WHEN I arrived in Serbia, I didn’t know how to swear. I knew what the verb ‘to swear’ was, but all the actual rude words were beyond me. Working in the student centre taught me a bit. But I was still wrestling with the language, and so while I could tell what was swearing and what wasn’t, the phrases themselves were still elusive – I didn’t know my arse from my bell-end. And I certainly couldn’t use any of the words properly myself. Partizan filled in those gaps.
I made a couple of pretty crass beginners’ errors before the match against Shamrock that made me swear (in English). Firstly, I decided to walk to the ground, despite having moved house and not really knowing the new way. I knew the general direction, but had forgotten that there’s a fairly major motorway junction between my house and the side of the city where Partizan and Red Star’s grounds are. There was an underpass under the first road, but nothing to help me cross the second. The only route was across a patch of scrubby land directly underneath the raised motorway. In the half light of dusk – replete with graffiti, rust streaks on the concrete, and a noticeable whiff of urine – it looked like the ideal place to get mugged or raped. Or both. I discovered a turn of pace not seen since the 1990s in dashing across the patch of land and sneaking between two buildings to rejoin the world of pavements, houses and a less pronounced fear of immediate and non-consensual penetration.
My second mistake was to forget what competition that night’s match was in. As I walked up the hill to the ground, I could already hear the crowd in full voice. That was pretty impressive considering there were still 15 minutes to kick-off. Unless, of course, there weren’t. Europa League kick-offs aren’t dictated in the same way that Champions League ones are, so my assumption of 20:45 had been proved sadly wrong. Making my second dash of the night, I managed to make my seat with only nine minutes on the clock and no goals scored. But the crowd was buoyant, delighting in Red Star’s 6-1 defeat to Rennes earlier in the night, leaving Partizan as Serbia’s only representative in Europe.
Partizan were defending the Jug in the first half. First-choice goalkeeper Stojković had a slight knock, so regular sub Radiša Ilić was between the sticks. For a permanent substitute, he was being serenaded with unusual warmth and vigour as 20,000 people were belting out a chorus of ‘Ti si prvi golman Radiša!’ [You’re first-choice keeper, Radiša] to the tune of John Brown’s ‘Body’ – and if that doesn’t ring any bells, it’s the same tune Arsenal and Chelsea use when they sing about Tottenham Hotspur going to Rome to see the Pope. How come such a rapturous reception? Not because Ilić is really that great a keeper – Dušan and the other guys around me quickly confirmed that. Which brings us to our first swearing definition:
Sranje [crap/shit], as in, ‘Da li je Ilić dobar golman?’ ‘Ne, sranje je.’ [Is Ilić a good keeper? No, he’s sh**]. Completely transferable from the English, used both adjectivally as above, but also as a noun.
No. The praise of Ilić was more of a protest against real first-choice keeper Stojković. Not a protest against his ability, but more against his past. Stojković started his career at, and then went back later to, Red Star, which makes him unpalatable in the eyes of many Grobari. Unfortunately for Stojković, having moved to Partizan makes him persona non grata at the Marakana too. He needs 24-hour close protection, and has minders behind his goal at all games. If this sounds a bit excessive, in the build-up to the Italy v Serbia European Championship qualifier in Genoa in October 2010 (the one which had to be called off because of crowd violence in the Serbia end, which itself was partly provoked by Partizan–Red Star arguments around Stojković), he was struck by a flare thrown by Red Star fans at the team bus. Italy coach Cesare Prandelli found Stojković trembling in the home team’s dressing room when they arrived.
Having deposed Ilić as Partizan’s first-choice keeper in 2010, played well for most of the season, and won the league and cup with them (including a 1-0 win away at Red Star), you could be forgiven for thinking that he might have won the Partizan fans over. Stojković even revealed a t-shirt after the away win at Red Star begging forgiveness from Partizan fans for ‘his ugly past’. But no, it wasn’t enough. I asked Dušan why he was still so disliked. ‘Well, he’s a Red Star pička. And that t-shirt didn’t convince anyone.’
