Poljud perches on the Adriatic coastline like a perfect shell that has washed up on the shore. The sun glints off its ridged roofs, which sweep round the pitch to enclose the stands like the embrace of protective arms - one of those rare moments when Soviet architecture reached for beauty above all else. A few people mill around in the afternoon sun. A mother and her young child approach the inflatable games set up outside. All is peaceful and calm.
'There aren't this many police around normally.' We've been in Split less than ten minutes and already the first of what would be many locals is defensively explaining the situation to us as we drive past a group of armoured policemen. 'There's a big game on tomorrow – Hajduk Split v Dinamo Zagreb.'
It would be the first thing out tour guide Tomislav says to us the next morning as well. Everyone is keen to impress upon the tourists that this is not normal. 'Don't worry, you won't see any fighting in the city because of the heavy police presence,' he insists. 'They go out of the city to meet on the highway and fight there, away from the police.' My mum is with me on this trip and isn't altogether reassured. 'Are you sure you'll be safe going to this?' she whispers.
The old Yugoslavia had four big rivals – Partizan and Red Star in Belgrade, Dinamo Zagreb and Hajduk Split. When Yugoslavia broke up, those rivalries turned inwards and each pair focussed on each other. In modern Croatia, Dinamo have become the dominant force, while Hajduk feel bitterly maligned in comparison to their rivals from the capital. Around a quarter of the population lives in Zagreb; it is the overwhelming financial and political epicentre of the country.
Hajduk, by contrast, exist on the rugged Dalmatian coast, a club forged in the spirit of rebellion which characterises the region. Even Split itself began life as a Roman palace which displaced tribes chose to take over, turning its walls and fine buildings into their city.
The very name of the club comes from this instinct to punch upwards against those with more. More wealth, more power. In central and south-eastern Europe, a hajduk was a freedom fighter who led his band of warriors into battle against their Ottoman rulers and plundered their riches. The founders chose this to be the image on which they built their club, and the club lived by it.
During the Second World War, Split was annexed into Italy and Mussolini was keen for Hajduk to join the Italian league. Rather than be someone else's play thing, Hajduk chose to simply cease competing instead. The Nazis later took over Split and wanted Hajduk to play in their cup. Instead, Hajduk players fought with the Yugoslav Partisans and reformed as the official team of the Resistance.
The club's national pride so impressed Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito that after the war he bestowed upon them a great honour: the club was invited to move to Belgrade and form the official team of the Yugoslav Army. Hajduk told him where to stick it.
There is an innate refusal to be bettered or controlled. Throughout the city, 1312 or ACAB is sprayed on walls – All Cops Are Bastards. At one point a Hajduk fan even pushed an unpopular club chairman into the sea.
And tonight their most hated rivals are coming. The team of the capital. The team who did compete in the Nazis' cup. The team of wealth and power. The team who win title after title. Dinamo.
'Within an hour, I think,' the lady behind the desk at Poljud replies, when I ask if they will sell out. That's nearly 35,000 tickets for this match. Hajduk's average attendance last season was under 13,000. I'm glad I came to get mine early in the afternoon instead of waiting until kick off.
What you need to know
I go home and return to Poljud about 50 minutes before kick off. The sun is dropping low, turning the sky a peachy orange. The stadium looks beautiful, but the organisation is a shambles.
I am directed the longest conceivable way around the stadium - around an entire car park that is fenced off by police for Dinamo fans, the Bad Blue Boys, to be bussed in and out of - only to find massive queues outside my gate when I eventually reach it.
After the frisk and bag search, I come out into the stadium as the game is kicking off. However, the eye is immediately drawn past the pitch to the stand beyond. The northern end of the ground is submerged beneath a sea of blue, red and white. In the centre is a huge banner from the top of the stand to the bottom showing a smirking face, cartoonish and slightly grotesque, decked out in a club hat and scarf. Around it, thousands of people hold up pieces of plastic to produce a tifo spelling out '1950'.
This is Hajduk's Torcida. You will see 1950 all over the place in Split. The Torcida is the oldest organised fan group in Europe - the continent's original ultras - and they are proud of it. Named for the Brazilian torcidas they saw deliriously cheering their team on at the 1950 World Cup, Hajduk fans were inspired to immediately form their own group.
