We started jeering our own national anthem back in the nineties, and maybe even earler, I don’t remember exactly when it all began, but it soon turned into a tradition. Every time the first tones of Hej Sloveni would be heard from the speakers at any stadium, it would soon be covered by loud whistling, booing and jeering coming from the home Serbian crowd. You could often tell that the guest team players were looking at each other wondering what’s going on. It is generally believed that the jeering started because the anthem is full of communist mantras and as such, an essence of communism. Of course, this is not true because it was originally written several decades before communism got invented. No, like most other national movements, it all started with a conversaion between two random dudes on a football match:

- Hey, they are playing this Yugoslav anthem again.

– I know, I love it.

– Me too. But isn’t it strange that they play it now when Yugoslavia doesn’t exist anymore?

– Yeah, now that you mention it, it does sound kinda strange.

– I guess they will change it soon. Strange stuff freak me out.

– Yeah, me too. I actually hope they will change it soon.

– Yeah, I can’t stand listening to this freakish communist anthem anymore.

– Change it! Change it!

– Boo! Boo!

But, we stopped jeering to our own some 3 years ago, when the even older anthem became our new anthem. You can’t really jeer to it because “God” is mentioned in it about 12 times and you don’t wanna mess with stuff like that. The old one had “hell” mentioned once – certainly not enough to scare a devoted whistler, not enough to scare even his son.

So we jeer the other nations’ anthems now. We don’t care who we play against, because it’s one thing being friends in politics, throughout history, ancient or modern. No, this is about football and winning in it. All the opponents look the same to our fans – whether it’s the Canadians or the Croatians (ok, Croatians are on the top of the jeering list). And all opponents understand this with quiet disgust and frowning – “It’s ok, they are savage people, we have to accept our national anthem is being jeered at.”

But not the French.

It’s hard to believe, but to the French, the national anthem is even more important than football. You see, to Sarkozy, Carla Bruni is almost as important as the Marseillaise. He would do anything to protect the Marseillaise from being jeered at, that he even threatened to pull the players from the court if he hears a spectator laugh during the French national anthem. Because it has happened before, and it was not nice.

Now we have to wait and see if this serious threat will stop Serbian fans from booing the Marseillaise away on September 9th when the two teams will meet in Belgrade.

... if we don’t fuck something up in the meantime, of course.

photo by lilit
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photo by caribb
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