Pička (c***) – again easily translated from English. This is the crudest word in Serbian as it is in English, used both literally and figuratively. Pička ciganska (gypsy c***) is the strongest football-related insult that a Partizan fan can offer. Firstly, you’re a c***. And secondly, your conduct reminds me, the offerer of this criticism, of Red Star Belgrade. I literally could not hate you more.
Partizan were on top, but failing to make their pressure count. The midfielders in particular were guilty of going for a killer one-touch through-ball instead of retaining possession. Tomić, maybe for the third time in five minutes, was guilty of wasting the ball. Dušan had had enough, and rose menacingly, yelling at the midfielder:
‘Pička ti materina seljačka’ [Your mum’s peasant c***]. The final adjective seljačka can also be substituted here for another semi-offensive word of choice, such as nepismena [illiterate] or nenormalna [abnormal]. It doesn’t get much worse than this. A couple of fans behind told Dušan to lay off. They weren’t offended by the language – I had heard the same thing a hundred times already in the match – but they just liked Tomić.
After half an hour, Partizan had their best chance yet. Full-back Volkov got on the end of Eduardo’s flick-on and shot towards the corner, only for Shamrock keeper Thompson to pull off a great save. Around the ground, 20,000 people said the same thing at once, ‘Jebote!’ [For f***’s sake!]. Also ‘f*** you!’ if aimed correctly and used as a simple retort – it’s derived from the verb ‘to f***’, but in this sense doesn’t have a literal and carnal meaning (more on that later). Used much more freely in Serbian than in English – people who outwardly appear quite respectable, including old ladies, say it on the bus to each other if they need to reflect severe exasperation.
We didn’t have to wait long though for a goal. Volkov, neither especially tall nor having proved himself to be a major aerial threat, popped up in the penalty area to head in Tomić’s corner. Big noise. No swearing. Just a massive cheer. No one seemed to mind that Partizan’s forwards were misfiring if the full-backs were going to be this prolific. Partizan settled and played out the rest of the half in comfort, passing the ball around like a team that actually knew what it was doing. The crowd were basking in the expectation of going through to the main stage of the Europa League. But a second goal wouldn’t come. When Vukić narrowly missed just before half-time, Goran said just one word, ‘Artmedia.’
What did that miss by Vukić have to do with the team from Slovakia? Artmedia was one of the games on the Love Partizan, Hate Yourself t-shirt, a classic example of Partizan snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Against a competent but limited Artmedia side, who had surprised everyone by dumping Celtic out in the previous round, Partizan had drawn 0-0 away in the final round of qualifying for the Champions League, and then dominated the second leg, creating chance after chance. But not scoring, instead hitting the post, forcing a number of saves from the keeper, and missing narrowly time after time.
In the 85th minute, the Artmedia keeper finally made a mistake, only for Partizan’s striker Nikola Grubjesić to hit the bar with the goal gaping. Partizan kept up the pressure in extra time, but to no avail. Then they were 3-3 in a shoot-out with Cameroonian striker Pierre Boya stepping up to take the decisive penalty. Artmedia keeper Cobej tipped Boya’s spot kick on to the post, Artmedia scored their next effort and Partizan missed and were out. Cobej would be diagnosed with a brain tumour a couple of months later after helping Artmedia beat holders Porto in the group stage, but made a full recovery and regained his first-team place the following season.
Partizan dominated after half-time too and went close a couple more times. ‘Definitely Artmedia.’ Coach Stanojević seemed confident enough though to take off the (reasonably busy) Vukić and bring on Babović. Babović’s first action was to ignore a pass guilty of not landing precisely on his toe, leading to howls of displeasure all around me. ‘Boli ga kurac!’ shouted Dušan, to everyone in his vicinity.
