The best football country you've never heard of

the second most prestigious football tournament on Earth is about to start in Germany Portugal among the 24 European countries that qualify these big ones are the favorites to win it as usual but there's one tiny country down here that's not only qualified but is also among the favorites ctia always have ability in their Rank and they are probably the best tournament team in the last decade Croatia's neighbors are also seemingly punching above their weights Serbia and Slovenia have qual ified for the first time since 2000 and Bosnia and heroa just missed out after losing a

playin match the story though of how these countries got so good at football is actually more than 70 years in the making starting back when they were all part of one big country the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia poured huge amounts of effort resources and talent into building the world's best football team and it almost worked but right before reaching the Pinnacle of the sport Yugoslav suddenly and dramatically vanished you then think okay so what would have come next so how did Yugoslavia get so good at football and what happened to [Music] it Yugoslavia was

always going to be a challenge lying between Europe and Asia this region is home to dozens of ethnic and religious groups each with their own traditions and histories for centuries though they were ruled by the Ottoman and austr Hungarian Empires both fell by the end of World War I prompting these groups to create a country together largely for their own protection if you have this larger sou slav state that will protect you from aggressive neighbors I called Richard Mills who wrote a book about politics and football in Yugoslavia there's a fairly widespread agreement that some

kind of South slav state is a good idea but what there is very little agreement over is what that state should look like yugoslavians were still struggling to figure it out in 1941 when the Axis powers invaded they treated yugoslavians brutally so it wasn't long until some began fighting back a group of communist Fighters called the partisans emerged as one of the most successful resistance groups in all of Europe thanks in large part to a charismatic leader named Joseph brose Tito Tito really succeeds in selling this idea that you can be a cowat and a

Yugoslav at the same time or a Macedonian and a Yugoslav at the same time after driving out the axes in 1944 Tito helped establish a new communist Yugoslavia based on this idea he was elected leader of a Federation of six republics drawn around the major ethnic groups but tensions between them were still high from the war meaning a wave of cowat or serf nationalism could unravel the country so Tito needed a way to build up their identity as yugoslavians and he felt that one way to do that was by getting his country really really good

at sports so this episode is actually a long time in the making it's one of the stories that I pitched when Johnny and I were developing the channel That would become search party it's just the perfect example of how Sports and politics are and always will be connected and these are the stories we like to tell so if you're new here and you haven't subscribed yet please subscribe to search party we cover Sports and geopolitics and I want to mention our sponsor incog incog was our very first sponsor almost a year ago and they continue

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for supporting our work now I'll get you back to the story Yugoslavia with no National tradition no roots in history it still needs displays of solidarity like these to create a national Spirit right after taking power Tito's Communist Regime used sports to demonstrate the unity of the state they poured money into building cuttingedge sports facilities tring Elite athletes and hosting big International competitions and they were soon producing athletes who excelled in water polo basketball wrestling gymnastics and tennis and Tito well he never missed a chance to appear with them in the Belgrade Stadium he appeared

very much as the father figure for 18 million yugoslavs but in Yugoslavia success in one sport was more important than all the others football [Music] so football took over Yugoslavia long before Tito did it actually arrived from Central Europe in the 1800s and quickly became the favorite sport there what developed were kind of two main levels of football and those are what I want to show you because they're what Tito's regime used to try and unify Yugoslavia so let's start by designing the first level this is going to be a league of professional Club teams

so here are the clubs as early as the 1940s there are dozens of these based in almost every city and town at first many of those are affiliated with either an ethnic group or political groups so that's what these colors mean and that's what Tito is going to change first upon taking power his regime eliminates or rebrands these clubs that are overtly nationalistic and forms new ones steeped in communist and Yugoslavian symbols soon four would emerge bigger than the rest Dynamo zagre hedc split Red Star Belgrade and Tito's favorite partisan while these clubs at first

attracted supporters from every ethnic group this highly competitive league was also a risk what you have created there is an opportunity for football supporters from across the Yugoslav state to come together and face each other as opponents on a weekly basis so from the very first matches we see ethnically fueled insults some violence but there was a second layer of yugoslavia's football sphere with only one team in it the national team Yugoslavia kicked off in all the 17 years since the two countries first met England had never won this was the most important team for

Tito's regime because it could be used to unite yugoslavians if it represented all yugoslavians so you don't have a quota system however there was immense pressure from the various republics to push the best players into that national team and actually in practice we see some quite remarkable instances of multi ethnic cooperation in the 1950s a Serb and Croatian made a legendary pair of Strikers and in the 1974 Olympics the team had five coaches two serbians two bosnians and a Croatian this team always had a balance of players from the different ethnic groups but the regime

also needed it to win it barred these players from playing outside Yugoslavia until they turned 28 so they remained on its Club teams and could be developed for this national team it was a complex strategy but it started to work at the 1952 Olympics Yugoslavia beat a much stronger Soviet team this was a crucial win for Tito who had just dramatically left an alliance with the Soviet Union and it sparked a surge of Pride that swept across Yugoslavia in 1960 Yugoslavia won an Olympic gold but the ultimate goal was winning a European Championship or better

yet a world cup from 1950 to 79 Yugoslavia would qualify for five FIFA World Cups make the quarterfinals tce twice and finished fourth place once in the European championships it placed fourth place once and second twice but it kept falling short of winning a championship still these successes were opportunities for all yugoslavians to celebrate their identity as yugoslavians they also showed the world their unique style most European teams at the time played a direct and physical style of football but yugoslavians were different Yugoslavia played football in a flamboyant style in a very attractive passing Style

with lots of star players they looked less like a European team and more like a Brazilian one in fact by the 1970s yugoslavia's national team was nicknamed the Brazilians of Europe the term Brazilians of Europe is something which the yugoslavs very definitely wear with pride immersion in the broader footballing world really helps Yugoslavia to pick up on new trends to develop its tactics so this is a a country which is quick to learn but also quick to apply those lessons and put their own spin on on them as [Music] well football was a key way

