Željezničar – Konyaspor

Stadium: Grbavica / Sarajevo

Time: November 29, 2022 – 18.00

I haven't posted on this blog for a long time. The reason why I opened this page in 2007 was to create a medium where I could write comfortably by going out of the academy from time to time during my doctoral dissertation study on "Football support in Sarajevo". For a while, Turkey was always matched with Bosnia and Herzegovina in the same qualifying groups, and the articles on the blog mostly focused on the national team of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In other words, the axis of the blog had inadvertently shifted from the Bosnian league to the national team of Bosnia. After that, I completely distanced myself from the subject and my interest in Bosnian football decreased to the level of one or two games a year.

Fortunately, I was in Sarajevo in the most important matches of the last 10 years. I was in Grbavica for the first night game on 22 April 2009 after the reconstruction of the war-torn lighting system. On April 1, 2017, I was at the stadium in the first match of the newly constructed Grbavica's East Stand (Istok). I won't make any promises, but I can share a few notes on these matches later. As far as I remember…

Unfortunately, I could not attend Željezničar's 100th Anniversary celebrations last year. I had to content myself with staring at the lights of Grbavica with sad eyes as I grappled with the scourge of Covid at home.

Grbavica through my window.

There have been some developments lately that has made me refocus on Bosnian football culture. At the end of the summer, a message came from Tanıl Bora, editör of the respected social sciences periodical Toplum ve Bilim (Society and Science): “Would you write something about the World Cup in Qatar?” Of course, I could not refuse it. Thus began the process that allowed me to take “football culture” seriously again. At the end of September, I prepared an online presentation on “Bosnian women's football” at a conference in Zagreb. When I announced this on social media, a few friends encouraged me to restart my studies on Bosnian football.

It has been almost 15 years since I finished my one-year field research for my thesis, and when I look back, I realized that Bosnian football culture did not take a lot attendance in the meanwhile by other scholars. I thought that it would not be bad to focus on the subject again. Moreover, this time, I do not have an obligation such as a "thesis".

After spending almost the entire Fall in Turkey, coming back to Sarajevo I decided to renew my enthusiasm for Bosnian football culture as soon as I arrived.

While looking at my social media accounts, I came across an announcement from Željezničar's official Twitter account: There was a friendly match against Konyaspor on November 29. Here is the opportunity to start my field research again!

After 15 years, I took the road to Grbavica again as an ethnographer. In fact, I have been to Grbavica several times during this period. After all, it is the team of my neighborhood…

My first match in Grbavica and the first photos I have taken for the fieldwork.

The match with Konyaspor is Željo's fourth match against a Turkish team, and all four matches are friendly. They played their first match against Adana Demirspor (Railway workers’ club of Adana) in 1953 and won 4-1. Long live the brotherhood of railway workers! In the summer of 1965, they went on a tour to Istanbul and drew 0-0 with Galatasaray and defeated Beşiktaş 1-0. In the previous evening's match, they lost 2-1 to Konyaspor.

In the first minutes of the match, it was obvious that the football players from Konyaspor had a very weak relationship with the slippery ground. The temperature, which reached 2 Celsius at the time of the match, pointed to the "hidden icing" and the football players of Konyaspor were constantly slipping and falling. I was thinking: “Oh guys, did you come from Antalya?” as Konya is also known to be under effect of continental climate with freezing temperatures in winter. However, they recovered quickly as and found their first serious goal-posting in the seventh minute. Just after, in the eighth minute, Konya scored the first goal with Iche Ikpeazu. In the ninth minute, Željo's Brazilian Santos dribbled well from the left, but his last shot was bad. In the 11th minute, with Croatian player Pavicic’s goal, Konya doubled the lead. Željo responded with Haydarevic in the 21st minute. You can watch how interesting this goal is in the 14-minute video shared on Željezničar's official Youtube account.

The remaining 70 minutes of the game, especially the last half hour, were terribly boring. The cold and misty weather may have also been effective. Although there was movement in the last minutes, it was not enough to warm either the players or us, who were about to freeze in the stands. The referee was merciful and finished the match exactly in the 90th minute. Without adding one single second as extra time…

Maybe it wasn't a very bright match for football, except for the first 20 minutes, but there were emotional and beautiful moments. Two Bosnian players of Konyaspor, İbrahim Şehiç and Amir Hacıahmetovic, got plenty of applause and cheers from the stands as they left the game. Şehiç and Hacıahmetovic, who took the first steps of their football careers in Grbavica, were announced as "children of Željo". Born in 1997 in Denmark, Hadziahmetovic started playing football in Nexo and spent seven years in Željo between 2009 and 2016. He has been on the A team for the last two years. The goalkeeper Şehic, born in 1988, started football in Željo and played in Željo between 2007-2011. Hacıahmetovic was in the champion squad in 2009/10 and Şehic in 2014/15.

What about the fans?

As I mentioned above, during my fieldwork in 2007, with one exception, I watched all the matches in Grbavica with Željo's legendary fan group Manijaci (Maniacs) in the south stand (Jug). Actually, “I watched the matches” would be a misnomer. It would be more accurate to say that I watched the ones who are watching the matches. The only exception was the match when Manijaci watched in the north stand (Sjever) due to the snow in the south stands.

After I submitted my thesis, as a family man, I watched it in Sjever with middle-aged audiences called “pabuçari”, that is, “slippers”. Since I started field research again, I had to return to Jug. Jug had about 100 fans in all. I toured the terraces a few times but couldn't meet any of the old fans. The main fan base was in İstok, the newly opened eastern tribune. Maybe the fans who were in Jug 15 years ago preferred Istok, whereas they get older, they are less rough-and-tumble. It is necessary to experience Istok in the upcoming matches.

The newly constructed Istok (East) terraces.

Of course, the performance of the fans was quite low due to the friendly match. Before the start of the match, there was a nice ambiance while the famous song of Tifa, Željezničar's trademark "Grbavica", was played on the loudspeakers of the stadium, but Grbavica was almost silent throughout the match.

If you want to listen "Grbavica" from Tifa:

In the meantime, about ten fans of Konyaspor in Zapad (West) tribune, and about 20 in Istok, attracted my attention. They were probably Turkish students in Sarajevo.

It is quite difficult for me to acceot that this heroic locomotive symbolizing Zeljo is dumped outside of the stadium.