Piše: James Rushton l Houseofv.ghost.io
What ties these European journeys that Aston Villa have taken me on together is confusion – I simply do not know where to begin with any of them.
I guess starting with cliche is best. Warsaw showed us the soul of football, Amsterdam/Alkmaar its more debauched side, and Mostar showed us a different edge of the soul of football, perhaps the spirit of it. The game brings people together, right? It did just that in Mostar.
Stories bring people together as well. It’s human nature to share your stories. They ground us, warn us, give us cause for hope, or caution. I have some stories to tell, from the Stadion pod Bijelim brijegom to HŠK Posušje playing in wind that’d ground a plane, we went to Bosnia and came back with a story.
Sorry, I’ve cocked something up already. It’s not just Bosnia is it? Mostar, Villa’s destination sits as the unofficial capital of Herzegovina, so to you, me and everyone else it is Bosnia and Herzegovina (or Herzegovina and Bosnia to some). It’s not ‘just’ Bosnia because Bosnia is many places, and many people – Herzegovina, and then some.
You come to this beautiful, diverse, and complex region of the world, western person, with prejudices. I had one vision of Zrinjski Mostar fans in my head, and it was challenged by them, in person. Their hospitality was something I’ll likely never experience again, unless I head back to Mostar. When I do, I want to see the other sides. It was eye-opening.
The journey to Mostar was fairly difficult, and with a head full of mixed feelings underlined by excitement, I woke in Luton. Myself and Jamie Cutteridge drove to Heathrow, flew to Frankfurt and then to Split. From Split, we (well not ‘we’, it was Jamie, entirely) drive through and down a mountain range to Mostar and slept the night away. Villa await, and so do Zrinjski fans.
The welcome was the first shock. You’re never really sure of what might go down on these European journeys and the scare stories are there to see, Bosnian and Herzegovinian football simply sits too far away from the prying eyes of the mainstream. The truth is that nobody has any idea what to expect.
I certainly did not, and that as well as Mostar’s beauty blew me away.
Just look at it
Mostar is a beautiful place. Or at least it is now, after years of hard work, with communities repairing what they lost, and what was taken as best as they can.
One of those communities are the Bosnian Croats, who back Zrinjski. You see their flag between the tenements in Strelcevina, far away from the romance of the UNESCO-backed Old Town, and while there are areas that ‘belong’ to each team exist, there seems to be no ‘real’ line that separates them from the Bosniaks who flock to follow Velez Mostar. You’ll see the 1981 graffiti of Velez’s Red Army not ten minutes from Zrinjski’s stadium. Mosques and churches are found on either side of the river, and the call to prayer echoes across the legendary Stari Most – two stone arms reaching across the Neretva to meet in an arching middle clasped fist of a keystone – daily.
You haven’t heard much about Villa so far, right? I’ll be frank – my team, our team, don’t matter much today. They are only slightly more than the best macguffin going in terms of the trip to Mostar. They brought us there, but they are NOT the story.
Where do I begin? Well, with asking you to sign up 👇 if you haven’t already.
Full credit belongs with Pete Hitchman (who recent readers might be familiar with) and his camera (Pete is an excellent follow on his AVFC On Camera Instagram account by the way). His boldness in placing himself in amongst the Zrinjski fans who travelled to Birmingham to take some great photos essentially landed him a family of ultras in Mostar.
Then, suddenly, I’m involved. Pete had been dragged all over Mostar by Zrinjski when it came to gameday in the Conference League, and we met at Opera Bar just outside of a square where Villa fans were collecting tickets. The bar owner was a former Croatian international, and his staff wear Villa shirts – but there’s a slight fracas with a Villa flag being hung up – as it might attract unwelcome attention.
Ivor (not the real name), a Zrinjski fan, welcomes us and explains the situation from his perspective. There had been some trouble, perhaps, with Villa flags elsewhere in town being hung where they might not be welcome. Zrinjski Ultras had sent out a message that no harm was to come to English fans – but they would not be protected from any violence occurring from Velez fans, nor would they suffer any provocation from mardy Brits.
“As for the English, the agreement among the group is that there will be no outbursts or attacks, unless we are forced to do so.” – Text sent amongst Zrinjski Ultras
The basis of that leaned heavily on the fact that they encountered no hassle in Birmingham, but I’d like to believe it was because of Pete. Word on the street was that Zrinjski leaders wanted to meet the ‘big Villa fan’ – and I fancied giving them my number and seeing what would happen. A fleeting fancy.
