I'm not a big football fan, but I do like to watch big matches, such as the World Cup, and I watched many games from the 2006 World Cup. During the beginning of the competition, I was again in Croatia, with G's parents. And one fine day, after a fine lunch in Stara Baška , G's father reminded me that it was time for the match between Serbia & Montenegro and Argentina.
Now, Croatia, like most places, went pretty silent when the national team was playing, and indeed most of the World Cup matches were on somewhere, but Stara Baška is a small place, and there was no sign of a television where we were sitting. After a brief search, I found one in a quiet interior room. G's father and I (of course, rather predictably, the ladies weren't interested) dithered about whether to ask the people running the restaurant if they would let us watch the match there.
I've said before that I'm a bit nervous about certain people in Croatia - almost a Don't mention the war kind of feeling - and in this restaurant most of the staff were men of my age, which places them among those people who are likely to have the strongest feelings (i.e. it was people of my generation who ended up doing most of the fighting after all). But they had been very kind to us, and we had tipped generously, and the customer is always right - dirty Serb or not - so we eventually plucked up enough courage to ask the Konobar, if we could, pretty please, watch this match quietly on their TV. He nodded and smiled, as if suddenly his suspicions were confirmed - a lot of people recognise G's parents' distinctive Novi Sad accents - and probably he had made some guesses already. He lead us to the room, turned on the TV and then left us, though I noticed upon leaving, he muttered something to another Konobar in the distance (e.g. I imagined: Hey Ivica, two Serbs want to watch their team get destroyed, or something).
The match opened, and any Serbian football fan must now remember the outcome with pangs of regret. It wasn't that Serbia had bad players, but they played very badly - rather selfishly I thought, and certainly all subsequent analysis of the team said that they weren't playing as a team. Anyway, after just 6 minutes they were down 1 goal. The Croatian Konobars came by smiling after this goal, and after the second goal for Argentina (31 minutes) they started to cheer. This continued, but by the fourth goal for Argentina, I was impressed to see the sense of sympathy that one football fan has towards another at times like this. Naturally, the Croats didn't want the Serbs to win, but 4-0 is a humiliation (in fact, we left before it worsened to 6-0), and the Žao mi je - I'm sorry - that came afterwards, even with a smirk, seemed touchingly heartfelt.
I was reminded of a humorous Viz comic that I had seen some years ago, entitled Best moments in Scottish football, which consisted of nothing but some of the worst moments for the English national team: David Beckam's botched over-the-top-of-the-goal penalty against Portugal in Euro 2004; David Seaman looking whimsically at Ronaldinho's goal from a corner in the 2002 World Cup.
But cynicism aside, after this little Serb/Croat exchange, I was struck by how Football, that great War substitute, was working its magic again. I'll definitely cheer for Croatia this month.
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