After the conclusion of WWII, a sudden interest in sport, especially football, in Yugoslavia was very big. After the fall of older domestic clubs, new teams have formed (Dinamo, Red Star Belgrade, Patrizan and others), which quickly fitted in with the rest of the clubs that did not change their old names (Hajduk, Sarajevo).Rivalry was huge, and the whole competition was exciting -- the champion was always decided at the very last game. That’s how it was on the 28 of October in 1950, when in Split, the game between “Hajduk” and “Red Star” was a decider of Yugoslav champion. That year, soccer gained a new wave of popularity -- with a bit of help from exciting World Cup that was held in Brazil which was a prefect display of talent, and even more so, a perfect display of their fans, the Torcidas.
With attractive southern atmosphere on Maracana and other Brazilian stadiums personally impressed a group of Hajduk fans, students in Zagreb. As the final game was approaching, with the rivals “Red Star” in 1950 championship, the ambition of supporting their club in an organized fashion grew even bigger ; in between the group a new idea sparked the flame which held the idea of organizing a supporters group with an influence from Brazilian fans, with the name of Torcida.
The core of the group held 113 students and other young people, mainly from Dalmatia, but there were also some Hajduk fans from other parts of the country.That group organized a trip for a couple of thousands of students and other Hajduk fans from that city for the derby in Split. The trains filled with fans came to Split in early morning on 29th of October 1950. on a Split’s train station and were greeted with music .The whole city was on its feet, anxiously awaiting the start of the game. A large group of supporters went on that night in front of the hotel where the players of “Red Star” were located, making huge noise with sirens, horns, bells and other helpful material, keeping Red Star’s player from sleeping. That event will later turn out to be a custom for big games, and an important piece of Split’s football folklore.
And the big moment finally came. The brimful “Stari Plac” ( Old Field , the first stadium of Hajduk Split ) hosted twenty thousand people. It was so crowded that even a needle couldn’t get in. Hundreds of supporters stayed in front of the stadium, and others were chewing their nails by their radios receivers. Teams run on the pitch and the game starts. But it wasn’t a game, it was a war . The game was marked by many incidents, one of Hajduk’s player even punched a player of Red Star , but the referee was afraid to send him off because he was afraid the fans would riot . The game ended 2-1 for Hajduk and Red Star who needed just a draw lost the champion title that day !
And then, unfortunately, the third half-time started. Red Star, not being able to get over losing the champions title, and in cooperation with the supreme communist authorities from Belgrade, comes up with a plan to punish Torcida and Hajduk. Milovan Dilas, at that time almighty state ideologist, called up a communist party conference, asking an investigation of the case. Special ad hoc party subcommittee was established, very soon getting the results. The president and the vice-president of Hajduk, Ante Jurjevic Baja and Jure Bilic got a party reproach and a warning. Hajduk’s captain Frane Matosic was expelled from the party because he punched Red Star’s player Stankovic (he was later allowed back in by the intervention of Tito himself ). Numerous members of Torcida were arrested and prosecuted. Vjenceslav Zuvela, one of 113 quintessential founders of Torcida was sentenced to three years in prison. On appeal the court reduced his penalty to three months. He was accused of wearing , like many other members of Torcida, a Torcida’s badge with T and H letters on it (meaning in fact Toricda and Hajduk ). Always active the “ brains ” of the communist party interpreted its meaning by “ Hrvatska Torcida ” ( Croatian Torcida ) or Torcida and Hrvatska ( Croatia ) . ). Of course, political attack on Torcida took its tall on organizers, ending its existence.
That is how the story of Torcida begins, proclaiming in the early start destiny of its followers. Yes, followers because as one of them said: ” Torcida is a sect and a religion”.
