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Olympiakos Piraeus vs. Panathinaikos
Athens, Greece
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Rivals, The Offbeat Guide To The 92 League Clubs, is one of the best derby books available.
Read the review |
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| Dinamo Zagreb - Hajduk Split (3-1) |
| Croatian First League, 01 May 2004 |
| Stadium : Maksimir |
| Attendance : 23.400 |
The Zagreb streets are full and they are all blue when Dinamo and Hajduk Split play their big match of the season. We (Dinamo) wear blue scarfs, t-shirts, hats, flags and even our faces are colored in blue.
Interest for the 'Vjeèni (eternal) Derby' is huge, tickets were sold out five days before the match. Fans are coming from all over Europe. You can see Dinamo,and also Hajduk fans, from Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Hungary, Germany, Italy and even Serbia.
Our ultras are called Bad Blue Boys and we hate those who are from the South of our country. We call them 'Tovari' which means donkeys. The ultras of Hajduk are called Torcida. They hate us from the North like we hate them and they call us 'Purgeri' which means citizens of Zagreb.
On the Sunday afternoon of the match we were in a local pub drinking our beers and talking about the game when the police ordered us out. We had little disagree with that so we decided to go out without making any trouble.
We walked to the stadium and started singing on our way through Maksimir street. Other fans started singing too and before we knew the whole street was shouting and singing. There were songs like :
"oj, Dinamo mi volimo, i za njega živimo, bez njega ne bi bili sretni, jer on je ponos grada mog! (hej, Dinamo, we love, we live for you, without you we wouldn't be happy 'cos you're the pride of the city!)".
We continued singing until we arrived at the North stand. We had payed 2,5 Euro for our tickets in this stand. We arrived 20 minutes before the game started. The stadium was still a little bit empty in some places. The Hajduk fans were located in the South stand where they arrived two hours before us so they wouldn't get in trouble.
Five minutes before the game started the whole stadium was full(except south and little bit of west-no tickets). The total attendance was 23000. The adrenaline was high because the winner of the game would probably become the 2004 Croatian champion.
When the players finally came out and the first whistle blew, Dinamo's Bad Blue Boys made a beautiful coreography. We made Dinamo's coat-armour out of paper and showed banners which said "Dinamo sacred, Bad Blue Boys, Dinamo Zagreb".
Then the whole stadium (except South of course) began shouting, yelling, screaming and singing on the first sound of Dinamo's club anthem.
In the 24th minute Branko Strupar opened the game by scoring 1-0!!! You can hardly imagine our happiness. The crowd was singing again but this time even more loudly. Bad Blue Boys were burning bengals and singing songs about Tovari : "Tovari,Tovari,niste ovdje roðeni marš iz Zagreba!!!" (Tovari, Tovari, you are not born here go away from Zagreb).
At the second half kick off there was a small coreography from Torcida Split on the South stand. They also produced a fireworks show. In the 68th minute Hajduk would scored a goal. Now the South stand was in delirium and Bad Blue Boys were booing and whistling, angry and sad.
But the Dinamo fans gave everything to support their team. We started a new chant, North and than East (one stand shouts and the other stand responds) :
North : Dinamo!!!!
East : Zagreb!!!!
North : Mi smo Purgeri (We are Purgeri)
East : Najjaèi smo najjaèi (We are the strongest ones)
North : Tovarske!!!
East : sSvinje!!!(pigs!!!).
It seemed that Branko Strupar did hear our chants as in the 82nd minute he scored again for Dinamo. Madness around the stands of course, we were winning again! At this moment we put out some Torcida banners and burned them with great approval of the crowd.
We were even more happy when Dario Zahora scored a 3rd goal for Dinamo. You can say there was chaos, from all stands fireworks and very loud singing. After the final whistle we stayed a little bit longer in the stadium to thank the players for their great performance.
At the end of the season we lost one match and Hajduk won the championship but we still keep the memories of this game in our hearts.
Pictures thanks to :
http://www.badblueboys.hr
Click here for more pictures.
http://www.torcida-split.com
Click here for more pictures.
Report added : 02 April 2005
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