Fan Violence Can’t Tarnish Serbia’s Sporting Pride

I don’t much like the way Novak Djokovic won the Australian Open on Sunday. It looked as if he and Rafael Nadal were scarcely human, playing for almost six hours in the finals.

It was like something in the movies: a clash of the titans on a tennis court, or like agent Smith and Neo from the Matrix series. An ordinary spectator learns nothing from such a display; he can only be amazed, and happy that “our man” has won.

Serbs from all around the world have celebrated this new success by their compatriot. His epic victory will surely change something in the world media’s perception of Serbs in general. We are not just war criminals and rapist but great sportsmen. Symbolically, Djokovic is the new god, like the one from the Serbian national anthem, the God of Justice.

Nor was this a lone triumph. After Novak seized the crown in Melbourne, Serbian water-polo players took the stage in Holland and won the gold against Montenegro. This was the second European title for Serbia in the five-and-a-half years of its new independence. The team won the world title back in 2009. They need only the Gold in the Olympics Games to be on top of the world.

Like water polo, handball is not as popular as football or basketball but it still means something when you are on the top.

Serbia’s handball team meanwhile lost in the finals against Denmark, world’s vice-champions, in the crowded Belgrade Arena, just after the water polo team celebrated its victory.

Thus Serbian sportsmen brought back to the country three trophies in one day, showing that there is something internationally worthy in the country.

The silver medal that the handball team won has specific weight, because that sport was almost forgotten in Serbia, and only a few former important players, now coaches, believed that a “big comeback” was ever possible.

In the former Yugoslavia handball was a “national sport”, like basketball, because the national teams were Olympic and world champions at one point. In the last 20 years Croatia became the leader. Now in the semifinals Serbia defeated Croatia, and for most  Serbian fans this was the most important thing of the championship: Serbia had showed Croatia it was better in a field that the Croats had dominated for two decades.  

Sadly, the prelude to that game last Friday drew the attention of everyone in the region because of the attacks on Croatian fans in northern Serbian province of Vojvodina.

The Croats were attacked by organized groups that were presented in the Serbian media as local football fans. No one was killed, but the damage to property was significant and people who had come to Serbia to support their national handball team were frightened and returned home. That’s why there were no Croatian supporters in the game with Serbia.

In several attacks people were beaten and cars were destroyed with axes, steel pipes and bricks. The Serbian police, who could have easily predicted that violence was likely, only acted after the fact when they arrested a dozen hooligans. It looked as if the bullies would once again destroy the efforts of the organizers and of Serbian sportsmen to change the image of the country.

The last time that organized football supporters group attacked someone, a man was killed, the Frenchman Brice Taton. After Taton’s death the Serbian police and security agencies said they had started to work against violence caused by hooligans but the results in the last two-and-a-half years are not impressive.

Moreover, it looks that those hooligan groups have never been so powerful and influential among youngsters.

State institutions have an ambivalent relationship with them: when their support is needed to achieve some sporting result the fans are “our twelfth player”, but when they stir up violence they are members of organized criminal groups, hooligans, far-righters, and so on.

Behind the scenes, the leaders of those extremists groups are connected with police and political parties who use them for their own purposes. One day you’ll support Novak; the next you’ll support our campaign.

But at the end of the day, let’s let those who see these three sporting wins as a reason for celebration and as a credit to small Serbia do so. Maybe this country has a corrupt administration, burdened with the war heritage and dictatorship of the Nineties.

But it is also a country of superb individuals and teams who try to do their best in every world championship in the world, facing strong competition. If the saying goes that people get the governments they deserve,  surely they also deserve the sportsmen that they have.