Hajduk Split – The Flag of Dalmatia

Ozren Podnar reports...

The Dalmatian capital of Split boast one of the most vociferous and passionate fan-bases in Europe and the team that profits the most from this support is Hajduk Split. The Split Whites, as they are commonly called, used to be a member of the Big Four of Yugoslav soccer and are currently one of the Big Two in Croatia, alongside their perennial enemies, Dinamo of Zagreb.

Guerrilla Fighters

Hajduk (pron. HIGH-dook) was founded on February 13th 1911 by a group of Split students who had studied in Prague and contracted the soccer disease by watching Sparta and Slavia games.

The untranslatable name of Hajduk was chosen after a lengthy deliberation because it supposedly reflected the rebellious and indomitable nature of the Dalmatian people: hajduks were the brave Croatian guerrilla fighters who used to ambush the Turkish forces in the interior of the Adriatic coast during the Ottoman Empire. In their first ever game, Hajduk defeated a team of ethnic Italians living in split 9-0.

As soon as the old Yugoslav league started, Hajduk emerged as one of the leading teams in the country, then ruled by the Serb Karadjordjevic dynasty. In the late twenties, the Whites achieved two league titles, but in response to the Serb dictatorship declared in 1929, they boycotted the first World Cup in Uruguay along with other Croatian sides, including Gradjanski (present-day Dinamo Zagreb), Concordia and HASK.

During the Second World War and the occupation of Dalmatia by the Axis Powers, the club ceased its activities, refusing the proposal of the Italian FA to join Serie A! football activities were restarted in 1944 when Hajduk migrated to Vis island in the Adriatic, then already in the hands of Tito's partizans, becoming the official club of the Yugoslav Liberation Army. Allegedly, there were pressures from the ruling Communist Party to relocate Hajduk north-east to the capital of Belgrade, but Tito – a Croat by birth – prevented the travesty.

Birth of Torcida

After the Second World War, Hajduk saw the birth of their first Golden Generation led by the phenomenal keeper Vladimir Beara and the virtuoso offensive midfielder Bernard Vukas, both permanent fixtures in the excellent Yugoslav side of the fifties. Hajduk won three titles from 1950 until 1955 and gave birth to the most fanatical ultra group in the former Yugoslavia: Torcida.

The word, obviously, came from Brazil. The fans, inspired by the Brazilian supporters during the 1950 World Cup, adopted the noise, the iconography and the denomination (torcida literally means "the support").

After a decade and a half in the dumps, accentuated by the still-disputed transfer of the local idol Vladimir Beara to the Serb team of Red Star, another Golden Generation came to be, this time featuring internationals like Ivan Buljan, Ivica Surjak, Slavisa Zungul, Luka Peruzovic, Jurica Jerkovic, Brane Oblak and the Vujovic brothers. This extraordinary team, coached for the most time by the great Tomislav Ivic, later of Ajax, Anderlecht, Porto and Atlético Madrid, among others.

Tear gas and a dead cockerel

From 1971 until 1979 Hajduk won four League championships and five consecutive cups from 1972 through 1977 (the 1975 finals was not played due to a change of format and dynamics of the competition). During the eighties Hajduk won two FA Cups and had a couple of decent runs in Europe, that came to a three year pause in 1987 after the Torcida threw tear gas on the pitch during a Hajduk vs. Marseille Cup Winners' Cup fixture. The same group of fans had been responsible for the slaughter of a cockerel before the Hajduk vs. Tottenham game in 1984, the cockerel being the Spurs' symbol.

UEFA, influenced by the Heysel disaster, meted out a ban for two qualifying seasons, which in Hajduk's case came to signify three years of European inactivity. Still, a very good team that included a powerful forward in Alen Boksic and a clever midfielder in Josko Jelicic won the last-ever played All-Yugoslav FA Cup finals against Red Star in Belgrade – when the Croatian war of independence was just about to start.

