Some authors place the beginnings of Balšić earlier.
Jovan P. Vukčević, editor of Zeta, is the author of the text “Podgorica and Sport” published on June 23, 1928 in Pravda. After an educational and didactic introduction, it states that “in Podgorica, since ten years ago (or since 1918), there has been a civic society called Balšić”, which “showed the direction in which today’s youth should go in developing their great thoughts”.
It is necessary to add that Vukčević was a long-time member of the board of the club he is writing about.
“It was founded in 1918 by a group of craftsmen, students and citizens,” is the description given in the First Yugoslav Sports Almanac from 1932, which probably comes from Špir Mugoša, the newspaper’s correspondent from Podgorica, a former Balšić player, later a football referee, manager of Budućnost and - a national hero. In Zeta on June 19, 1932, the text “A Great Sports Celebration” was published, signed by Radomir Nilević, which stated that Balšić would celebrate its 14th anniversary on the same day.
In addition, a letter to the Ministry of Physical Education of the Peoples of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, dated March 21, 1936, which is kept in the Archives of Yugoslavia, states that “immediately after the liberation, the First Podgorica Civic Sports Club Balšić was founded in Podgorica, the 18th largest city in Montenegro, and it immediately began working intensively, improving its youth in physical and national terms, because until then nothing was known about sports in these areas.”
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Apparently, many people in the interwar period were keen to point out that Balšić - whose management also included the aforementioned merchant Šestić - was founded in 1918. However, regardless of when it was founded, the fact is that it was the first club from Podgorica registered in the Split Football Sub-Union, a sports forum that had football jurisdiction over the Zeta Banovina until 1931. In the issue of the Split daily newspaper “Novo doba” for 1 March 1924, an official act of the Sub-Union dated 26 January of that year was published, stating that Balšić was among the eleven permanent members.
"It's interesting how sports are progressing in Podgorica," wrote "Novo doba" the following year, in a report on the match Balšić - Crnojević (Bar), which ended with a 3:0 victory for the hosts.
"A large number of spectators and great support from the Municipality have enabled Balšić to make great progress."
Although it is not easy, based on existing documentation and in the absence of archival material, to reconstruct with utmost precision the course and outcome of the competition organized by the Split Football Sub-Association, it can be concluded that in the second half of the 1920s, Balšić was the most successful club in Montenegro.
Five "titles" of Montenegro and Boka, as it was called at the time, are also mentioned. In the following decade, it slowly lost its breath, both in terms of primacy and at the city level, and its last rise was in 1939, when it won the championship of the Cetinje Football Sub-Association and participated in the qualifications for entry into the national league.
The facts are that Balšić was perceived by the opposition as a favorite of the regime and was favored, that he was granted certain privileges and that he was competitive with Budućnost and other workers' clubs from Podgorica, which he occasionally put a damper on.
In addition, during World War II, it was activated, playing its last matches under its name in the summer of 1943, on the eve of the capitulation of Italy. All of this influenced its post-war closure/non-renewal, and the silence, denial and downplaying of its role in the development of football in Podgorica and Montenegro.
Sports journalism devoted much more attention to the other side of the interwar Podgorica football scene - the clubs that brought together workers and "advanced", as it was referred to for many decades, or communist-oriented youth.
(From the monograph “Proud Past, One Future”, which will be on sale soon)
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