The greatest football match I’ve ever had the fortune to witness was indeed a 6:1 home victory in a cup competition for a team wearing ‘red & blue’, although it happened almost thirty years before Barcelona’s much admired comeback against PSG in the Champions League. The date was 9/12/1987, the team was FK Borac Banja Luka and the competition was Marshal Tito Cup (Communist Yugoslavia’s equivalent of FA Cup).  

FK Borac happened to be my local team and I grew up supporting them. My dad took me to my first match in June 1977, to see Borac take on FK Sarajevo. I was five years old and Borac was doing rather well in Yugoslav Top Division. We sat with his mates in the West Stand and I remember them talking about “that little Susic” ***, a promising no.10 midfield maverick in Sarajevo’s team. I don’t recall Susic doing much that day, for the spotlight was on local legend Abid Kovacevic, who scored four times in what was an emphatic 6:2 victory for Borac.

So, ten years after my first ever visit to City Stadium and the club had been stagnating in what was known as Second League West (the other one being East) for eight years, occasionally flirting with relegation. It wasn’t getting any better as the team had a disappointing start to the 1987/88 season, yet somehow Borac reached quarter-finals of the Cup. We were drawn against reigning Yugoslav Champions, FK Vojvodina Novi Sad, to play away first in a two-legged tie. Expectations were not high. Borac promptly lost the first match 3:0.

I tried in vain to animate my mates for a return leg. Very few of them did actually support Borac, many opting to follow one of the so called Big Four: Red Star, Partizan, Hajduk, Dinamo. Unimaginative bastards. More depressingly, even those who had affiliations with our local club didn’t seem that keen on going, making all kinds of half-hearted excuses. The week before the match I bought myself  a “Juniors & Soldiers” ticket for East Stand,  numbered 0001. There was evidently very little interest. Eventually a couple mates from the neighbourhood expressed some enthusiasm, only for one of them to cut open his head in a freak accident at school on the morning of the game. When Smajo and I went to pick him up, he appeared on a balcony, with his head bandaged. “I can’t go, I need to be laying down! My head hurts!” he cried, probably still in shock. At least he had a valid excuse.

Fewer than two thousand faithfuls gathered that Thursday afternoon to see Borac attempting the improbable, under the floodlights and proper Bosnian snow. The pitch, which at that time of year would mainly be shades of mud with sporadic grassy patches, was effortlessly painted white by mother nature. Have to say it looked much better that way. Either no one bothered removing the snow, or they simply didn’t have the equipment to do so, whatever the reason, it was decided that the game would be played with a red ball.

Nothing of importance happened in the first 40 minutes, we froze our devoted arses, while some better organized fans warmed themselves drinking “Rum with Tea”, which some wise soul had brought in what appeared to be a giant canister. People swore and cursed at no one in particular, hiding their frosty fingers in their pockets. It felt like one of those 0:0 games that would never end. We all gonna freeze to death here. Then the ball went out of play. Soon it became apparent that it had suffered some sort of puncture. As luck would have it, there appeared to be no replacement red ball in the stadium, so the game continued with a standard one.

Borac scored a minute later. 1:0 up at halftime. “Rum with Tea” crowd kept on chanting throughout the break, growing louder in confidence: “From the East Stand dust is rising/ Borac machine is up and running/ Once it starts it doesn’t know how to stop/ fucked is anyone getting in its way”. Suddenly there was an air of optimism amongst Borac faithfuls. We were feeding off each other in fast emerging collective belief that a miracle is possible. Stranger things have happened, surely.

I do remember this much: a few minutes into the second half Popovic scored with a great 16yrd shot to make it 2:0 and then it all becomes a bit blurred, as I got overwhelmed with emotions triggered by the extraordinary events unfolding on the pitch. By the 60th minute it was 3:0 and tie was levelled, but Vojvodina replied almost immediately, making it 3:1 and silencing the crowd. That didn’t discourage the boys in red and blue. The Borac machine was truly up and running. We scored three more times in the next fifteen minutes, one goal in particular denying the logic; Suljo Besirevic, our 6”3 striker, who enjoyed cult status amongst hardore fans, jumped for a cross and lobbed the oncoming Vojvodina keeper with the back of his head to make it 4:1. The crowd went mad, strangers hugged each other, ball boys joined  players in celebration. The whole stadium was rocking; a true winter wonderland. After the final whistle had blown, Borac players ran towards the East Stand to be embraced by joyous supporters.  “We’re gonna win the cup” song echoed around the stadium. After what we’d just seen on the pitch, such a notion seemed entirely possible. After all, Borac had made it into the Cup semi-finals for the first time since 1976.

Smajo and I walked away from the stadium in some sort of hazy delirium, but realised pretty quickly just how cold and hungry we were, so we went to get some Cevapi, as you do in Bosnia.  We sat inside a warm barbecue place, smoking, waiting for our meat to be grilled, listening to the 7pm news on the radio. They read out the football results. “And finally, we have a conformation of the result from Banja Luka, Borac did indeed beat Vojvodina 6:1”, announced the newsreader. We laughed. It seemed no one could quite believe it.

Borac needed a penalty shootout to beat another First Division team, FK Pristina, on the way to the final. This time around 15000 came to see that match, despite the game being televised. The crowd chanted “We are off to Belgrade!” and sung “We’re gonna win the Cup”. All it stood between us and the “dearest trophy” (nicknamed in yet another gesture of devotion to Tito), were newly crowned champions Red Star Belgrade. In Belgrade. The only comfort we could take was the fact that the Cup finals were traditionally played in the stadium of Red Star arch rivals, FK Partizan.