Kurac [dick]. A sensationally versatile word. Can, and does, mean the male sexual organ. In Dušan’s outburst, boli ga kurac, literally ‘his d**k hurts’ means he doesn’t care. Svirati kurcu, [to play (musically) the d**k] means to talk nonsense. Then there’s koji ti je kurac [which d**k is yours?] – ‘what’s the matter with you?’ Ići na kurac [going to (my) d**k] or popeti se na kurac [climbing up (my) d**k] means ‘to annoy’. Ode sve u kurac [everything’s going to the d**k] is like the English ‘going to sh**’. Daću ti kurac [I’ll give you the d**k] signifies that actually I won’t give you anything. Do kurca [To the d**k!] means ‘go to hell!’ or ‘damn it!’ Puši kurac [smoke a d**k] can be semi-literal – an imperative to fellate, but is more synonymous with ‘f*** you!’ There are many more. In a later game, Dušan would call Šćepović ‘Gospodin Kurobolja’ [Mr D**kache], another way of calling him lazy. What a great word.
A minute later, Shamrock had equalised. And what a goal. Full-back Sullivan volleyed in from 30 yards out, timing it to absolute perfection, the ball never going more than six feet in the air and not bouncing before it hit the net. From where we were sitting, right behind Sullivan, it was an amazing strike, simply incredible technique. On TV, it’s even better. Never has a full-back who wasn’t Brazilian connected so sweetly with a ball. Not even Lee Dixon. So it was 1-1, and 2-2 on aggregate – the only way the tie could end with penalties tonight. It was probably only Shamrock’s third shot all night. ‘Like I said, Artmedia,’ repeated Goran.
Still Partizan came forward though. Jovančić went clean through and fluffed a one-on-one, then Babović missed a good chance with 20 minutes of normal time left to play. As the frustration had built since Shamrock’s goal, the old guy next to me had gone from looking disapprovingly every time someone near him swore, etching frown lines ever deeper into his forehead, to muttering his own oaths. At this point though, even he lost it and joined in the coarse chorus. ‘Jebem ti sestru, Baboviću, bre!’ [I f*** your sister, Babović!]
Jebati – to f***. Used in the literal sense pretty interchangeably with English. But as an individual insult, a personal f***ing of the recipient’s female relatives can be used for an even stronger feeling than a standard English ‘f*** you’ or ‘f*** your mum’. Or, in contemporary youth English, just ‘your mum’. Also used fairly liberally with a pronoun, ‘jebi ga’, to mean ‘f*** it’, either dismissively in everyday language (I heard quite a few pensioners use it at the market) or more aggressively to refer to a more specific ‘it’.
Partizan were increasingly wasteful in possession and looking short of ideas. But Shamrock had put in a magnificent effort and were visibly tiring. Dušan, in between invitations to Partizan players to have their female relatives impregnated, summarised it: ‘This lot are a pub team. A pub team!’ In the last ten minutes, Partizan went close two or three more times. Goran said no other word during this period than ‘Artmedia’.
In extra time, Partizan were worse than ever for wastefulness, despite having almost all the possession against a now frankly knackered Shamrock. In attack, 17-year-old substitute Marković’s industry and creativity were putting all of his more experienced team-mates to shame. In defence, Volkov was still making runs and looking committed (he came closest to scoring, sliding in but seeing his effort saved). But that was it. The old guy and his son to my left had stopped saying anything other than swear words. The son, after yet another errant Partizan pass, managed a sentence that consisted only of f***, in its various forms. Babović came in for another blast, this time from the people in front of me after playing a simple pass straight into touch:
Jebeni peder (f***ing queer). Homophobia, to be honest, is pretty rife in Serbia. Peder is a strong word, worse even than expressions unacceptable in English like ‘poof’. There’s something sinister about it, both in the way it’s used to imply that the subject is ‘not normal’, and also in the aggression with which it’s deployed – to call someone that in Serbian means malice aforethought, or that the swearer is genuinely accusing the recipient of being homosexual. This is something which in Serbia is a bigger deal than it is in the UK, where fortunately we have got to the point where not many people actually care, and most people support equal rights.
Peder is a word you don’t use lightly. I saw this too outside of football, when a colleague of mine from another embassy, in conversation over lunch, said in Serbian that one of the reasons that he didn’t go to football matches in Belgrade was because he was a jebeni peder, and so wasn’t welcome. Someone didn’t quite hear him properly and asked him to repeat it. And he said again, more clearly ‘Ja sam jebeni peder’ [I’m a f***ing queer]. He seemed oblivious to the fact that the whole restaurant was now looking at him, some baffled, but some openly finding what he was saying unpalatable. You don’t drop the peder-bomb in Serbia unless you’re really angry. Babović’s pass was pretty lazy, but it didn’t merit anything quite so hateful.