At that time, political authorities did not provide enough support for introducing new organized fan support. Never the less, in the next decades, the fans still sang the songs on Hajduk games, and were still supporting their club, but could not have been organized like before. During 50′s and 60′s popularity of soccer escalated even further. Behavior of the spectators in Split and in Yugoslavia at the time, was mostly reflective of the match in progress itself. But on some bigger and more important games, a groups of wilder and louder fans started forming. That’s how in the first half of the 60′s Hajduk fans supported their club; with signal rockets, flares and other fire materials, which on some of the occasions ended up of the pitch. Just like today, fans were cheering on and singing after a good performance or a win, and were angry after a loss, but at the time only on rare occasions the fights broke out. One of those rare incidents happened when “Hajduk” and “Sarajevo” played in Split. Twice in a row, Sarajevo played better than Hajduk, with games ending up 1:0 for the visitors. First incident took place on 1st of October 1961, when the referee, Aleksandar Skoric, was attacked after the game. He overruled a goal to Hajduk, which was seen as a mistake by fans in Split. Skoric was beaten up, and at the stands fans were falling into vandalic tendencies. Second bigger incident took place on 11th of September 1966, when number of fans, disappointed by Hajduk’s loss, started a massive fight, where the stands were damaged, parts of the stadium, goals. Verbal attacks were frequent too, which was mostly a message for the fans and the players of other teams, and of course referees. Even then, loud singing and fan support was considered more of a thing to scare the opposing fans and players. Open slogans about nationality, especially those of chauvinistic nature were really rare. At the time, the regime was supported by majority of the citizens, and any threat to it was severely punishable.
As mentioned earlier, Torcida is a trance, and that unusual trance produced the feverish search for all kinds of original ways to support the team . Firecrackers, flares, smoke bombs, drums, huge flags, spitfajerice (jackets with fluorescently orange exterior), and bunch of other things distinguished Torcida as an unique patent in these lands, and often used as a guide by other groups. Many of Torcida’s inventions were unfairly attributed to the creativity of Italian supporters. Materials were coming to Split mostly through sailors, who brought various influences and life-styles from all over the world, making them an integral part of this climate and this people, authentic in its own feeling.
In Hajduk’s annals we can find infos on some of the big torch-light corteos that happened long time ago, in the time when such things were a rarity in Italy. One of those processions took place in 1964, in Rijeka, during the match between Hajduk and OFK Belgrade. The game was played there because “ Old Field ” was under suspension, caused by the pitch-invasion in the game against Sarajevo. Torcida’s members made a circle around the stadium, and then lighted dozens of torches, celebrating 4:1 victory. In the cup final of 1967, played in Split against Sarajevo, another memorable corteo took place, being a part of a glorious atmosphere. Here’s what Hajduk’s annals say about it:
“Half of Dalmatia congregated in Split. People carry banners and flags. Rockets are launched. Mortars rattle. Ship sirens whistle.Church bells ring. The entrance is closed an hour before the game start. 30 000 people are already inside, more than stadium can take. At least as many people stayed outside. ”
Oldschool photos and videos of Torcida Split
1970′s
At the beginning of 70′s, a smaller group of younger and louder followers of Hajduk started to form on the east stand of the stadium in Split and from that place lead the chanting.Even though they were low in numbers, members of that group slowly but successfully spread the new, modern way of chanting. Young supporters at the time followed Southern American way of chanting and supporting, with a large number of club flags and banners (which reflects that part of the stands were the group is hanging). Members of the fan group which was located in the middle of east standings “Starog Placa” (Hajduk’s stadium at the time) tried to follow the English fans way (with scarves, singing of songs, hanging in smaller groups, forcing someone to fight, and other violent things) and started going on away games in the other cities. In the second half of 70′s, a lot of members started meeting up even if the game wasn’t on, making it a new style of living for the youth. In Split they mostly hung on Riva, and in the ‘Dubrovnik’ cafe, which soon became somewhat of a barracks for the ultras. During that time, it was there, where the talks were held about organizing trips for away games, making up new songs, thinking of strategies, fights and everything else. It was then when the violence became more intense relating to soccer games. In those escalations main participants were adolescents, but the older fans were there too. That’s how the ultras were forced to retaliate for the beatings they’ve experienced during the previous encounters on away games, on any other fans that arrived with their club to Split, knowing that it was hard to point out the guilty party responsible for the paybacks. Ultras violence in that part of decade had a partly symbolic character -- it was more satisfying to harm the opponents with words and making them do things they normally wouldn’t , than to physically hurt them. Incidents mostly took place on the streets and train stations after the game. But, there were also fights on the stadium, like the game against Crvena Zvezda (Red Star) in Split in 1974 when several hundreds of army soldiers, fans of Red Star, got into fight with Hajduk fans, which ended up in a high number of injured personnel. It’s worth mentioning that with the exceptions of Dinamo Zagreb and Velez Mostar, no other fans travelled to Split in big numbers, or chanted in the Stari Plac, while Hajduk ultras followed their club everywhere around ex-Yugoslavia. First group of fans to travel to Split in large numbers was Patrizan’s Grobari, which came in numbers close to a thousand, in 1978. But then, they were brutally beaten up and a lot of cars with Belgrade license plates ended up in the sea .
