Search: 'Obilić Belgrade'

One Belgrade club has floundered since the assassination of their infamous and highly feared owner in 2000. Richard Mills reports

Earlier this year Serbian pop singer Svetlana “Ceca” Ražnatović was finally charged with embezzlement over the sale of footballers and the illegal possession of firearms. These charges date back nearly ten years and relate to transfers from Obilić Belgrade Football Club. Ceca took over the running of Obilić when her husband Željko “Arkan” Ražnatović was assassinated in 2000 after an extraordinary life which included bank robberies, prison breaks, commanding a paramilitary organisation and indictment for war crimes. In death Arkan continues to be a legendary figure among Serbian nationalists, but the plight of his football club has been less well documented.

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The league that produced the European champions in its final season. By Jonathan Wilson

The long-term significance
Given the political situation, 1990-91 is remarkable for having passed off so smoothly. The previous season had been overshadowed by the riot at the Maksimir Stadium in Zagreb between Dinamo’s Bad Blue Boys and Red Star Belgrade’s Delije, hooligan firms that would end up serving at the front and who later saw that clash as the first battle of the Yugoslavian Civil War. However, although political violence flared across the region, crowd trouble remained relatively low-key.
It was, though, the last season of a truly pan-Yugoslav league. The Croatian clubs – Dinamo Zagreb, Hajduk Split, Osijek and Rijeka, as well as NK Zagreb, who would have been promoted – withdrew to join the league of the newly independent Croatia, while Olimpija Ljubljana, Slovenia’s only top-flight representatives, also withdrew. No sides were relegated, with OFK Belgrade (third), Sutjeska Niksic (fourth) and Pelister Bitola (sixth) joining second-placed Vardar Skopje in being promoted from the second division. The season also saw the continuation of the experiment whereby drawn games went to a penalty shootout, with only the winners taking a point, something that was widely seen as having helped Crvena Zvezda – Red Star – in Europe.

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From Bolton’s bright spark to Tranmere reject and retirement aged 30, Helen Duff charts the downward spiral of a footballer who wanted to make love not war

Hope and disappointment were the competing themes of Sasa Curcic’s football career, but in the end the latter won decisively. By the time the Yugoslavia midfielder opted for early retirement two years ago, he had convinced football fans across a broad span of the planet that he was one part virtuoso to two parts woeful lummox. Remembered with fondness for his lud­icrous comments, he’s still reviled by those supporters who once saw him as a saviour and remains, in at least two English boroughs, the man least likely to be invited back to switch on the Christmas lights.

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A new type of football violence is emerging in the Italian capital, says Roberto Gotta

Italy has again been surprised by an outbreak of football violence, and moved swiftly, though as usual too late, to correct it. It wasn’t the usual city centre skirmishes but a different kind of violence: political slogans written on large banners and racist chants, a disease which had been spreading for a long time without anyone noticing.

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Despite interference from NATO among others, Yugoslavia made it to Euro 2000. Dragomir Pop-Mitic looks back at an extraordinary campaign

“All games for the coming weekend are postponed.”

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