The exports of the best players speeded up in independent Croatia, but somehow the youth system managed to keep pace. A talented side included Aljosa Asanovic, Igor Stimac and Goran Vucevic made it through the 1994/95 Champions' League group phase reaching the quarterfinals, where Van Gaal's Ajax at their peak proved too much to handle.

On the domestic stage, Hajduk won three out of the first four Croatian titles, but then fell behind the state-supported Dinamo Zagreb for a full five seasons between 1995/96 and 1999/00. Since 2001, the honours have been pretty much evenly distributed between Dinamo and Hajduk, with a slight advantage for the Blue Lions from the capital. The erratic policies of the Board and a series of arbitrary sackings of coaches remain a liability, as well as the ultras, responsible for numerous incidents at home and abroad.

Hajduk Split Fact File

Vedran Corluka Factfile

Founded: February 13th, 1911
Team colours: white shirts, blue shorts
Nicknames: Bili, Bijeli (Whites), Majstori s mora (Seaside masters)
Stadium: Poljud (45,000)
President: Branko Grgic
Coach: Sergije Kresic (as of August 2007)
Honours: 9 Yugoslav League titles (1927, 1929, 1952, 1955,
1971, 1974, 1975 and 1979)
9 Yugoslav Cups (1967, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1976, 1977,
1984, 1987 and 1991)
6 Croatian League titles (1992, 1994, 1995, 2001, 2004 and 2005)
4 Croatian Cups (1993, 1995, 2000 and 2003)
5 Croatian Supercups (1992, 1993, 1994, 2004 and 2005)
European success: Cup Winners' Cup semifinals (1973),
UEFA Cup semifinals (1984)

Europe: So Close To Glory

Hajduk are one of the great underachievers of European soccer. They came close to glory on so many occasions yet they have never progressed beyond the semifinals, and in five cases beyond the quarterfinals.

Twice they were stopped at the gates of the finals by English sides. In 1973 they could not overturn the 0-1 loss against Don Revie's Leeds United, while eleven years later they failed to hold on to 2-1 advantage against Tottenham Hotspurs.

The Spurs shattered Hajduk's hopes three times, first in late sixties, then in 1983/84 and finally in 1991/92, the last time the Split team represented Croatia before the disintegration of the Yugoslav multiethnic federation.

In other seasons, Hajduk reached three times the quarterfinals of the European Cup or Champions League. In 1976 they lost to PSV Eindhoven by a 2-3 aggregate, in 1980 to HSV on away-goals rule and in 1995 to Ajax by a 0-3 aggregate.

The Dalmatians also played once in the quarterfinals of both the Cup Winners' Cup and the UEFA Cup, both times losing on penalties.

In this season's UEFA Cup, Hajduk only progressed to the second preliminary round where they succumbed to Sampdoria of Genoa 0-1 at home and 1-1 away at the Luigi Ferraris stadium.

Exports: Never Short Of Talent

Hajduk has always been a major exporter of talents. Hundreds of Hajduk-grown players have gone on to ply their trade outside of Yugoslavia and Croatia, some of them quite relevant in the international field. Some of the most distinguished stars have been Alen Boksic (Marseille, Lazio, Juventus, Middlesbrough), Robert Jarni (Torino, Juventus, Real Madrid, Betis), Slaven Bilic (Karlsruher, West Ham, Everton), Igor Stimac (Derby, West Ham), Aljosa Asanovic (Merz, Cannes, Montpellier, Derby), Igor Tudor (Juventus), Ivica Mornar (Anderlecht, Portsmouth), Milan Rapaic (Perugia, Standard Liege), Zlatko Vujovic (Bordeaux, Paris SG), Zoran Vujovic (Bordeaux), Luka Peruzovic (Anderlecht), Ivan Buljan (Hamburger SV), Ivica Surjak (Paris SG, Udinese, Zaragoza) and many others.

The sensational Croatian third-placed team from the 1998 World Cup included five players who had emerged from the Hajduk soccer school.

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