Yugoslavia Wars – Football in Yugoslavia: Killing the Game

In the autumn in which football was once again betrayed and sold in a disgustingly grotesque way, when FIFA postponed its 2034 World Cup to Saudi Arabia without any protest from the member countries, a clever little book by Barbi Marković was published almost at the same time ends with the sentence: “I hate football.”

In the spring, the writer received the Leipzig Book Fair Prize for her book “Minihorror,” which says: “The world is not right, bad things are happening, people are overwhelmed and are not counting on the future.” 2025 will not come until 2025 sometimes Trump.

In “Mini Horror” a couple experienced threatening things, expressed in a cute children’s book style. It was a mix of Roald Dahl’s “Kiss, Kiss” stories and the “Itchy and Scratchy” episodes from The Simpsons, as funny as they were brutal.

In the fall, Barbi Marković followed up with the “Piksi Book,” in which she tells unpleasant memories of her childhood in the form of a satirized football report. It was published in the interesting series “Ikonen” published by Frank Willmann at Voland & Quist. In it, various authors link their stories to a formative football figure. The title “Piksi” is reminiscent of the little “Pixi books” for children; But it is also the nickname of Dragan Stojković, a legendary midfielder from Red Star Belgrade who is now the Serbian national coach. As such, he was quite unsuccessful, but during his playing days it was said that the dust on his football boots made his teammates better, like some kind of superpower.

This is again packaged in a light and original way by Marković, and yet the much greater horror can be found in her “Piksi book”. She was born in Belgrade in 1980, and during her childhood her country was betrayed, sold and dismantled: socialist Yugoslavia. Nationalists and the military broke it up into its supposedly ethnic components, and the economic crisis turned into a civil war from 1991 onwards. Around 120,000 to 200,000 people died. This difference between different estimates alone points to the inhumane madness that raged for years.

Marković merely hints at this by highlighting a football match as the beginning of the disintegration of Yugoslavia; a game that, tellingly, could not take place because the fans of Dinamo Zagreb and Red Star Belgrade in Zagreb not only attacked each other but also the stadium before kick-off. This was also a reaction to the first elections in Croatia shortly before, which the nationalist Franjo Tuđman had won.

In terms of sport, there was nothing more to do on May 13, 1990, it was the 33rd matchday and Red Star were already champions. But abandoning the game or even canceling the game “is the biggest thing football fans can do,” writes Marković, namely “kill the game.” Piksi stands on the square between soldiers and police officers and cannot play.

A day later it is Barbi’s 10th birthday. She is watching the events in Zagreb the day before on a sports program on television when her father Slobodan calls to congratulate her. He is a friendly, peaceful football fan (“incapable of violence”). How often did she have to spend her birthday with him at the football stadium, even if he just wanted to watch training? But he no longer lives with his daughter. He tells her how he is currently sitting at the table with his new family and eating cabbage rolls. Because “Slobodan Marković doesn’t stick with a team, and he doesn’t stick with a family either,” his daughter realizes, takes the phone to the toilet and angrily throws the receiver into the bowl.

As the state of Yugoslavia breaks up, she separates from her father. It’s the time when she is beaten by “self-appointed belonging police” on the way to school. Every day she should “commit to a football team, a nation, a style of music and a political option.” But she doesn’t want that because she doesn’t believe in God or team and knows “what this isn’t about: football.” But always about violence and masculinity.

Nevertheless, there is another game that describes the final symbolic end of Yugoslavia in this book – not in strife, but in sadness that it didn’t work out. And Piksi is back on the pitch, six weeks after the disaster in Zagreb. It’s June 30th in Florence, Yugoslavia is playing against defending champions Argentina at the World Cup.

Barbi watches the game on TV with Slobodan, who has come to say a final goodbye to his old family. After half an hour, the Yugoslavs have one player less – yellow-red card. And Barbi also feels as if she is away from the window. Does her father even know her name anymore? But the Argentines don’t score a goal. Not even in extra time. There will be a penalty shootout. Piksi hits the crossbar and Diego Maradona also misses. No matter, Argentina ultimately wins 3-2.

Afterwards, the Yugoslav players sit on the grass and cry because “they will never play together again.” Slobodan Marković is also crying – in fact, all the Yugoslavs seem to be crying in front of the screens because they will soon be no more: “They are crying for the idea of ​​solidarity, which is the deadest of all. (…) They cry because they have to go to war, have to kill. Because they have to become assholes or victims.” All these tears lead to Barbi Marković’s question: “Oh, you liquefied guys, you idiots of all teams and nations, what have you done?” A small book (100 pages) – a big book about the collapse of the collectives.

Barbi Marković: Pixi-Buch. Voland & Quist, 100 S., no., €12.