It wasn’t just the guys next to me who were churning out the expletives. The whole crowd was turning against Partizan as they could see the match, which palpably should have been all over by now, slipping towards the lottery of a penalty shoot-out. Even the usually ultra-loyal Jug had lost the rhythm of its chanting and was watching and worrying like everyone else. The rest of the ground was no longer supporting the team, more holding them to account. Every player’s parenthood was doubted if he misplaced a pass, his fertility mocked if he held on to the ball too long, and his sister’s virginity threatened with every pace below full sprinting speed.
Then it happened. Shamrock defended another low-imagination Partizan attack and launched the ball upfield down the left-hand channel. Rnić misjudged the flight of the ball and ran too directly towards it, realising his mistake only as it sailed over his head.
Shamrock’s striker Ciaran Kilduff, who had only come on in extra time, but had been ploughing a lonely furrow with limited support for most of his short time on the pitch, saw his chance. Allowing the ball to bounce, he struck a good shot first time, which Ilić couldn’t hold (he should really have just tipped it over) and parried into the path of Kilduff’s strike partner Sheppard, also on as a sub. As Sheppard controlled the ball, the next seconds played out in slow motion, as a panicked Ilić hauled himself up from the first save and realised the danger. Desperate to make up for the first error, he hurled himself at the feet of Sheppard, whose feet were quick enough to move the ball away and allow Ilić to take him out. Penalty.
The Partizan crowd did its best to salvage something from the situation. Ilić’s morale was boosted with a hearty burst of ‘ti si prvi golman Radiša’, but given the howler he had just made, not everyone can have been truly sincere. As Shamrock’s Stephen O’Donnell, their third substitute, prepared to take the penalty, the stadium booed as one. It wasn’t as intimidating as the threat of ethnic violence against Shkendia’s penalty taker but it was probably louder, and the stakes were much higher: if O’Donnell scored, Partizan would need two goals in eight minutes to avoid going out on the away goals rule. O’Donnell kept his nerve and put it away. Directly opposite from us, Shamrock’s 50 or so travelling fans, hemmed in beneath the executive boxes by a thin luminous line of stewards in the Zapad, managed to make their cheers heard among the stunned silence of 20,000 Grobari.
Then came the anger. Seats were being smashed around me. The crowd, having exhausted its anger on the players, turned on the management. ‘Uprava napolje!’, the same chant I had heard in Novi Sad when the fancied Serbian side had lost to similarly unfancied European opposition, swelled in the throats of the thousands around me in the Istok. As one of Dušan’s mates put it, the board stealing from the club was one thing if the team was successful, but the team had been asset-stripped to the point where it couldn’t even beat a team ranked so far beneath them. The chanting got more specific as the crowd in the Istok called for the chairman to go, ‘Đuriću, odlazi!’
Parts of the Jug joined in. Parts of the Jug didn’t. Parts of the Jug chanted for manager Stanojević to be sacked. Parts of the Jug fought other parts of the Jug. Mostly it was, as football commentators say, just handbags. In a tightly-packed crowd like the Jug, it was hard to tell sometimes what was just natural swaying of a standing crowd – how I remember the Kop from TV when I was a kid – and what was a new front being opened for rucking among the fans. But there were definitely two or three distinct fights going on, while the rest of the stadium signalled its collective disapproval and booed those Grobari who were fighting their brethren.
The turmoil in the stands transmitted itself to the pitch. Partizan’s spirit had wandered off into the night, and their brains were following it out of the door. Medo’s composure deserted him. He committed a series of rash fouls before a five-second combination of elbowing one player, then wrestling another and stamping on his shoulder got him a red card. Crestfallen, the team didn’t produce a single shot in the last five minutes, and limped out of the competition. At the final whistle, while the Irish players jumped up and down and saluted their few dozen fans, the Partizan fans let their team know what they thought of them with the final word in our swear guide.
