Take good care, they say, of your own desires. Because you never know - they can come true.
The approval of the Assembly of the Yugoslav Football Association in Belgrade on December 14, 1930, to establish an independent football committee in the territory of the Zeta Banovina (established a year earlier), until then under the "authority" of the Split Football Association, was greeted with a sigh of relief in the smallest area of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. with hope.
"Certainly, it will contribute a lot to improving the quality of football in Montenegro, making matches even more interesting and attracting the attention of the audience, because the Split Sub-Confederation did not take care of our clubs so diligently" - wrote in Nikšić's "Slobodna Misla".
A deadline of three months was also given. Approved - done.
When the founding assembly of the Cetinje Football Association was held on March 8, 1931 in the hall of the House of Freedom (Government House) in Cetinje, the wishes of the Montenegrin clubs, who had previously been relegated to the periphery of Dalmatian football for a whole decade, were fulfilled: to be on their own, reduce costs and have an easier walkability to the federal league.
"Everyone gained a lot from the founding of the CNP," reported the Belgrade-based "Politika". "Today represents a new era in football sport in Montenegro."
With a subtle sense of symbolism, chance arranged for everything to happen exactly 18 years after the foundation of Lovcen, the first club in this region. Montenegrin football has officially entered adulthood.
But, as we said, beware of your wishes...
Gifted football material to God behind his back
Nikola Latković, a respected sports and cultural worker, was appointed as the first president of the Sub-Association. The management board, politically, understandably, sympathetic to the regime, consisted of 20 football workers from Cetinje, Podgorica, Nikšić, Tivat, Bar and Herceg Novi. A wide professional range: from "bookstore owner" (Aleksandar Reinvajn), through "cafe owner" (Jakov Kontić), "shoemaker" (Jakov Dožić), "driver" (Aco Čejović), to "student" (Vojin Cerović) and "owner and the editor of Zeta" (Jovan Vukčević).
"It is up to them to prove that we really deserve the trust of the JNS Assembly, that we are mature and capable of taking care of ourselves and that the progress of football is our common goal" - "Free Thought" set the demands. "If they don't stick to it, but if they introduce clubism and disputes, if there is no management of the entire Sub-Association, but only of Cetinje clubs, the old story will repeat itself and what we got - nothing."
Although he soon regulated his competences with a series of regulations and rules, a structural error occurred in the foundations of the Sub-Union. From the beginning it was torn apart by disagreements and divisions, above all club-based, geographical ("the arbitrariness" of Cetinje was resisted by Podgorica and Kotor as strong regional centers), ideological (on the one hand the workers' clubs, such as Lovcen, Budućnosti, Nikšić's Herzegovac, on the other "civic "Montenegro, Balšić from Podgorica...)...
However, they didn't hate Montenegrin football so much, but for a more prosaic reason - money. Already in the first CNP championship in April 1931, two of the planned six matches of the first round were not played, because Crnojević (Bar) and Njegoš (Berane) gave up, without the means to travel to away games.
In order to ensure mere survival, tickets for matches, which is regulated by a special rulebook, were charged three, five and ten dinars (for comparison, dinars had to be allocated for daily newspapers). Part of the profit went to the owner of the playground, Podsavez, the referees, and the visiting team had the right to transportation and daily wages... And that's where the problems started.
Already at the end of May, Obilić from Nikšić was suspended "until he pays 336 dinars, the debt of Budućnost". The management of the Nikšić club claimed that it earned 250 dinars from the match it organized, while the Podsavez found out that it earned - 1.000.
In June 1932, it was Obilić who visited Cetinje, losing in the final match of the championship against Montenegrin 8:3. This did not bother the people of Nikšić, reports the official newspaper "Zetski glasnik", to announce themselves on the streets of Cetinje at around 9 o'clock in the evening - with a song. From pain.
"They want to announce with a song that they have no possibility to return home, because the host could not fulfill the obligation and pay for the car and food. Sitting quietly in front of the 'Korzo' tavern, the people of Nikšić sang and waited."
During the night, it seems, they somehow managed to travel.
But, despite the fact that there was "no proper playground", that the footballers played "in their work suits, often barefoot", the ball rolled on the Montenegrin fields, entertaining and cheering.
"The Cetinje sub-union is the poorest. He is behind God in terms of our internal competition", is a quote from the Belgrade-based "Pravda".
"In almost all places of Yugoslavia, footballers who started and learned football in this sub-association play, and no one has any idea under what painful circumstances this gifted material is created, from which all other sub-associations ultimately benefit more than the one here."
