Correspondence

#002

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FIFA World Cup and colonial mentalities

DATE/LOCATION:
Heerlen, 25 June 2026

FROM:
Sanja

Dear Hanna,

I saw the madness in the streets of Inglewood, Ca.

Yeah, that’s us — we love to show that we have balls! We are an emotional people, and it is clear why we are globally associated with a highlander mentality. And the war. After all, hey, we just recently stopped fighting. And we come from the Balkans.

It is nice to feel important and “normal” in the eyes of the world. But just as much as we are now proud of our national team, with a defeat at the World Cup, which will inevitably follow because, after all, we are a small country with almost no experience in big tournaments, we will be devastated and angry at the very same ones we are proud of now: Sergej Barbarez, Edin Džeko, and the rest of the team.

That madness of emotions has cost us in national team matches, too. We start well, for the first twenty or so minutes we play like furies, a goal or two lands in the opponent’s net, and then a total reversal. That imagined superiority weakens our reflexes, so the score advantage very quickly shifts into the rival camp. Then we remain completely paralysed until the end of the game. Emotions...

I have to admit that last night I started and then temporarily left this letter aside. I watched the match in which we masterfully defeated Qatar. I am not inclined to pathos, but I am proud of our boys! Not only because they knew how to play, have a heart and skills equal to those of the football giants. Best of all is that they reminded our ever-present war instigators that in this team, made up of boys from all parts of the world and with origins from different parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, they are all brothers — Bosnians! They speak the same language, they face the same youthful challenges, whether they are in the homeland or displaced across the world, they come from the same spring of Mother Earth and the same ancestors, and they all equally love their homeland.

I admit, games like this homogenise the chemistry of the diverse, often conflicting sentiments of the same nation.
But I think that in many places these misunderstandings, and even animosities, are deliberately generated in the corrupt circles of the “system,” for whom discord and traumatised collectivities are convenient, because they are then much easier to govern. The political elite, and especially the right wing, everywhere uses similar schemes of manipulation through fear of the other and the different, to gain the image of the saviour of the interests of the community it governs, and from whose back it does not want to step down.

Maybe this sounds too simplified, but exactly such patterns are described in science and show their success in practice across the world and in every social epoch. That is why I am a passionate advocate of the thesis that every person with any role in society has an obligation (to themselves and to their surroundings) to awaken their own zoon politikon and equip it with the necessary knowledge and a deeper understanding of themselves, “their own,” as well as the world they live in, to justify the status of a dignified being, equipped with virtues and ethos. I know that this is my excessive demand to the world, but it is my fate to expect the maximum both from myself and from others, because the world must be saved from decadence and self-destruction.

My opinion is also that the “ordinary people” who feel a certain animosity towards people from another city or region are victims not only of the political agendas mentioned, but of their own unwillingness to make the effort to truly understand those who live outside their field of vision. The cause of everything is the laziness of the brain and the heart to feel empathy for the pain of others and to rejoice in another’s happiness, which is always and everywhere so rare... What I want to say is that I think people everywhere are deeply alienated — lazy slaves of the “system.”

What do you think?

The excitement over the success of cultural, sports, and other representatives of one nation achieving “abroad” is the best indicator that these “animosities” are imposed; love for a shared homeland is a powerful drive that breaks barriers and illusions. With us, this is still shown even on the level of Yugoslavia. All our “neighbours” cheer for the Bosnian team, and Bosnians in sports passionately support Croatia, for example. The same sentiment explodes during disasters. Examples are the tragedy of the canopy collapse in Novi Sad (Serbia), the earthquake in Petrinja (Croatia), or the stone avalanche disaster in Jablanica (Bosnia and Herzegovina). We were all like one nation. But when the passions calm down, we return to our keyboards and continue calling each other insulting names and arguing over history. Stupid!

The resistance towards everything that reminds us of former empires is real and based on historical intolerance towards “foreign conquerors,” who took our state and all its resources. Austria today is completely different from what it was during the Habsburg rule. Moreover, today an enormous number of our people study or work in this country, and that state provides them with benefits almost equal to those enjoyed by Austrians. Therefore, our people today feel at least dual emotions towards Austria and Germany: gratitude for the chances and anger because of the relationship in the past.

Different feelings are activated depending on the situation!

Much more “real” is the animosity between the fans of football clubs from Zenica and Sarajevo, which strongly spills over into regular communication — or better said, into quarrels, and even hatred, between the Robijaši and the Manijaci, and quite often more generally — between the people of Zenica and Sarajevo. Again, emotions...!

But, outside, for us, stays outside.

In the photograph, there is a legendary scene from the Oval Office, where a historic event took place that we, former Yugoslavs, love to retell to emphasise our own peculiarity and defiance, as well as our cynical attitude towards the world “out there.” The dialogue goes like this:

President Nixon: But, Mr. Broz, we don't smoke here!
President Tito, after already lighting the “Cuban” cigar that had been gifted to him personally by Fidel, replied in cold blood: Bless you! After that, he finished the cigar in a casual conversation with his counterpart from the USA. None of the officials present dared to react.

So that you may understand “our mentality” even better, I warmly recommend that you watch the very interesting and entertaining feature-documentary film „Houston, We Have a Problem!“, which was released in 2016, in a Slovenian co-production with Croatian and German cinematography!

The film is based on “true” events from the 1960s, when we were rebuilding our common state from the ashes of World War II, through ingenuity, and even that somewhat thieving kind, which belongs among the important manners of all our peoples. When the Americans, at the height of the Cold War, found out that Yugoslavia was building a modern space program, one that could rival the greatest on the world stage, the then-President of the United States, John Kennedy, offered a large amount of money to buy it for the space race, in which the Americans had to be better than the Russians.

So as not to spoil the enjoyment of the film for you, I will only say that the Yugoslav space program turned out to be completely unusable — but only after American millions had arrived in Yugoslavia and were then spent, in record time, on rebuilding the state devastated by war.

What we have here is the so-called mockumentary film form, which tested audiences' gullibility and media manipulation, and did so with enormous success. Research showed that more than 40% of people in the region unconditionally believed the story about the Yugoslav space program. A lot of them didn't believe that the film was a mockery and were really angry and betrayed after finding out what it really was.

Why did our people simply believe the remarkable story of the historic deception of the most powerful country in the world? Well, first of all, because we think that such a scenario was entirely possible, considering the greatness of our former country and, of course, the kind of people we are — madly brave and exceptionally innovative when we have the chance to take advantage of an opportunity to deceive someone. And at the same time, we can laugh well at both ourselves and others.

By the way, I don’t know if you noticed, but in the song by Dubioza Kolektiv, now the anthem of the Bosnia and Herzegovina national team at the World Cup, besides “wishing for” assimilation, the guys in the background point out: “One day, when you reach the end. One day, you will understand. One day, back to roots my friend. No place like a motherland.”

Much love from the “asshole of the world,” which can hardly wait to collide with the world superpower at the World Cup, on July 2nd.

Yours,
Sanja