I was there. Of course I was there, as were thousands of others. Chibe, my mate who had smashed his head before the Vojvodina match, went with me this time. I’m not overstating when I say that in the days prior to final, that was the only thing I could think about. People were saying stuff like: “Why are you going when you know that Borac will get thrashed?”, but I guess those people never understood certain things, nor they ever will.

Admittedly, the mood in the supporters’ coach Chibe and I travelled on wasn’t that optimistic, as we left Banja Luka on that cloudy May morning. “As long as we don’t lose 5:0!” seemed to be the mantra for the first couple of hours. But as the consumption of alcoholic beverages increased, so did the courage and optimism. As we got to the outskirts of Belgrade, a man with glasses sitting at the front, clearly tipsy, waved a 500-dinar note at the rest of us shouting: “Who dares to put money on Red Star? I’m putting Tito on Borac!” (Tito’s face was on the note - that man was everywhere.) I figured that he was offering even odds on the Champions beating a Second League team, so I suggested to Chibe we back it and at least make some money out of it, but my mate had already had two bottles of beer by then and seemed revolted by the idea that I, of all people, would bet against Borac. I never thanked him for that.

The scenes outside the stadium were out of some surreal Balkan movie; red and blue flags, scarves and hats could be seen everywhere. Borac supporters were in good numbers and great voice, drinking beer or wine or plum brandy from the bottles. The crowd loudly cheered every arriving coach. Najko and Alija, “old hippies” who were East Stand regulars, had hired a whole band of gypsies from somewhere. They were loud and out of tune, but it just added to the whole atmosphere. It all resembled a drunken circus. They tried to get the band inside the stadium but security were having none of it.

Once inside, the mood calmed a bit, especially as the names of Red Star players were shown on a giant electronic board; all household names. Just after kick off, about hundred or so Partizan fans joined us on what was their own South Stand , and offered support against team they despised. That certainly brought level of noise up: “Fuck off Zvezda, ole ole!” to the chorus of Yellow Submarine sounded pretty convincing. Red Star didn’t come out all guns blazing, as Borac held its composure and actually played rather well, so we went to halftime still tied at 0:0.

As minutes in second half were running down, crowd got louder, sensing the improbable. Then came 61st minute of the game. Senad Lupic, our talisman striker (who I forgot to mention scored four times in that 6:1 win) headed the ball into the net, after brilliant counter attack and pinpointed cross by our no7, Amir Durgutovic. South Stand erupted. “Did that just happen?” I wondered, before being swayed by a pile of joyous human bodies. That was the closest to pandemonium I have ever experienced on the football stands. The sudden outburst of ecstatic joy coupled with sheer disbelief; these things seldom happen in life, I tell you. Do we dare to start believing? We got to the last ten minutes, when in the 83rd minute the almost inevitable happened: Red Star were gifted a penalty.

What happened next is the stuff of legend. I have to admit to not seeing it. Once the arshole referee signaled a penalty, I briefly joined in the rage of my fellow supporters, and then I found myself weeping in despair. It was just too much for 16yrs-old me, the injustice of it all. So I sat down, defeated, my snotty face in my hands, cursing those gypsy cunts who always get helped by referees, while my mate Chibe kept shouting “He’ll save it, I tell you, Kara’s gonna save it”. “He’ll save my cock!” I cried. “It’s fucking Piksi who’ll be taking it!”

Regular penalty taker at Red Star was none other than Dragan Stojkovic, one of the finest footballers Yugoslavia had ever produced, and by far the best player in the country at the time. Husnija Fazlic****, Borac legend from the 60s and the manager at the time, observed that Stojkovic had taken the Panenka penalty in the game against Velez Mostar the previous week - taking a run, then waiting for the keeper to make a move before chipping the ball nonchalantly across the middle of the goal. That cheeky technique is named after Chez player who scored such a winner in the shootout against West Germany in the 1976 European Cup Final, played in Belgrade. Fazlic approached our goalkeeper Karalic during the warm up, and instructed him not to move in the (likely) event of Stojkovic taking a penalty. Panenka, when it works, is a highly effective way to score, as it kind of embarasses the goalkeeper, but when it doesn’t work, the embarrassment gets reversed.

Stojkovic did indeed attempt Panenka and Karalic stood still and the rest is a statistical gem in the footballing history of a now deceased country. FK Borac Banja Luka was the only lower division team ever to win the domestic Cup in Yugoslavia.

11th of May 1988 is still the greatest day in the history of FK Borac (and will be for a foreseeable future, as the club, founded by workers in 1926, imploded after being overtaken by incompetent Serb nationalist mob during the 90s war), but for me, that 6:1 win against Vojvodina will forever be the most amazing thing I’ve ever witnessed in sport. For not only did David beat Goliath on that snowy December evening, it had also taken him apart.



Footnotes


*** “That little Susic” would later become one of Yugoslavia’s finest footballers ever, and to this day is considered to be “best ever foreign player” at PSG, where he enjoyed a stellar career in the 80s. Safet Susic would lead Bosnia & Herzegovina into their only World Cup to date, Brazil 2014, this time as a coach.

**** Fazlic made 513 appearances for Borac in the period 1963 - 1974, scoring unbelievable 1004 goals. He would become manager, then a director of football at Werder Bremen in 90s.