Tito tried to keep ethnic divisions at Bay he also used more brutal tactics though hunting down dissidents and cracking down on any political opposition but he kept Yugoslavia United for 35 years until he [Music] died this is the moment Tito's death is announced during a match between red star belgrad and hajek split players and fans stop to sing and cry together unaware that this was the beginning of the end of [Music] Yugoslavia once Tito is gone there is no final Arbiter of disputes and so you have a Yugoslavia which is further and further and further

decentralized where the republics have more and more control and a reluctance to work together at the federal level this made it hard to fix a a collapsing economy under Tito Yugoslavia had borrowed billions of dollars to grow its economy but by the time he died this debt was undermining it inflation and unemployment skyrocketed to the 1980s and the agent Communist Party didn't have any solutions so as it weakened National politicians filled the void an ultra nationalist Serb threatened to build a greater Serbian Nation while leaders in other republics began pushing for more sovereignty the long

feared wave of nationalism had arrived violence broke out between ethnic groups across Yugoslavia especially at football matches many fan groups affiliated with these clubs became outwardly Nationalist and for some the transition from fan to Soldier was almost seamless you have the colors the slogans the extent to which everything's about territory it's a very small step to go from being a supporter of red starwell gra to being a supporter of a Serb national identity and the same is very much the case for Dina mosag in May 1990 Pro Serb Red Star Belgrade fans traveled to a

match against Croatian Club Dynamo zagre a fight broke out that spilled onto the field as fans clashed with police this is Dynamo's Young Star zir bin kicking a policeman in a photo that would become infamous so to me this Photograph represents the two things happening to Yugoslavia at the same time on the one hand you have its descent into chaos and violence but on the other you have this player bin was a young super talented player for Yugoslavia and part of a gener ation of talent that this system had been building towards for almost 40

years in 1987 boben scored three goals for Yugoslavia in the FIFA youth world cup plus this decisive penalty to win the [Applause] [Music] championship he was part of a golden generation of extremely talented players coming up through this system and they seemed destined to finally win a championship in 1991 red star belgrad became the best club in Europe by winning the European Cup and the world Club [Applause] Championship meanwhile the national team was becoming one of the best teams in the world despite being a man down for 89 minutes it nearly beat defending Champions Argentina

in the 1990 World Cup quarterfinals by the late 80s the Yugoslav football sphere is creating a a crop of immensely talented players you you then think okay so what would have come next in 1992 Yugoslavia had qualified for that Year's Euros tournament and was among the favorites but it was in a Race Against Time in 1990 yugoslavia's Communist Party had dissolved then Slovenia and Croatia declared independence followed later by Bosnia violence erupted between ethnic groups in these countries and by Spring of 1992 Yugoslavia was in a full-scale [Music] war this football system unraveled along with

it sloven and Croatian clubs left yugoslavia's League to join new ones then the national team was dealt a blow when a number of Croatian players left finally weeks before the Euros tournament the UN placed sanctions on Yugoslavia and FIFA banned it from participating this team would never get another chance the Yugoslav wars would rage on and off for 10 years killing hundreds of thousands of people and displacing millions eventually seven countries emerged they all in some ways continued to recover but remarkably they've also continued to build on yugoslavia's great football project you've just got to

look a little more closely most obvious is Croatia its national team placed third in the 1998 and 2022 World Cups and even made the finals in 2018 today it only has 4 million people but it is the 10th best team in the world and Croatia for the first time ever will play in a World Cup final while no other exlan country has played as well as Croatia you can still appreciate their football success if you look at how many players they produce this table ranks countries by the number of players it sends to play in

foreign professional leagues but if we weigh them by how small their population is Montenegro exports 155 players per million inhabitants the second best ratio in the world and five other ex-yugoslavian countries are in the top 10 in other words this region really is punching far above its weight in football you can find players from ex-yugoslavian countries in the world's biggest leagues and on the best clubs it makes me wonder how good a Yugoslavia team might look in today's Euros if you were to put together a squad of players from the Former Yugoslav Republic you have

a a formidable side it's frightening and that's all just in football [Music] we also have a regional phenomenon of knowing how to do sport well laying down the infrastructure coaching from very early ages there's also that fighting Spirit which undoubtedly enables these athletes to achieve above and beyond beond their potential ultimately the lesson here isn't that mixing Sports and politics is good or bad it's that they're impossible to separate and Yugoslavia isn't the first or the last to learn why thanks so much for watching that's our episode for this week if you haven't subscribed yet

please subscribe to search party we cover Sports and geopolitics if you are a subscriber I've got good news we're now going to publish every 2 weeks so look forward to another search party coming in 2 weeks it's been a lot of work so I want to thank my team my editors my researchers for all the hard work they' put in to make this possible if you have any story ideas please let me know in the comments or email me at Sam search party. CH and I'll see you in two weeks thanks very much