They weren't welcomed, and after only one match the Communist party shut it down. The founders were thrown in jail and it was forbidden to even speak the group's name. The danger feared by the party grew clear after they returned in the 1970s. Like Dinamo's Bad Blue Boys, Partizan's Grobari and Red Star's Delije, the Torcida became a breeding ground for nationalist fervour. After Tito's death, the ultras played a large role in driving the break up of the Balkans and in fighting the wars that followed.
Today that nationalism still exists as a nasty, but not insignificant, fringe among ultra groups. In the past, swastikas and Nazi slogans have been spotted graffitied on nearby walls, although I did not see any. The bottom of today's tifo display reads 'White Boys' – a fan group within the Torcida based outside Croatia, whose name is explained away by white being Hajduk's colour. However, another nearby banner displays the name around a Confederate flag, and it feels hard to accept this as an accident. The group's website says it is 'definitely wrong' to call them right wing. 'We are an unpolitical group,' they insist. Some things are hard to swallow, though.
But the Torcida are also widely praised as an example to other clubs. In 2011, when various chairmen had left the club on the brink of collapse, it was rescued by the fans. The group Naš Hajduk (Our Hajduk) was formed to buy up shares, and the fans now own the controlling 25% stake in the club. It is a true community-led organisation, run by fans, for fans, with nothing in mind but what is best for their beloved club. There are nearly 90,000 members from not just Split, but the wider Dalmatian area and beyond.
It is hard to square this praise with hazy, indistinct imprint of the far right on the Torcida, but the morality of ultra groups is a hazy and complex web to unpick.
To my right, the Bad Blue Boys – who themselves were recently filmed marching towards the San Siro performing Nazi salutes en masse - are making all the noise. They form a black smear down the stand, separated from the rest of us by metal fences and a block of empty seats. Each row is bookended by a policeman in full riot gear. But they are noisy, with relentless singing and drumming.
After three minutes the Torcida's tifo comes down and suddenly they burst into life, singing, jumping, heaving on the north stand, drowning out the Bad Blue Boys. As dusk falls over Poljud, the focus switches to the match and the noise swells. At the southern end, a mural displays of the club's successes but has the inadvertent effect of advertising their decline. Yes, they have fifteen Yugoslav and Crotatian titles to boast of, but the last was in 2005. Dinamo have won sixteen of the seventeen league titles since then. Hajduk are desperate to change that.
Midway through the first half, Hajduk score and the stadium explodes. The first flares are set off and the Torcida revel in having the lead over their hated rivals. Somewhere in the inky blackness beyond the stands, two red sparks appear. Someone is watching from their apartment balcony and is whirling two flares around in celebration.
In the second half VAR awards Dinamo a penalty. Hajduk are furious. The ref runs over to berate the Hajduk bench, then returns to sort out the mess in the penalty area. After a long wait, the penalty is scored and the Bad Blue Boys erupt. Some are climbing the fences in their delirium and are soon dealt with by the police.
The Torcida respond with pyro and smoke bombs, so much so that the game is paused for the smoke to clear from the pitch. Dinamo's fans then set of their own flares, and a firework spits into the sky and explodes in a shower of sparks.
In the final minutes, the Torcida push things even further in a bid to will their team forward. There are smoke bombs, flares, fire crackers. Soon they decide this isn't enough and simply start setting fire to things. Again the ground is swamped in smoke, and again the ref indicates a pause.
The smoke is never going to clear fully so as soon as the pitch is vaguely visible, the ref waves the game on again. An orange glow appears in the northern stand. Someone has now set fire to a row of seats. Fans move away slightly but carry on singing, urging Hajduk towards the winner they so badly crave. Firemen on the track below look up into the smoke and watch, deciding it would be easier to let it burn than to push up through the fans in the final minutes of the game.
The team don't respond, though, and the game ends 1-1. Poljud empties and there is no menace among the fans outside. Those armoured policemen stand around looking bored. Members of the Torcida perch on top of the north stand still, finishing their drinks and discussing the game, silhouetted against the smoke glowing in the floodlights. The draw has kept them second, six points behind Dinamo. They can still dream of that elusive title.
The calm of this afternoon will slowly return, and tomorrow morning this gleaming shell will again sit peaceful and beautiful on its perch by the sea. But for a few hours tonight it became a pit of fire and passion, shaken by some of the fiercest ultras in the world and their rebel spirit.
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