1980′s
The core of supporter groups in this period grew drastically in numbers and started to form real supporter bases. First modern supporter group in ex-Yugoslavia was a group of Hajduk fanatics.In 1980, there was a need to fill the generational gap and the voidthat after the break-up of the group “Nesvrstani” . A dozen or so boys (Kule, Vele Bakovia, Gula, Stipe, Uso, Trepea and others) started a group and soon adopted a new name “Torcida 1980″. With the name, they wanted to pay respect to Torcida from 1950 and the whole tradition of supporters in Split and they also wanted to start again with Brazilian, and South American way of chanting and supporting.
In the early 80’s Torcida along with their team moved on to a new stadium, Poljud. On every game there was a banner with “Torcida” written on it, while graffiti with that name started to appear everywhere around city’s walls. Also banners started to appear from the locations outside of Split (Torcida Vranjic, Torcida Seget…), which was the proof of the expansion and popularity of that group.As the group grew, so did the troubles. Example for that comes from the game against Olimpique from Marseille. Small group of supporters smuggled in and ignited a tear gas bomb, causing a stampede and cancellation of the game. It was only a m,miracle that nobody died in that frenzy. Hajduk was expelled from European cups for couple of years.
One supporter active in the 80’s remembers :
“And then it comes 1985. -- that was very important year. That year in Split a new trend of supporters was emerging. Torcida became something very important, even more important than Hajduk. Our graffiti covered the whole city -- Torcida became somewhat of a trend.”
Torcida’s Graffittis.
Outside of the borders of ex-Yugoslavia, the supporters scene grew too: tragedies which took place that year in Bruxelles, Bradford and Birmingham sparked interest in international phenomenon of soccer supporters. Even in the first half of the 80′s, some changes where made in the attitude of fans in contrast to their flag-bearers from the 70′s. For example, in Split more and more supporters turned to drugs. Tomo said more about that:
“About 10 of us from Torcida, use to hang around at ‘Dom Invalida’, where we could get the beer at a cheap price. Communists didn’t aloud wine, so we would buy it beforehand and bring it in under the table and get drunk. Then we’d sing, verbally attack people, start troubles…They would call the police, and we would run. Back then, the drugs for us where something else, we hated it. But then sometime in `81, sniffing glue period started. I didn’t really understand what it was. We would inhale the glue from the bags, sniff and then we’d have hallucinations. After a couple of months the tablets took over as the most popular drug. Smoking pot was something completely different, it gave us excellent feeling and we were satisfied with it. Before the game, we would buy some pot on Riva, and then we’d go to Poljud. There were 100 or 200 of us, we would smoke pot, drink and then make troubles. We chanted and supported louder, we’d be so uptight, no one could do anything to us. We were ready for everything. Sometimes during the 83 era, we started with the ‘shit’, or as some call it hashish. Back then it was unpleasant to come to our gathering spot without it. We had our idols when it comes to supporting our club, older warriors, and they all smoked hashish. We would imitate them, and then with time, we became the idols to the younger generation. We started with heroin somewhere in 1986. The police kicked us out from ‘Dom Invalida’ and ‘Dubrovnik’ so we started going to ‘Slavice’. That was the worst move by Torcida. At night there would be 30 or 40 of standard guys, we’d drink, take drugs and again cause troubles. We wouldn’t pay, we would trash everything, and then go home.Then in the morning the police wakes you up.”
