Belgrade’s derby: a multi-layered snapshot of local and global tensions

It is a warm, sleepy Sunday afternoon in block 61. Most of the alleys between New Belgrade’s grey, looming 1970s towers are virtually deserted – a permanent state of affairs in some cases, if the buildups of litter and vegetation are any barometer. The area might look unloved but life hums along inside the thousands of apartments, families taking lunch and washing hung on balconies.

At ground level graffiti daubs almost every wall and doorway. Children playing mini-football can do so flanked by a mural spanning the side of the concrete pitch that reads: “Russia and Serbia, brothers forever”. Then there are the numerous reminders of a turf war that, under cover of darkness, is marked out slogan by slogan. “What is the life of a Grobari?” asks one inscription, painted in Red Star’s primary colour and taunting Partizan’s notorious ultras group. “During the day they run, during the night they scribble”. Somebody has crossed a thick line through those letters in the black of Partizan.

The previous night, Partizan could claim supremacy in their rivals’ home. The 172nd Belgrade derby at Red Star’s cavernous Marakana was a 2-2 draw and, in other circumstances, perhaps the visitors might have regretted giving up an advantage wrested by goals either side of half time. But the bigger picture, as Igor Duljaj’s players threw shirts into the throbbing mass of away supporters and posed for photos while flares and smoke bombs flew overhead, was that Partizan had emerged unscathed from a battering to remain top of Serbia’s Superliga.

It had been a thrilling game, by consensus more entertaining than any derby in recent memory, and watched by a sell-out crowd for the first time in four years. Pyrotechnics and an atmosphere of unparalleled intensity have always been this fixture’s real selling points for those who, looking on from more sanitised climes, seek to tick it off their bucket lists. This time it had delivered on the pitch; Red Star hitting the woodwork four times and peppering their visitors in an extraordinary late onslaught after Xander Severina’s hotly-disputed red card.

Yet this fixture, with its mottos and motifs, holds wider relevance than ever. So does Serbia, a country torn between starkly different visions of modern-day Europe. Before kick-off at Marakana, Red Star’s ultras, the Delije, chanted their own affirmation of kinship with Russia; later in the match the Grobari displayed a banner glorifying Russian soldiers alongside an image of the country’s flag. There is no more potent petri dish than a full stadium for reflecting public sentiment and testing it, too. Serbia has long courted European Union membership but support is dropping and the hardening gaze towards Moscow may have ramifications far beyond these borders.

The sight of Gazprom’s logo on Red Star shirts – and across the east stand’s seats inside Marakana as the crowd clears – presented a reminder that, much as a team sprinkled with imports like the gladiatorial Senegalese forward Cherif Ndiaye is fun to watch, it has been funded to at least some extent by Russian money. Later this month Serbia’s national team, who face England at Euro 2024, will visit Moscow and grant Russia their first friendly match against European opposition since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Uefa has shown no appetite to intervene, even though Russia’s sides are banned from its competitions.

Another banner, displayed along a section of the east side, requested: “The state must stop the migration of Serbs from Kosovo”. In recent months a number of extravagant murals, notably untouched while others are modified or defaced, have sprung up in the centre of Belgrade advocating the resumption of violence in a mainly ethnic Albanian state that declared independence from Serbia in 2008. “When the army returns to Kosovo” is their message; similar proclamations have been displayed by the Delije, although this derby is spared them. It is widely held that the state, led by the authoritarian president Aleksandar Vučić and increasingly keen to dangle red meat for hardline nationalists, has given them tacit signoff.

Seven hours before the derby a crowd in the low hundreds watched Sindjelic Belgrade defeat FK Rad 4-0 in the regionalised third tier. English, Czech and Polish were as audible as Serbian; morning kick-offs are a groundhopper’s paradise. Inside the adjacent cafe a group of Poles ordered a tray of beers with rakija chasers. Overlooking the pitch a dark, featureless building sat at odds with the blue sky. It is Belgrade’s central prison, among whose inmates are members of a criminal gang who present a living reminder that Serbia’s brutal ultras scene must never be glamourised. Graffitied scrawl in the suburbs barely tells the story.

Among those being held is Veljko Belivuk, the leader of a Partizan fan group named the Janicari and the subject of a long-running trial that has dredged up shocking, gruesome details. Belivuk and company are accused of multiple murders, kidnappings, rapes and other offences: he has denied the charges against him but the case has dragged the topic of football ultras’ underworld connections into broad daylight. Belivuk has claimed that his group carried out work for the government, including dampening anti-Vučić sentiment inside football stadiums. The truth may never come out: one certainty is that the currents running beneath the surface of Belgrade’s football scene are complex and virtually impenetrable.

There was certainly nobody to stop the Grobari chanting “Vučić is a faggot” early in the derby, an episode that was remarked upon in local media the following day. The Delije rejected an invitation to follow suit. Vučić controversially won December’s snap election by a comfortable margin but dissenters are many: thousands protested in Belgrade after the vote amid claims of fraud and manipulation.

If the derby offers a multi-layered snapshot of local and global tensions, it also reflects Serbia’s place in the football world. A country famed for producing a stream of talent that belies its population of seven million has, key figures on the local scene fear, stopped bringing players through. There is little sign of the next Aleksandar Mitrovic, Luka Jovic or Dusan Vlahovic on the Marakana surface; foreigners like Partizan’s Brazilian forward Matheus Saldanha, who equalised Uros Spajic’s opener in first-half stoppage time and is the league’s top scorer, make the difference. There is a sense clubs are selling talent too early or using money from Uefa competitions to splash out six-figure sums on quick fixes. If Partizan win their first title since 2017, that is unlikely to present a concern.

Block 61, where Partizan are comfortably winning the off-pitch struggle for supremacy, may be a happier place if they do. Much of the street in these parts is tagged by Vandal Boys, a group that was largely subdued by Belivuk during the internecine struggles that marked his reign of terror. Tension has spilled into violence here before. “A warning to all who work for the police,” advises one message dramatically. “Organised flare displays are not tolerated in block 61 and people responsible for those will suffer draconian consequences. Signed by the law of the streets.”

Belgrade and its derby will continue to be an ungovernable, barely fathomable window into a modern world fraught with uncertainty and contradiction.