The stands of football stadiums with the most ardent fans have been recruiting centers for criminal organizations for decades. They are a gray area where numerous interests intertwine and where it is never completely clear who is playing for whom, i.e. it is evident in whose name they are playing but never at whose expense. The stands are full of "Frulas from Hamelin" who manipulate the sentiments of teenagers for whom joining a fan group is the first strong and often indelible experience of belonging and identification, i.e. the call of the "pack". As such, they are cannon fodder for mafia organizations flush with cash thanks to the abnormally large drug traffic.
The conflict for the control of Partizan fans is an example par excellence of what happens when true love for a club is mixed with criminal, political and security interests. It would be wrong to view the struggle for supremacy in the southern stands of the former JNA stadium, but also in the entire corps of Partizan fans, as a Serbian or Belgrade phenomenon, or as something new, that is, something that had not happened before.
In a very simplified way, it could be said that the militarization of fan groups in the former Yugoslavia and its connection with crime, as a pattern of action, was imported from Italy, that is, from the fan groups of the biggest Serie A teams during the eighties of the last century. From the Apennine Peninsula, we have also received the new occupation "fan" as well as the function "leader of the fans", since they were used in the media as a description of criminals. The political component was applied according to the eastern pattern of the communist secret services, whose ideological as well as methodological part was the Yugoslav intelligence structure.
In the previous 35 years, there have been qualitative changes. On the one hand, thanks to the exponential increase in drug consumption, criminal organizations have literally become money factories. Local thugs who were satisfied with thefts, burglaries and petty racketeering have become "bosses", with so much money that they can corrupt a good part of the state apparatus and recruit an army of petty criminals. Organized fan groups have become a natural breeding ground for new criminal generations, an excellent environment to test their loyalty, obedience, readiness and initiate initiation.
On the other hand, the liberal-democratic states in Western Europe have infiltrated their people into the tribunes and into organized criminal groups in order to control them from a distance and keep them under surveillance with the aim of preemptively preventing gangster wars and the rise of collateral crimes in addition to drug dealing.
In the countries in transition in Eastern Europe, regardless of whether they entered the EU or remained on its margins, a perverse relationship has emerged in which it is often not clear who works for whom and who controls whom: ultra-fan criminal structures, the police and services or vice versa. Political influence was grafted onto it, as some leaders realized that militarized and criminalized fans are a very useful weapon in confrontations with opponents and a megaphone for sending political messages.
In Italy, almost all militarized fan groups are an extension of local drug dealers, while the leaders in some cases are also very serious crime bosses, this is especially true for the fans of Napoli, Lazio, Roma, Inter, Milan and Juventus.
The Camorista clans rule the stadium in Naples. In Rome, for decades, the drug lord Fabrizio Pisitelli, better known as Diabolik, ruled the north stand of the Olympic Stadium, liquidated two years ago in broad daylight in a Roman park. Fabio Gaudenzi with the explicit nickname "Romel", also a drug dealer, but of a lower rank compared to "Diabolika", has been in charge of the southern stand, where the Roma fans are located, for twenty-odd years.
Juventus' south stand is under the total control of the 'Ndrangheta, the strongest drug-trafficking criminal organization in Europe. The situation is similar in Milan, where the leaders of the Rossoneri and Nerazzurri fans cooperate and deal drugs together. It is important to note that, apart from the militarized fan groups of Livorno and Fiorentina, which are left-wing, almost all the others are sympathizers of the extreme, neo-fascist, right-wing. For them, Matteo Salvini's legalists and the Italian brothers Đorđe Meloni are too polished and bourgeois-minded.
The politicization and criminalization of the Marakana North Stand and the JNA South Stadium occurred at the end of the XNUMXs. The regime of Slobodan Milosevic sent Željko Ražnatović Arkan to restore order in the stands, that is, as they defined it: to expel politics from the stadium, after the entry of sympathizers of the Serbian Restoration Movement, Vuk Drašković, among the Red Star fans, especially after the frequent chanting of the then leader of the opposition in the stands. .
A good part of the members of Arkan's paramilitary unit was recruited from among the "Delias". During the nineties and in the first decade of the 21st century, Red Star fans would be anti-regime, regardless of who was in power, for the simple reason that they believed that all those in power favored Partizan over Red Star.
"Save Serbia and kill yourself, Slobodan", was not only a cry against a kleptocrat, but also against someone who, in the opinion of the ultras, was destroying Red Star. Even Arkan and his Obilić made deals with Partizan, with the help of state powers, to the detriment of Crvena zvezda, in the second half of the nineties.
Militant fans of red and white are a typical example that the same people in different historical circumstances can be "heroes" and criminals. During the 2000s, Delia were not only rivals of the Undertaker, but also a symbol of resistance to the "undertaker" of Serbia, the Milošević-Marković married couple. At protests during the XNUMXs, Delija often stood up to Milosevic's thugs, until the regime was overthrown in the fall of XNUMX. Emphasizing belonging to the family of Zvezda fans, outside the sports framework, during the XNUMXs meant making it known that you were against the Milošević-Marković regime.
However, without an autocratic regime, the hard-line fan wing becomes more and more ultra-right, xenophobic, homophobic and criminal, and with the coming to power of Aleksandar Vučić, Delije become "regime" fans for the first time in their history, i.e. government favourites.
Gravediggers had a reverse development path. Partizan has always been the privileged child of the nomenclature, whether it was the communist, or JNA, or parts of the Milošević regime, starting with the longest-serving prime minister, Mirko Marjanović. The situation did not change significantly even with the change of government in 2000, only with the arrival of Vučić did changes occur in the relationship of forces and the position of Paratizana fans.
The fan's passion for the beloved club goes beyond logic and goes deep into the irrational. When Partizan fans chant against Vučić, they send a message that is political, but essentially a good part of its fuel is not based on the desire for Serbia to be a just, free and democratic society, but on anger and frustration due to favoring the eternal rival.
Vučić's attempt to "pacify" Partizan fans according to Milošević's recipe, and to campaign through his tabloids that he helped Partizan like no one before, indicates that he understood the reasons for the rebellion of the army of "black and white" fans. However, the disclosure of the atrocities of criminals under the guise of "fan leaders" and the discovery of "hot water" that a good part of fan groups are criminalized is an indication that he does not know how to solve the problem without producing a counter-effect in the opposite fan camp, much larger and potentially much more dangerous for regime, especially regarding national issues, first of all, Kosovo.
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