No hope of a goal

Saturday 18 November 2017, FK Vojvodina 0 FK Radnik Surdulica 0 - Super Liga, Stadion Karadorde.

We drove onto the city of Novi Sad - crossing all 3 bridges that have been rebuilt since 1999, when NATO destroyed the bridges crossing the Danube. What we found was a city very different from Belgrade, one that featured many examples of Austro/Hungarian architecture.

We then made it to Stadium Karadorde just in time for kick off, £2 only to get in and we found a superb ground, all the seats red, even had a  fire engine on the athletics track, most of us were in the main stand which had some cover. The pitch was much lower than the stands.

It may have been an interesting stadium but the game itself will soon be forgotten bu the hoppers who watched the game, even if they were playing now, a week after the fixture, both teams would still be struggling to score.

No pens allowed but pyrotechnics are OK!

Saturday 8 April 2017, Partizan Belgrade 2 FK Radnik Surdulica 1 - Supa Liga, Stadion Partizan

After the morning game which contained plenty of good football, with the players all being very talented technically it was surprising how poor the first team game was - and the result also looked quite dodgy!

Partizan needed a win but the opponents scored first- certainly not in the planned script, Partizan got back in the game and then the Ref did not want any more upsets, so he sent a few of the Surdulica players off just to make sure Partisan got over the line- well that is what seemed to happen to most of us watching.

Now I want to go back to Belgrade for the derby match v Red Star, and even today there was trouble even with no away fans present- it seemed that the Red Star Ultras turned up to burn a few Partizan flags outside the ground then one Red Star fan was spotted in the ground- a quick chase and fight followed.

The ground itself is typical of the East European bowl, but luckily the rain kept off as not much cover. We had very little pyrotechnic use but some were smuggled into the ground- not sure how? As our group even had their pens confiscated!! How did they expect these groundhoppers to fill in their legendary notebooks?