Pičkice [pussies]. Literally, ‘little c***s’, this expression is used to convey a belief that the recipients of the insult have no bravery.
The chant grew and grew, until it seemed like the whole stadium had finally found something to agree on. As the Partizan team drifted off the pitch, dazed like road accident victims, the pussy chorus reached a crescendo. Manager Stanojević reached the start of the tunnel and a few hotheads in the Jug called for him to go. The rest of the south-east corner responded with vitriol for the board of directors, and more fights broke out in the Jug. This time, the ‘leaders’ had decided enough was enough, and sent some heavies round from their central headquarters to suppress the dissent. It worked, just.
Still on the pitch celebrating, the Shamrock players and staff seemed oblivious to the acrimony that had accompanied the Partizan players off the field. When they finally decided to head to the changing rooms, the 15,000 Partizan fans who had remained to watch or participate in the internal feuding in the Jug stopped rowing long enough to applaud Shamrock off surprisingly warmly, with an ovation that lasted a good two minutes.
Dušan, who had gone pale in what couldn’t have been far off clinical shock, wasn’t one of them. Despite the anger towards their own team, the fans had still recognised the magnitude of Shamrock’s achievements. This was a big deal for a club side from Ireland – to come to a famous footballing city and beat one of its big names. It was one of the most sporting gestures I’ve seen from a crowd, and a much more heart-warming end to the night than had seemed possible three minutes before. I noted the contrast between that and the scalding abuse I got once for applauding Manchester United off the field at the Emirates after they had destroyed us in a Champions League knockout game. Shamrock’s players, lapping it up, were stood in exactly the same place where the Partizan players usually receive and give their own post-match ovations. The irony was probably lost on them.
Another game could be added to the list for next year’s ‘Love Partizan, Hate Yourself’ t-shirts. Right next to Artmedia. Serbia’s participation in all forms of European football was over for the season. It was still August. We would all be ‘concentrating on the league’.
Serbia’s media gave the double exit of Partizan and Red Star the full Spanish Inquisition the next day. ‘Shame of Serbia’, ‘Serbia Out Of Europe’, ‘Horror at the Humska’. Serbian tabloid headlines aren’t any better than British ones... but buried among the shock and horror, there were some cleverer analytical comments. One paper questioned the business model of Serbian football: the big clubs (essentially just Partizan and Red Star) gathered up the best talent in Serbia and a bunch of foreign misfits and outside bets, only to sell them to ‘proper’ European clubs as soon as they showed any real promise, maybe to buy them back later after they’d had their day, or their western European adventure had failed to deliver. Meanwhile, the little clubs were mostly unable to compete with the financial clout of the big two, but too often were being used as vanity projects or fronts for dubious business practices by ‘businessmen’.
A journalist from the quality daily Danas had texted Dušan. ‘Sometimes I wish I was a normal woman and didn’t care about football, and could forget about what I saw in the stadium last night.’ She and her colleagues had also written some interesting stuff about the game, or, to be more precise, about the fighting that had accompanied the last five minutes. As they put it, most of the crowd had been calling for Đurić’s head. Those fans, who had argued that the blame should be apportioned to Stanojević, and had defended Đurić by lashing out at those around them, were ‘in the pay of the club’. No attempt to dress that up, they just came straight out with it. I would have been content to put it down to a difference of opinion between fans, but no story in Serbia is complete without a conspiracy theory. The story naturally sounded better if vested interests were behind something as banal as a fight at a football stadium.
At work the next day, Dušan wasn’t himself. He is a talented and hard-working colleague, but he wasn’t on form. We were all busy at that time, so I wanted to make sure that his workload wasn’t too ridiculous. I needn’t have worried. ‘No, I’m fine, it’s just I’m still in shock from last night. I can’t believe it all.’ I made a note to check our human resources guidelines to see if football-induced illness was a valid reason for taking time off work, in case Dušan’s condition worsened.
As it was, he got back to his normal self as the day progressed. Partizan, on the other hand, was just about to experience a nasty bout of internal sickness, which had its immediate roots in the previous night’s dose of Shamrockitis Extratimensis.