Did we mention, the text was written in December 1933. Sound familiar?
Everyone plays their own game
The list of criticisms against the Sub-Association was long: sluggishness in work, dubious personnel solutions (five presidents were changed in the first six and a half years), weak competition organization, clubism and localism, i.e. supporting and promoting Cetinje teams. We waited and waited for the achievement of the basic goals, the recognition of "permanence" and the inclusion of Montenegrin clubs in the federal championship. The fuse was short, patience ran out quickly...
And there was no lack of stomping on local-patriotic chests, all with the stinging of neighbors, so it was possible to read in the Podgorica press that no one "knows how to position himself skillfully like Cetinje athletes, only when they see good opportunities for their own benefit".
And there was no benefit from the Yugoslav Football Association, stuck in constant tensions between Serbian and Croatian clubs, for a long time. The central government did not cut the province, when on December 20, 1931, the parliamentary majority in Belgrade "refused to recognize his permanent position (to the CNP, note a) and he remains temporary for another year."
Exasperated, the leadership of the Sub-Confederation requested on January 10, 1932, the joining of the Dubrovnik and Trebinje clubs, 10.000 dinars in aid and passage to the state championship. The answer has been waiting for months. And it was not favorable.
Not even two years had passed since its establishment, and in the area of the Podsavez everyone was playing their own game: the teams from Podgorica demanded that the headquarters be moved to them, Barani to return to the administration of Split, the clubs from Bokelje suspended contact with Cetinje, and the Cetinje were fighting each other around the playground...
The CNP tried to alleviate the strong pressure by decentralization: at the beginning of October 1933, two parishes were formed - Zetska, with its center in Podgorica, and Bokokotorska, with its center in Kotor.
But even that did not silence the critics, so at the end of 1934, the weekly paper "Zeta" appealed to the state Ministry of Physical Education to either dissolve the Sub-Union or appoint a commissioner. Our business.
And then, as a "deus ex machina", the decision of the JNS Assembly from mid-December 1935 appeared that the champions of all 14 sub-associations would enter the fight for the national title.
Permission and prohibition
As the best team of the Cetinje Sub-Association, in June 1936, Montenegrin faced Slavia Sarajevo in the first round of the Yugoslav championship, organized according to the cup system.
The opening match in the capital ended in a 3:3 draw. Although in the second leg, as stated by "Politika", "the Montenegrin's good actions were accompanied by loud applause", the home team won 2:1 and passed "only thanks to luck". Later, Slavija narrowly lost in the final to Moša and Tirket's BSK.
Praise for Montenegrin was overshadowed by the authorities' decision to ban Lovcen, Budućnost and Podgorica's Slavija in April 1936, due to their close ties with communists. It turned out that the president of the CNP, Niko Bokan, was partly behind the verdict.
At the session in October 1936, the "letter affair" was opened - the opposition read a memo in which Bokan suggested to his vice-president to contact the police chief "to prevent this scumbag from taking any action". The first man of the Sub-Union defended himself by explaining that in Montenegro sport is not practiced for the sake of sport, but "for the sake of creating conspiracy and intrigue, for the sake of antagonism".
Bokan remained at the head of the CNP until the end of the following year.
Concluding paragraph
In the next four years, Arsenal (twice), Crnogorac and Balšić tried unsuccessfully to become part of the elite. During that time, the Sub-Association won a small administrative victory, including clubs from the area of Eastern Herzegovina (Trebinje, Gacko, Nevesinje...), which was part of the Zeta Banovina.
Fractures and divisions, however, did not stop. In the end, they led to the formation of a parallel Montenegrin Sports Association in Podgorica on January 8, 1940, headed by Jovan Vukčević, a member of the first leadership of the CNP.
"Almost all the time since the CNP has been in existence, a policy of waste and material exploitation of people has been pursued, a policy of destroying Montenegrin sports, precisely a dictatorial policy," said the secretary of the new Alliance, Mihailo Milonjić.
World War II put an end to further tensions and escalations...
Immediately after its completion, on August 5, 1945, the Football Committee was established under the republican Physical Culture and Sports Committee, which on December 1945, 6, grew into the Football Association of Montenegro.
At the first session, among the delegates was Nikola Latković, the first president of the CNP, the link between pre-war and post-war football.
Most of the leading actors of football between the two wars, due to political ineligibility, were erased from historical memory. Just like the word "football" in Montenegrin territory, which existed until the beginning of the 90s only in the name - Arsenal Football Club...