Hospitality in Herzegovina is all around you, you just need to break the ice and plunge in. Waking with Pete, and Jamie (who had driven me all the way to Split – and back), we wondered where’d we’d be taken by Ivor.
Turns out that it was to his mate Bosko (not his real name either) and the boisterous Zrinjski Ultras bar opposite the stadium. This bar faces a car wash embedded into the corner of the stadium complex, and it converts into a bar that sells hotdogs after the game. That’s neat.
They do not stop drinking. They are giving out a moonshine brewed with cannabis leaves. It is getting lethal and there is over an hour until match time. I’m asked where I will be watching the game, and they not accepting my answer of taking my allocated seat inside the away cage with other Villa fans, I don’t think I want to refuse their offer because A) it seems exciting, and B) refusing a 6″2 Bosnian Croat seems like a stupid idea.
Their songs are loud, and I believe we avoided hearing any nationalist chanting. Their main song was quite cute, actually:
“Watching Villa is like a sun, and we want this sun to last forever.”
Can’t knock that.
It’s a minute walk to the stadium, and one thought runs through my head for the next forty-five minutes: What the fuck am I doing?
Look, I never once felt in danger during my time in Mostar. I’m mostly always an observer which helps me straight up avoid threat in most occasions. This was not me observing at all.
I’m passed through a turnstile, I’m in Zrinjski seats, it is rammed from wall-to-wall in the lower tier. I miss the cage I never got to enter. I’m handed reams and reams of beer to carry for people I do not know through a sea of people I do not know.
I struggle, but I get them to safety and almost pass out. The chants start, my head wobbles, it’s so aggressively loud, so thunderingly passionate. They want something bigger than we know, they want a slice of history. I’m covered up by a display, it’s happening. Shit.
A game happens, but I’m not sure I’m witness to it. Zrinjski fans simply do not stop bouncing and shouting and screaming. One John McGinn goal at Villa Park stood between Zrinjski and an unbeaten record against a Premier League team – that’s some going. Fans before the game wanted an important point that would help Bosnia & Herzegovina secure a better co-efficient and UEFA footing going forward.
That point would be secured by a goal from Matija Malekinušić. A kiss of a shot that will sear into the brains of the home fans forever. It hit the net and the lower tier turned into a human tsunami. I smiled remembering that when I was cleaning the paint off the shin of my jeans the next morning.
For Aston Villa, it was an exhibition match thanks to a qualification already secured, to Zrinjski Mostar and Bosnian & Herzegovinian football, it might be the start. Progress by Zrinjski in terms of the wins and draws earned in Europe this season raises the country’s status, and even if you despise them – it benefits other clubs in the country.
I don’t think it’s a shame that I wasn’t involved much with Villa on the night – but there was very little choice. Presented with an opportunity to embed myself into a very foreign community, I took it and lived it. As the night went on, my thoughts got bolder. I start to reckon that this is how it should go down, everywhere. Then I catch myself, it can only happen here, really.
Zrinjski Mostar fans just want you to watch them. No, not in the sense of a hyperactive child telling you to “watch this’ then runs to the end of the lounge, now. They want to be witnessed, seen, heard, listened to. It’s not just them, either – that’s Mostar in a nut shell.
Pre-match, we grabbed a home ticket for Jamie from Ivana, who is grateful that we chose to come to Mostar. Our tour guide post-game states how wonderful it is that people actively chose to come to Mostar. Everyone here is just thankful that you know that it is here and have chosen to spend your time there. I mean that in the least-patronising way possible.
There’s the politics as well, right? How do you square all of this against the welcoming people that you are with?
Those things only leak out at the extremes though. Hardcore ultras will practice what they preach, but there’s middle ground. Not all Velez will be hardcore socialists, and not all Zrinjski will subscribe to hard-right politics.
Even then, Politics is different here. Left and right mean different things in practice, theory and reality than they do back home, and judgement is best left there. For many who lean left, socialism and communism remains very scary due to the failures of history. There is a lot of nuance here.
But still, how do you square it then?
Well, you don’t. It isn’t my job to have a take on Balkan politics. It’s not right for me to do so. It’s not your job, really, to judge normal people from from afar. Such opinions are best reserved for the people who are continuing to rebuild and highlight Bosnia and Herzegovina. Your job? It’s to meet with people, sit across the dinner table and listen. It’s to travel to new places you might not have considered in the past – and to hear the stories of the people there. Its to bring experiences back to your community and do what is right. You do not necessarily have to agree with people, you just have to sit down and listen. Politics and identity here is forged in part by tragedy and struggle, which for many people in the UK isn’t true at all. There’s a privilege we have to suspend. We haven’t had to drag the corpses of our family members out of the street under sniper fire, because that would certainly change perspectives.