In the middle of 80′s in ex-Yugoslavia the process of starting out new supporter groups intensifies. Everyone wanted to prove that their group was the best, the craziest, the toughest. Special concentration and preparation was the one for the home games, because no one wanted their ass kicked on the home pitch, that would be shameful. Ico, a person with his proud 120 away games, explains the mentality of Torcida members , back in those days:
“About 15 of us would gather around early in the city and we would look for Red Star supporters.The whole morning we’d look around the town and the people passing by. They would hide, they were afraid of us, so they didn’t show their scarves in public. But we would know them by their clothing, because they didn’t come from Belgrade, but from Knin and some parts of Bosnia. How can I explain that…, they would look like villagers, you know what I mean? I would spot a persons like that from the airplane, and would know straight away that he is Red Star Supporter, and would then surround them, take their scarves and then bash them.”
Photos and videos of choreos by Torcida Split.
The best way to prove that your group was good, is to show it on the away game, where you had to travel far away. Most incidents happened in Belgrade, four of older and respected Torcida members have something about their travel there in 1990:
Prle: “Hajduk supporters back then would go to Belgrade in big numbers. If you’ve seen the movie “Warriors” -- that exactly how the day was for us in Belgrade. People were chosen, as in who would go to Belgrade beforehand.”
Stiple: “Back then, some kid that’s 10 years old could not go, we would not let him”
Prle: “When we went to Belgrade, we would immediately get in to a fight with Red Star Supporters. After that we’d go further away.”
Uso: “We pass through the Belgrade and fight. The war lasts the whole day. Once we got into a fight with a huge group. There were about 2 thousands of them, and about 200 of us.We launched a couple of rockets at them, and they started to run.One of us here was that rocket launcher.”
Bosna: “It’s not important who exactly.” (Laughs)
Uso: “They flew like birds everywhere. And then we threw some bottles on them. The smoke from the rockets covered half of the city. That year, not a single Red Star supporter came to Split.”
Torcida’s Corteos:
In the circles of ultras scene the most respected are those who prove themselves in drastic incidents.Members of Torcida did just that in Rijeka in 1988. Armada, Rijeka’s supporters threw a couple of flares and smoke bombs on the eastern stands where Torcida was located. The response was aggressive: a couple of hundreds of Torcida, obviously under the influence of drugs and alcohol, teared down the fence and started the fight with the local supporters on their stands. The police was also the loser here, a lot of them experienced injuries.In the rocket fight which started soon after that, serious injuries were sustained by the fotoreporter and one spectator on western part of the stadium. The game continued as if nothing had happened, but in very unusual circumstances. After the game, Torcida took their anger on the streets of Rijeka, from fights to broken cars, broken windows and similar things. The police from Rijeka succeeded in organizing themselves so by the end of the day locked up a couple of hundreds Torcida ultras. As the 1980’s came to an end , the growing political tensions in ex- Yugoslavia influenced ultras scene more and more. Some members of ex-Yugoslav ultras scene cause troubles motivated by chauvinism, which caused severe reactions from media and political forums. Those reactions caused different reactions than they wanted -- to prove other ultras that their are the best. One of those examples is the political affair concerning the throwing of some military vehicles in the sea in Split after the game between Hajduk and Red Star in 1985. When that incident happened, one of the eye witnesses , a 20 years old back then, said:
“After the game in which Hajduk lost, about 30 of us were totally pissed off, we went to the Riva and started to cause chaos, we started to throw rocks on every cars that were not from Split. On Riva there was already a huge number of members of our group, there was screaming and yelling…I already knew what was going on, they’ve must have found a group of Red Star fans, the ones serving the military.And when I got there, they were already in the sea -- the group threw them into the sea. They must have been bashed before it, so they ran to the sea, because they couldn’t run anywhere else. I’ve heard that two of them jumped in the sea by themselves. The rest were pushed. The group threw rocks on them, they didn’t let them get out, while the sea was cold, end of October. And normally, we would say to them: “Come out, we won’t do it anymore. Then you give him the hand, and when he takes your hand, you would kick him. We did that two or three times.That all lasted for about 10 minutes. One girl that I knew wanted to take me away from the mess: “Get away from there, its only gonna get worse”. Because some of their fans were already beaten up in Matejuski. I’ve let her drag me away. Because, I did my part, as a ultras and member of Torcida, and away was more than happy. I was also drunk as hell, so I didn’t see a cop behind me, that said “Its you!”, then he ran after me and arrested me. Just me. On the way to the police station, the paddy wagon stopped, the door opened. I think that the military truck and the police wagon went pass each other, then stopped. The cops pointed at me, and asked “Is this the guy?”