Gianni Galleri – Balkan football club Review

Take a maniacal football fan, stuff from statistics, sites, almanacs, magazines, books, films, stadium every (several times a) week, mood conditioned by the team’s results, decades-long friendships born and consolidated on the steps of the house and around Italy, the rhythms of everyday life dictated by the championship and cup calendar. However, consider that his world (of football interest) has only expanded to the West. Not of Donald Duck, but of the Iron Curtain that was. Here: now give it into your hand Balkan football clubthe book of Gianni Galleri, and you will see that it will start to look towards the East.

I’m talking about myself. One who, beyond some quick and superficial approach linked to Lobanowski’s Dynamo Kiev or the Red Star of ’91, in fact the football world of the countries of the former Soviet bloc had always let it slide on him without arousing the slightest interest .

So the approach to Balkan Football Club it was like when you get ready to taste that dish whose ingredients you know and they don’t really drive you crazy, on the contrary. Instead, after the first bites with a wrinkled nose, the taste starts to make you think again and page after page, chapter after chapter, you find yourself on page 350 in a flash. Because Galleri knows how to talk about his passion for football, stadiums, fans and the intersection of all this with the history and events of the last century in the countries interested in his visits. And, above all, he is not content to talk about the greats of the former Yugoslavia (Red Star, Partizan, Hajduk), Romania, Bulgaria and Albania, but delves into the events of the “minor” clubs, the rivalries born during the second half of ‘900 – in some cases even before -, of the peculiarities of small realities that defend their uniqueness.

In the background there are the events of History, the one with a capital “S”, which in those parts has left enormous rifts, still and who knows how long unhealed, indeed exacerbated by personal experiences, of families, friendships and acquaintances destroyed by civil wars , bloody revolutions, ethnic cleansing. Football becomes, in a scenario of this type, a further reason to defend one’s “side”, different and opposed to the “other”, to the point that in some towns it is difficult to move without arousing suspicion and risking some bad experiences if one it speaks well or badly of a team, of a fan base, if there is evidence of belonging or sympathy for one or the other side of a coin, which is ultimately the same.

However, Galleri does not live and talk about football alone: ​​and so, together with visits to the stadiums, shops and bars of the various fan groups, we discover the geography, the habits and customs, the monuments, the naturalistic beauties of ten countries (Romania, Bulgaria , Albania: plus the seven realities of the shattered former Yugoslavia – North Macedonia, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina), each with its own peculiarities and internal contradictions. Which makes them unique and interesting. Including stadiums and niche teams.