Ready for the Homeland?

In the case of post-socialist Croatia, sport has proved to be a highly politicised form of national expression functioning as a salient social field in which Croatia’s “national habitus code” is most intensively articulated, debated and contested. An incident emblematising this argument occurred on 19 November 2013 when the Croatian national football team secured their qualification for the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. In front of the 30.000 people at Zagreb’s Maksimir stadium, the national team player, Josip Šimunić, grabbed the microphone and “greeted” all four stands with a loud chanting of Za dom [For the home(land)], to which the stands thunderously responded spremni [ready]; the official salute of the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist WWII quisling-state. This presentation will argue that the issue extends beyond politically radicalized football hooligans and has to be understood from the standpoint of “social memory”. By focusing on football, it will scrutinize debates in the Croatian public sphere dealing with the salute Za dom-spremni. Providing an insight into its complex and multi-layered nature, the presentation should illustrate that Croatian football has to be understood as a field in which social memory is prominently constructed, heatedly articulated and powerfully disseminated.