There’s real tragedy at the heart of living in Mostar. People of a certain age will have witnessed and endured the worst atrocities imaginable. We come here with the prejudices learned to us by the news clips shown at the time. Images of Tony Blair and/or Bill Clinton trying to hold themselves back from patting a hole through their own backs on a job well done (or not well done), grainy memories of Slobodan Milosevic getting his comeuppance, the unforgettable image of Slobodan Praljak downing poison at the Hague.
You come here with expectations, prejudices. You can’t help that, but you can help how open you are to changing those prejudices. Just taking a visit is the start, but I left on a walking tour. A tour that took me and Jamie from the Zrinjski graffiti to the Old Town to Velez graffiti to bombed out buildings. There’s one strong truth to life in Mostar at one point, and that is at one point in time, your life expectancy was as long as 20 seconds if you stepped outside of a building at the wrong time.
If you come here, you’ll never ever stop wanting to kick the fuck out of the dickheads who called the shots and drew the lines. You’ll never stop feeling disappointment in an international community who watched a genocide occur in their backyard (and on multiple occasions since they swore ‘never again’ after 1945, including a genocide taking place right now). People do come here just because of the war, and they don’t leave with much else. It saddened me that truth is that Mostar locals want people to come because it’s so much more than that. So go to Mostar, experience it, and listen to people there. I will go back, and hear more sides than this.
You can see why Villa didn’t occupy my thoughts too often.
Autor se u članku dotakao i HNK Posušja: Napisao je da ne može vjerovati kako tamo momci igraju po vjetru koji bi mogao odnijeti i avion
Appendix: HŠK Posušje
To add on to my ‘what the fuck am I doing’ thoughts, myself and Jamie decided to watch another game of football. Our Zrinjski contacts had a hookup at HŠK Posušje – not ten minutes from the Croatian border – and off we went.
Posušje were hardcore – and I mean the players, and we realised that quickly. Turning up at Posušje was like essentially walking into a tornado. Literally.
The wind was moving our parked car backwards. The wind was tilting floodlights. The wind was stealing my breath and threatening to bowl me over.
HŠK Posušje and Borac didn’t call off a match to be played in conditions that would’ve likely grounded flights – and they suffered because of it.
The ball would take flight with any kick that launched it off the ground, it would spin wildly and uncontrollably. It couldn’t really be played on the floor because of the condition of the pitch. It was a bizarre spectacle to say the least, and was less a game of football than a sports game that involved a football. If you want a good summary of my past week of football, less than a week after witnessing McGinn’s fluid football goal against Arsenal, I saw the Posušje full-back take a clearance so hard to his balls he couldn’t walk properly for ten minutes (he carried on, somehow).
Borac’s fans turned up very late as well, entering the stadium after half-time with their team already 1-0 up. At half time, the home fans simply walked to their cars to turn the heating on. The locals couldn’t really understand why me and Jamie had turned up.
I’ve never felt so oppressed at a match by mother nature. I’ll miss every second of it though – it was a once-in-a-lifetime sight.
Appendix: A Group Stage of Love
The Mostar game closed Villa’s group stage in the Europa Conference League, and I’m so sorry to see it go. I took my shot at a Warsaw ticket and have not looked back. It’s been a crazy journey, so thank you for reading. If you want to do me a favour, share this newsletter and get a Villa fan to subscribe. I’ve really enjoyed sharing my tales of following Villa this season more than ever before.
If there was one word I’d use to describe this past group stage, it’d be love.
I mean, it’s Villa right? We’re here because we love it. We’ve endured to see this and the wonderful entertainment that Villa are currently bringing to us on the pitch. We’re not flying and watching without love.
And there’s the players as well. I’d cry if we sold John McGinn, Emi Martinex or Leon Bailey (amongst others like Luiz, Konsa etc). I genuinely feel attached to them.
Of course there is friendship. I’ve made new friends, strengthened long-time friendships and seen new places. Thanks to this newsletter, the Villa, and you, I’ve had a blast.
Forgive me for being soppy, but there’s one more thing, one that’s always on my mind during these away trips.
Part of the buzz of these journeys is coming back to someone that cares. I can’t thank her enough for helping me and pushing me to do something like this. I’m glad to survive the countless airport trips and border crossings just to get back to her. Thank you Lara! I love you.
Everyone else, I love you too. UTV and see you soon.
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