It struck me that I ought to explain a little bit about why we cheer for the teams we do. Well, in part, it’s because I thought we ought to, and I’m the one of us most capable of complex thought and logic. But also, each team has a special something that captures part of what I love about life, and part of what makes you who you are.

So periodically (like during international breaks, long summer holidays, or say, global pandemics that completely alter everything we understand about our lives and ourselves), I want to introduce you to the teams we are tied to.

Our second team to meet: FK Vozdovac from Belgrade, Serbia. A team that reflects how we love our family.

Wherefore FK Vozdovac?

You should know that you boys are deeply loved.

Not just by your parents (obviously), or your grandparents (certainly), or your uncles and aunties both of blood and affinity. You are deeply loved by people half a world away who have never met you.

You are loved by your Grandma Di’s cousins Mariana and Dragana in Serbia. Their grandparents were related to your grandma’s grandparents (your great-great grandparents). Great-great grandfather Mane and Great-great grandmother Sofia Dimich left Gozpic in the Lika Valley for America and (eventually) Red Lodge, Montana.

Your great-greats were Serbs before there was a Serbia. Before the Lika Valley and Gozpic were part of Croatia, or all of these kingdoms and places were part of Yugoslavia. They were people who started over on a new and different frontier, while kept the old ways and old family close to heart. So while the family is built on love, the truth is changeable.

Mariana and Dragana don’t live in Gozpic, or the Lika Valley, they live in Belgrade. They live among no fewer than 8 local clubs in one of the most feverish hotbeds of soccer in the entire world. Some are casual. Some are legendary. For you I chose FK Vazdovac.

Who are FK Vozdovac?

FK Vazdovac are neither a legendary Serbian side, nor are they a casual crew of weekend warriors.

One of the oldest clubs in Serbia, Vozdovac can trace it’s origins back to 1912: two years after your Great-Great Grandpa Dimich headed west and two years before Sofia joined him. Its one of four clubs founded, in part, by Danilo Stojanovic. The forefather of Serbian soccer ran clubs, managed teams, and even played a rather adept goalkeeper from time to time.

For the next century, the team bounced around lower levels of Serbian, Belgrade, and Yugoslavian leagues. It would combine and merge with several other neighborhood sides when times were tough, but results never matched their more prolific neighbors: Partizan Belgrade and Red Star Belgrade.

It was only in the early 2010s that Vozdovac became a fixture in the top tier of Serbian football. This at the same time Serbian football began to face a serious split between how much of the games were organized for the owners, and how much for the Ultra Supporters.

Vozdovac’s new owners helped them leave behind a tiny ramshackle field, for a rooftop arena perched above a lucrative shopping complex. Their money and vision helped the team remain stable and improve their performances.

But that doesn’t mean the fans are thrilled. After all, it’s not all about the winning, and many Vozdovac fans loved the club wherever they played and however they fare. The new ownership seemed to abandon long standing traditions and stadia which smacked of disrespect to the fans. Fan support in Serbia is much more about the community than the club, sometimes to the good, and sometimes to the terrible.

The past twenty years has seen a long, long, long, long, LONG stretch of ugly events around Ultra Supporters Clubs in Serbia, especially in Belgrade (whose largest clubs Partizan and Red Star, offer the fiercest groups: The Gravediggers and the Heroes).

Some groups provided recruits for the late 1990s Bosnian genocide, others for gang violence and illicit drug deals. Some engage in grim racist attacks, others in gross assaults of opposing fans and police. Through it all there’s an ugly strain of white nationalism, neo-nazism, and criminality broadly tolerated by the government because these supporters also crack down on protesters.

How are we FK Vozdovac?

I couldn’t ignore your Serbian heritage. I can’t forget that your uncles and I had a host of Balkan coaches and classmates in Montana who taught us to love the game, our teammates, and opponents. I can’t gloss over the tremendous pride in Serbian heritage that comes out in your Grandma and her family. I won’t insult the love that Mariana and Dragana show you by inviting you to love the whole wide world of football…except their country.

But I can’t talk about the beliefs and values we hold and blithely tolerate or ignore the Ultras that make football in Belgrade so bloody and bitter.

Choosing a team meant eliminating Partizan and Red Star straight away. The rest of the Serbian leagues can’t compete with those two teams’ trophies or their rap sheets. I looked at some other teams, but FK Vozdovac stood out early because of their unique stadium and the dragon badge I thought was a great reflection of your mother’s love of dragons. (For the record “Dragana” comes from the word for precious or dear, but the word play is nice to have.)

Still, like seemingly all teams, Vozdovac has an Ultras group with a little more love of violence and fascist imagery than I’m comfortable with. They call themselves Invalids (far less fierce or grim than “Heroes” or “Gravediggers”), but they still encourage a fight with the police and revel in sexist chants. They loathe the club owners, but the team owners completely accept their behavior, using the Ultra’s own language to describe fans on the official team page.*

So why stand alongside “The Invalids”?

I think we should be fans of Vozdovac because it offers a strong symbol of the kind of love for family I hope you grow into. Proud regardless of the trophies. Strong and precious as a dragon, but not blind to the problems we have. Above all, like your Great-Great Grandparents, like your Grandma, your Mother, and your Aunties around the world: lead with love and be willing to change.

Football in Serbia can be an ugly thing. If we choose to ignore it, it stays that way. If we amplify the love we have for our history, our heritage, our values, we can make sure that the team isn’t just for the Ultras. It’s for all of us.

*(I recognize you boys won’t get this until you are much older, but the performative analysis of the group posted on their own website is fascinating…and not nearly as positive as they seem to think it is…)