Scene Setter
October 30, 1999. Partizan Stadium, south stand. A flare arcs through Belgrade's night sky toward the away section, and 17-year-old Aleksandar Radović never makes it home. The match continues—Partizan win 2-0—as if teenage death is just another casualty in a war between neighbours separated by one kilometre and everything else imaginable.
This is the 113th Eternal Derby. What makes it singular isn't the pyrotechnics or the funerals. It's that these clubs were literally created by competing government ministries to settle bureaucratic scores. Seventy-five years on, they're still fighting Yugoslavia's institutional civil war, twice a year. The world sees Balkan ultra madness; look closer and it's a state split in two choosing football as its battlefield.
Historical Origins
The story begins in 1945's rubble. On March 4, Red Star Belgrade emerged from the United Alliance of Anti-Fascist Youth, backed by students, intellectuals, and the Interior Ministry. Seven months later the Yugoslav People's Army decided it needed a club of its own. Enter FK Partizan on October 4, founded by resistance heroes including Koča Popović, with the Defence Ministry's full backing.
Their first meeting—January 5, 1947, Red Star winning 4-3—set the template: civilian authority versus military might; Serbian identity versus Yugoslav federalism; competing visions of a newborn state. This wasn't regional rivalry or class warfare. Two arms of the same government had created clubs expressly to compete, turning interdepartmental memos into 90-minute battles.
By the time organised ultras emerged—Partizan's Grobari (Gravediggers) in 1970, Red Star's Delije (Heroes) in 1989—the institutional DNA was fixed. These weren't just clubs; they were proxies for state power, which is why, when Yugoslavia collapsed, the derby didn't fade but intensified. The state died; its ghosts kept playing.
Cultural & Political Themes
Here's what outsiders miss: this isn't tribalism; it's institutionalism. Every Serbian leader since Tito has had to pick a side, because these clubs represent competing power centres that predate modern Serbia. When Arkan transformed Red Star ultras into the Serbian Volunteer Guard, he wasn't corrupting football—he was following the logic of clubs founded as paramilitary projects.
"To die for Red Star would be an honour," one doorman told reporters, despite his doctor's warnings about his weak heart. That's not hyperbole in Belgrade. When your club was founded by security services, when your ultras became actual paramilitaries, when your derby can shut down the government, football stops being metaphor.
Academic research finds both ultra groups operating within right-wing nationalist frameworks—there's no left-wing presence left in Serbian football. Yet they hate each other more than any external enemy. Red Star flies Russian flags and courts Putin's oligarchs. Partizan's black-and-white reads as resistance to that red-and-white nationalism. They're fighting over who owns Serbian identity itself, using flares and fists because the ballot box settled nothing.
Iconic Matches & Figures
November 4, 1951: Red Star win their first championship by beating Partizan on the season's final day. One point behind entering the match, they emerge as champions. December 6, 1953: Partizan's 7-1 demolition remains the record margin.
Then there's Dragan Džajić—389 Red Star appearances across 14 years—who called derbies "the most important games of my career" and meant it. Momčilo Vukotić answered with 791 Partizan appearances, refusing foreign riches to embody his club's military loyalty. Legend says only seven players ever switched sides, though verified names remain elusive.
And the defining figure: Arkan, whose March 1992 display of "Welcome to Vukovar" signs—referencing the Croatian city his paramilitaries helped destroy—drew cheers from 60,000 fans. When ultras become war criminals, when chants become ethnic-cleansing soundtracks, the rivalry transcends sport.
Rivalry in Microcosm
The story goes Red Star and Partizan sit one kilometre apart—close enough that chants carry across Belgrade on derby days. Legend adds planners placed them that way to ensure perpetual territorial warfare. True or not, it captures the point: the state engineered a channel for institutional competition, only for the rivalry to outlive the state itself.
Cultural Reflection
The Eternal Derby shows what happens when football becomes a society's last functioning institution. Both clubs have won every Serbian title since 1992 except one, yet can barely compete in European qualifying rounds. They're trapped in their own orbit: too big for Serbia, too small for Europe.
This isn't about passion—every derby has that. It's what happens when the state manufactures sporting enemies, when bureaucratic rivalry hardens into blood feud, when football must carry weight democratic institutions cannot bear. The Eternal Derby endures because Serbia's ministries still need proxies to fight their battles. The war never ended. It just moved to the stadium.
The next time someone says football doesn't matter, remind them that in Belgrade, government ministries literally created clubs to destroy each other, and they're still at it 75 years later. Share this with anyone who thinks all derbies are the same, and subscribe for more stories about when football becomes more than football.
Cheers,
The Gaffer