The incident in Stari Jankovci has once again shed light on the difficult everyday life of Serbian sports collectives in Croatia.
The football club Sinđelić from Trpinja, which for decades has preserved the tradition and identity of the Serbian community in the Vukovar area, experienced shameful provocations during an away match that was supposed to be an ordinary lower-league encounter.
As soon as the players and coaching staff of Sinđelić stepped onto the home team’s stadium, a song by the controversial Croatian singer Marko Perković Thompson – “Anica Kninska Kraljica” – was played over the loudspeakers. It is a song whose lyrics contain open threats and war-inciting rhetoric directed against the Serbian people:
Controversial lyrics: “Because of Anica and a jug of wine, I will set Krajina on fire up to Knin” and “I will burn two or three Serbian headquarters, so that I did not come in vain”.
After the match, the club from Trpinja released a video as confirmation of these claims, in which the mentioned music can clearly be heard in the background while the players are preparing for the game.
Despite the charged atmosphere and insults from the loudspeakers, Sinđelić’s players did not give in. The match ended goalless (0:0), with the visitors showing sporting defiance and character in a far from friendly environment.
Trpinja is a village near Vukovar, located close to Borovo (the birthplace of Siniša Mihajlović), and represents one of the largest settlements with a majority Serbian population in that part of Croatia.
Sinđelić is one of the few, if not the only club in Croatia that proudly displays signs in the Cyrillic script at its stadium.
The club is not just a sports organization, but a central gathering place for Serbs from this area, which is why it is often a “thorn in the side” of extremist groups.
Such incidents in the lower leagues of Croatia often pass without adequate punishment from disciplinary bodies, raising questions about the safety and equality of Serbian clubs. Sinđelić states that their goal is exclusively to play football and foster good neighborly relations, but that they cannot and will not remain silent in the face of such direct insults and calls for violence.
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Source: Nova Foto:Reuters / Antonio Bronic