. Military personnel said “yes”, but it was impossible to see my face at all… At the station they took my information, and let me go home. I went to ‘Dubrovnik; again on Riva, with the group drank another two or three beers. Then at 4am, I went home to get some sleep, and UDBA (Yugoslav secret police) knocked on my doors. They take me, irritate me 3 days in the station. The whole of Yugoslavia talked about it. It was so much hyped that its unbelievable, even the politicians talk shit about it. They didn’t harass me too much physically, compared to mentally, for more than an hour they would make me stand behind the wall, I couldn’t sit down. One Montenigrian threatened me just to say more. I didn’t. Later on they would buy me Marlboro cigarettes. Sad!. From the whole mess it was concluded that only 5 of us were guilty and were on trial. Media was happy. Then we pleaded against that code 53 -- attacking of military force of SFRJ, where the maximum penalty was 10 years in jail. I mean, we attacked Red Star fans, we only suspected that they were in the military. My motive was ultras motive, because seven days prior to that, we had a fight in Belgrade, where some of ours got beaten up badly. But then I had to go to the prison. All together I spent two and a half years behind bars, and all that because of football hooliganism.”
Torcida pyroshows :
In the middle to late 80′s it was noticeable national homogenization of ultras groups from the same republic of Former Yugoslavia. It’s hard to imagine nowdays , but that’s how for example, a part of Torcida sometimes went to important games of Dinamo in Zagreb, especially if they played against Red Star or Partizan, trying in that way to strengthen up a “brother” group if there was a chance of a fight.
In that period the people in charge more than before concentrate on the ultras scene, which they explained as the enemy of multinational and other political stability in society. Noticably they called up Torcida for “Informative talks”. One of the key topics there was the name alone, knowing that the police considered the word “Torcida” synonymous with “Terrorist organization”. In the early mornings at the day of the derby with Belgrade clubs, special forces would knock on their doors and take them in custody until the match was over, so they could not attend the game.In many cities around the train or bus stations there was a huge number of police present, preventing any contact with any other ultras group.
Since the Croatian Independence and until today.
After the Serbian aggression on Croatia in 1990, many members of Torcida went to protect their country in the battle fields winning the independence for Croatia.
After the war ended, Croatia established its own league. Hajduk took the very first title in 1992, a cup next year. Then came the first trip to Europe under the Croatian flag. Many people followed Hajduk to Ljubljana and Amsterdam in games against Olimpija and Ajax. In 1994 Hajduk takes another crown, and next year first double ( cup and championship ) crown in independent Croatia. In the same year, in Champions league Torcida traveled everywhere Hajduk played : Warszawa, Bucharest, Bruxelles, Lisbon, and for the second time in two years Amsterdam. Throughout that time Torcida strengthens like an organization and in its reputation. At the end of the 90′s and in 2000, after 5 years without the trophy, Torcida once again is filled up with anger and the new incidents begin, like the one in Sibenik, when the game was stopped, and then against Dinamo, on both occasions a huge fight with the police and special forces. Torcida kept its name and its history, that how today in Split on the day of the game the fans of any other teams can’t walk the streets. By the middle of 2000’s Torcida went through a short and transitory crisis , but by the end of the decade bounced back impressing everybody with big actions like the 2007 away trip to Genoa to face Sampdoria and the 100th anniversary of their beloved club .
Now , just a couple of weeks after celebrating their 61th anniversary Torcida looks stronger than ever.
Photos and videos from Hajduk’s 100 years celebrations:
Sources : http://adriaticfanatic.com , http://whiteboys.de/
