Who would have thought that a football match would have so much importance put on it by it's supporters. At the end of the day it is just a game and not a life and death situation. The "Old Firm Derby" as it is known is the game played between Glasgow Rangers and Celtic in Scotland. This was the game that everyone used to wait and see who won it as normally the winner would come out on top of the league.
I still don't know if it is the case with the make up of the supporters for each club as Rangers were backed by the Protestants and Celtic the Catholics. This was more like a holy war between supporters who used to have a few skirmishes with each other in the past before and after the game. Thank fully those times seem to have disappeared and the few that caused the mayhem have either got too old or have been singled out by technology and banned.
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The match never took place as it was just too dangerous for the players.
There is a game that didn't divide a city, but a country. This game was played in 1990 in what we knew as Yugoslavia between Dynamo Zagreb and Red Star Belgrade. Dynamo is a Croatian team and Red Star is a Serbian team today, but then they were all mixed up in one country. Red Stars supporters are somewhat extreme and that day in 1990 crossed the line that some consider was the spark that ignited the future civil war.
Red Star supporters believed that Yugoslavia needed to be controlled by the Serbians in Belgrade and showed that day how serious they were. More than 3000 Red Star supporters hit the streets before the kick off and then took the fighting into the stadium. Dynamo supporters thought their treatment was unfair as the local policemen ignored the Red Star supporters and targeted Dynamo fans as well. It became apparent that there was an "us" and a"them" and the authority was on the "them" side. It was rumored long before this incident that the local police force was Serbian backed. This must go down as the bloodiest football match in history and it wasn't about football at all. The game never even took place as it was deemed way too dangerous.
In reality Yugoslavia was a cauldron bubbling ready to explode and was babysitting over a half a dozen states all looking to break out on their own. The match was played just two weeks after the Yugoslav Communist Party had lost elections to the Croats. This wasn't about football, but what was happening in the country politically. The Yugoslavian President trying to hang on to power started mixing areas of different ethnicity and religions incorporating Serbia as part of Croatia and that is why the place went nuts. The game of football was just a powder keg allowing Serbian fans to come and show their displeasure on anything that was a Croat.
It may sound crazy to blame a game of football for what happened as the following year civil war broke out and it ended in the total break up of Yugoslavia. The Serbians who wanted to control the country ended up with their own much smaller country where the local derby is between Red Star Belgrade and Partisan Belgrade and is known as "The Eternal Derby" and is not for the feint hearted.
