a greeting associated with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) that collaborated with the Nazi regime in World War II.
Back home, the success of Croatian football team made waves across the region. Players, who went to the tournament burdened with the accusations of corruption, assumed the cult status again; media reported of the ‘children of Oluja*’ whose winning mentality and high motivation resembled that of war heroes during the 90s civil war. All envious ‘Yugoslavians’, as the cover of one magazine put it, can simply kill themselves; there is no Yugoslavia anymore, but Croatia exists and its winning.
And while Croatia exploded with euphoria and nationalistic sentiments, the atmosphere in neighbouring Serbia was a bit grimmer. Far from having any success in the tournament, the president Vučić was satisfied with supporting all those who played against Croatia. “Even if Croatia and Russia would play for a thousandth time,” he said, “I would still cheer for Russia.” In Bosnia, meanwhile, they were also busy — either with counting how many players born in Bosnia actually play for other countries (there were three in the Croatian team); or with frantic cheering, among others a chant “Fuck you Bosnia, fuck you, Croatia is my homeland,” could be heard in certain parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
These primitive behaviours are neither new nor surprising; in a society, drowned in populism and propaganda, where war criminals are celebrated and truth has three different faces, these pictures represent an established post-war order.

So, it wasn’t all too surprising, either, to see Thompson celebrating with the players upon their return to Croatia. An estimated 500 thousand people gathered in the capital Zagreb to welcome their team; an event that was supposed to stay un-political and uncontroversial was thus quickly overshadowed by politics.
Marko Perković Thompson joined on the explicit request of player Luka Modrić and coach Zlatko Dalić. Thompson, whose nickname derives from the gun he was using during the civil war, is anything but unpolitical. The favourite singer of the Croatian far-right is a well-known sympathizer with the Ustashe movement; his songs glorify fascism, violence and hate. His concerts attract large groups of fans, that wear Ustashe outfits, symbols and shout Ustashe slogans. But all that doesn’t matter much to coach Dalić who sees Thompson as the team’s anthem; the fact that all Croatians cannot, and do not, identify with this kind of nationalism, is apparently beyond him.
The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center slammed the inclusion of Thompson in the reception of the Croatian Football Team in Zagreb, noting that “Thompson was notorious for singing songs which called for the murder of Serbs and related nostalgically to the notorious Croatian concentration camp Jasenovac and its adjacent women’s camp Stara Gradiška. By inviting Perković to sing at this mass celebration, at which no politicians or performers were scheduled to appear, gives his fascist views a legitimacy they do not deserve.”
It goes without saying that a second place in the World Cup is a tremendous success of the Croatian football team that deserves to be celebrated — but perhaps, just perhaps, this could have been done without giving the platform to such a controversial figure. Thompson divides Croatian society as he represents a narrow-minded, excluding and compromised nationalism; one that recognizes as true patriots only those close to the right, HDZ, Catholic Church and Thompson — and that culminates every year in the biggest fascist gathering in Europe, in Bleiburg.
If there is anything in abundance in the Western Balkans, it is anger. Far from reaching a satisfactory peace settlement in 1995, there is an overwhelming feeling that the aggressor reaped the rewards — who that might be is still contentious, as each side has its own ideas about who carried out the aggressions. The World Cup has revealed a region trapped inside its past, and as the boundaries between patriotism and nationalism continue to fade, the society drowns deeper and deeper in the never-ending sea of populism, propaganda and indoctrination.
A reviving experience for Croatia, a “new chapter”, left a bitter taste — of something that has already been seen and heard. The opportunity for a better representation of the country has been compromised with Thompson’s performance that, unnecessarily so, gave voice to the far-right and pro-fascist elements of the society.
So long as the war criminals are being idolized, fascism legitimized, and war glorified, the region will not be able to reach its full potential. Remaining divided, balkanized, it will be susceptible to outside forces and interests — those that once stood by as the bloodshed, ethnic cleansing and genocide conflagrated through the region.
If the people could recapture their lands again from the ruling elite, maybe then, perhaps, the Croatian football will not be spoken of in the same breath as fascism, and the neighbours would be able to support each other’s teams without grand debates and primitive outbursts.
* In English (Operation) Storm, the last major battle of the Croatian War of Independence
