ti si govno

Pointing to this video isn't breaking any new ground, even if Bokolis translated for you. The incident happened in 1999, and didn't become more widely known until about 10 years later. But, most people, Bokolis would venture, that have seen the above video haven't seen the entire documentary, of which Savićević's rant is but a mere clip.

It is called Het Laatste Joegoslavische Elftal, put together by Vuk Janic. I gather that is Dutch for the last Yugoslavian team. I've seen it in full with both French and Dutch subtitles, which helped Bokolis piece it together, as my Serbo-Croatian vocabulary is limited to not much more than stuff similar to what Savićević had to say.

The Savićević clip gets all the cyber-guerillas wound up. There are dozens of it out there; pretty much all of their respective comment boards are traded volleys of Fuck Serbia! and Fuck Croatia! Bitterness (not to mention a lack of context) has made these fuckers blind to the point where it hasn't dawned on any of them that the incident smacks of being staged.

You know shit is bad when their respective poeples won't even let these muthafuckas associate with one another. I don't care to make a comment of the merits of anyone's position. There is bitterness (lingering in the Serbs from the days of the Croatian Ustaše, as part of Croatian nationalism, and general Croatian sentiment that they got the short end of the deal on Yugoslavia set-up...this says nothing about the Serb sentiment towards Bosniaks and Kosovan) there that won't heal, that festered even while they largely put it all aside for the sake of Tito.

The title is a bit misleading because while this treated the Euro 2000 qualifier between Croatia and Yugoslavia as the last team, Yugoslavia effectively ended when Boban kicked the cop...in 1990.

As such, you see the same type of nostalgia as you saw in the Divac-Petrović piece. This piece brings up the ’87 World Youth (U-20) Championship in Chile and interviews Boban, Siniša (Mihajlović), (Peđa) Mijatović, Ivica Osim and Savićević, even though it notes that Savićević is older and wasn’t on the team.

Also like the Divac-Petrović piece- leaving aside the liberties the lemur and NBA seemingly took with it- you get the sense of the prevailing sentiment: The Serb, Montenegrin, Bosnian, etc., guys are like, we wish we could all still be as close as we were, while the Croatians are like, yeah, he’s a great guy and I miss him, but I got a country out of the deal, so…womp womp for them.

When I explained the sentiment to a Croatian friend of mine, who has seen the Savićević clip and was aware of, but hasn't seen the larger piece, he said, you're goddamned right- 200 years we've been trying to get our own country. If we have to lose a few friends over it, so be it.

In the same vein, it’s easy for Rađa and Kukoč and even Petrović‘s brother to sit there now and say the standoffishness and Divac being portrayed as the symbolic bad guy was all bullshit and stupidity, but you noticed that Petrović‘s brother was nowhere to be found when Divac showed up at the house. If Petrović were still alive, he probably still wouldn’t associate with Divac any more than necessary.

I felt bad for Siniša (Serb father, Croatian mother) and anyone that is caught in the middle like that.

The part with Savićević comes right before the end. After having Savićević declare himself as Montenegrin, they play up the antagonism in the buildup to the qualifier in Zagreb, complete with a bunch of Croatian guys- entirely too old to be doing that kind of stuff- marching and chanting all kinds of stuff. Note that the vitriol is directed at Serbia(ns), not "Yugoslavia."

It then cuts to the interview with Savićević. He starts by saying that he hadn’t been to Zagreb in 8 or 9 years, he had many good memories, blahblahblah, how they blame us, we blame them, but I don’t want to get mixed up in all that, but as soon as the Purgeru- apparently slang for someone from Zagreb- heckles him, he dives right in, albeit with a Savićević-ian calmness.

As Bokolis said, the whole episode was very likely staged.

It finishes with the match. They show Siniša hammering a 40-yard free kick right at the keeper and the subsequent good-natured banter between he and Šuker, likely Šuker telling him what a rocket that was, after which Šuker slaps him five. Then, they cut to a miserable Osim watching it in his living room.