08.08.2014. NK Zadar – NK Zagreb 2:2, 4th match of the season
We’ll start off with the football: I read somewhere that NK Zagreb haven’t returned from Zadar with a full three points since 2003, which amounts to 11 years. Fuck you Zadar. The match we attended was, simply put, a catastrophe to watch. We just made it into the stadium as Jurendić scored from a penality. After this the level of play severely dropped as if the players were waiting for the match to finish, when there were still another 80 minutes left to play. Zadar quickly scored two goals from nowhere, which we put down to sloppy defending. The home audience responded to every decision the referee made with booing and hissing so it was hardly surprising that all hell broke loose when one of their players got a red card in the 70th minute.
Zagreb came across as even weaker even though they then had an extra player on the field and only started to put pressure on Zadar towards the end of the game. Luckily one of their plays destroyed Krovinović in a last minute duel and so Jurendić once again scored from a penalty. This generated a new wave of insults, including all the well-worn peasant insults: gypsies, fags, thieves etc. The players came over to say hi at the end of the game and several took off their shirts and threw them to us to thank us for making the journey.
The coast isn’t ultra! This was visible in our numbers in Zadar as well. Altogether five angels travelled there by car. We put up our banners and supported our team. For this we were rewarded with the team’s shirts. First we had trouble getting in to what the game due to our late arrival – the stadium security had already gone off for a drink leaving us stuck outside for ten minutes of the game. During the game most of us had our eyes on the situation on the pitch and after we went off to the Martinska punk festival where we spent the rest of the weekend consuming a number of alcoholic beverages, returning to Zagreb late on Sunday.