"Football is the most interesting social phenomenon. Reflex of life oscillations. A sphere where not only fans' passions are manifested, but also political identification", are the written words of the screenwriter of the once popular TV series "More than the game" Slobodan Stojanović. That is why the story of football is always also a story about the nature and spirit of the times of an environment.
In socialist Yugoslavia, the Cetinje football sub-association was interpreted as "an institution of bourgeois society", so accordingly "some weaknesses and contradictions of that society manifested themselves in the work of this organization". Nevertheless, from a sufficient time distance, it remains a testimony of Montenegrin football's exit from puberty and entry into adolescence. And the road to maturity, understandably, is paved with desires and - stumbles.
About the first president of the Montenegrin Football Association
Born in Cetinje on December 27, 1893, seven years before the beginning of the 20th century, the first president of the CNP, Nikola Latković, in his way of life evoked all its complexity in Montenegrin areas.
After completing elementary school and junior high school in the capital, he studied at the first high school in Belgrade, sharing a bench with Gavril Princip. During the Vidovdan assassination, it happened in Sarajevo. Whether he was connected with the conspirators he never revealed. Anyway, he was arrested.
"On the day of the assassination, Sunday, June 28, 1914, around 12 o'clock, I was placed with my hands tied in the yard of the police detention center with my nose against the wall," he described in the Belgrade "Vremen" 25 years later.
Psychological and physical torture followed until July 10, when Latković was deported to Montenegro.
"I was treated for a long time in Danilo's hospital," he wrote.
Soon, the Montenegrin government sent him to Switzerland, where during the years of the Great War he graduated in Geneva and Lausanne, and later graduated in mathematics in Belgrade.
He returned to Cetinje, where he taught at the Gymnasium, starting in 1925 the first Montenegrin sports newspaper "Omladina", with a "noble task: the physical and mental education of our national hope, our youth".
Active in public and sports life, he was the president of Montenegrins, and for more than a year he was the editor-in-chief of the radical newspaper "Crna Gora".
A key man in the founding of the CNP in March 1931, he retired already in October. He moved to Kotor and devoted himself to his teaching career. He wrote respected textbooks on geometry and algebra.
Not long after the start of World War II, the Italian occupation authorities expelled him. He moved to Belgrade, where during the war years he taught at the Fourth Gymnasium.
After the end of the war, at the invitation of the Government of the Republic of Montenegro, he returned to Kotor, where he worked until his retirement in 1950. He was a delegate at the first session of the Football Association of Montenegro, and along the way he occasionally appeared in Pobjeda, writing mainly about his favorite sport.
"Let the young people remember that you have to sacrifice something for sports: we bought the balls and football boots ourselves! Our only help was willpower and determination," he said in his last interview for "Pobjeda", at the end of 1962.
Nikola Latković died in Kotor on January 5, 1965.
Champions of the Cetinje football sub-association
In the first season of the championship organized by CNP, 12 teams participated: Crnogorac, Lovćen (Cetinje), Balšić, Budućnost (Podgorica), Obilić, Hercegovac (Nikšić), Orjen, Zrinjski (Tivat), Yugoslav (Kotor), Gorštak (Kolašin ), Crnojević (Bar) and Njegoš (Berane).
In the last season 1939/1940, the competition consisted of 28 clubs, of which 18 were from Montenegro (Balšić, Crnogorac, Crnojević, Obilić, Yugoslavia (Nikšić), Sloga, Njegoš (both from Cetinje), Budimgrad (Berane), Gorštak (Kolašin ), Bjelogorac (Ulcinj), Montenegro (Podgorica), Orao (Stari Bar), Sutomore, Mogren (Budva), Primorje (Herceg Novi), Yugoslav (Kotor), Arsenal (Tivat) and Igalo) and 10 from Herzegovina.
Two Yugoslav national team players in the interwar period, members of BSK, came from Montenegro: "El Grande" Milovan Jakšić from Kolašin and former player of Budućnost Vojin Božović, born in Cetinje.
CHAMPIONS:
1931 - Montenegrin
1932 - Montenegrin
1933 - The future
1934 - The future
1935 - the championship was not held
1936 - Montenegrin
1937 - Arsenal
1938 - Montenegrin
1939 - Balšić
1940 - Balšić
All the presidents of the Cetinje football sub-association
Nikola Latković - March 8, 1931 - October 25, 1931
Alexander Rheinwein - October 25, 1931 - August 13, 1933
Srećko Jun - August 13, 1933 – December 23, 1934
Niko Bokan - 1935 - December 5, 1937
Đuro Čejović - December 5, 1937 - 1941.
Bonus video:
