Fudbalski Klub Crvena Zvezda
( , known in English as Red
Star Belgrade) is a football club from Belgrade
, Serbia
. The
club is sometimes known worldwide by translations of its Serbian
name. Red Star Belgrade are the only Serbian club to have become
European and World Champions having won the
1991 European Cup and 1991
Intercontinental
Cup. They are also the only Serbian club ever to win an
international title.
According to recent polls, Red Star is the most popular football
club in Serbia, with nearly 50% of the population supporting the
club. Their main rivals are fellow Belgrade side,
FK Partizan.
According to the
International
Federation of Football History & Statistics' list of Top
200 European clubs of the
20th century,
Red Star is the highest ranked Serbian club, sharing the 27th
position on the list with
Feyenoord.
History
Start
The story about how Red Star was formed is well known. In
February 1945, while
World War II was still going on, a group of
young people, members of the Serbian United Antifascist Youth
League, decided to form a Youth Physical Culture Society, that was
to become Red Star on
4th March. The name
Red Star was assigned to the club after a long discussion, and the
first vice presidents of the Sport Society, Zoran Žujović and
Slobodan Ćosić, were the ones to assign it. On that day Red Star
played the first football match against the First Battalion of the
Second Brigade of
KNOJ and won 3:0 (2:0).
Five days later, a football section was officially formed, led by
Kosta Tomašević, and the
first manager was
Predrag
Đajić. The two of them defended the honor of Red Star in the
playing field – Tomašević was the first striker and scorer in the
history of the club, and Đajić was a midfielder. Red Star was given
a stadium of a prewar
FC Yugoslavia (that was active
during the war under the name of
League of Communists of
Yugoslavia in
1913, and that was disbanded
specifically due to these activities at the time of occupation), at
that time known as
Avala.
In a
post-war 1946
season, Red Star won the
Serbian
Championship and thus qualified for the
Yugoslav Championship.
In the first four
seasons our club did not succeed in winning any championships,
however, in the period of 1948 to 1950 there was a series of hat-trick triumphs in Cups, finals against Partizan, Naša Krila
of Zemun
and Dinamo.
The first championship was won in a spectacular way.
Three rounds before
the end Dinamo from Zagreb
was five
points in the lead in the league and winning a match brought two
points. However, the team from Zagreb was defeated by
the team from Sarajevo
, and Red
Star won the rivals’ duel for the championship and entered the last
round with a minus of one point. The match between
BSK and Dinamo ended 2:2, and the decision was
reached a day later, on
4th November,
in the match with Partizan. The eternal rival had won the derby
very convincingly earlier that season (6:1), but Red Star this time
scored the necessary 2:0 and thanks to better goal-average (only
0,0018 more) became the national champion for the first time.
The late fifties – the first era of dominance
Red Star also won championship in
1953, however, real
changes would yet follow in the middle of the decade, when a stable
club structure was formed with Dušan Blagojević acting as
president, Slobodan Ćosić as secretary general and great Aca
Obradović, famous for his
nickname
Doctor O, acting as technical director of the club.
They prepared the ground for the generation that would fully
dominate Yugoslav football scene in the following five years,
leaving their stamp on the European scene as well. It was a team of
players such as
Beara,
Durković,
Stanković,
Popović,
Mitić,
Kostić,
Šekularac... Those football
players, whose names are still remembered, who are worldwide
famous, will win four Yugoslav championships and two Cups, not
missing a single trophy in those five seasons.
Red Star’s play was fast and offensive, bringing great popularity
to the club both in the country and in the world. As they were
gaining victories in the playing field, Obradović formed the ground
for professional work that will later serve as the basis of great
successes to be achieved by our club.
Doctor O possessed
an exceptional gift to recognize talents, and at the end of his
career he transferred Mitić, Stanković,
Toplak to the professional staff headquarters,
and they will be dealing with football very successfully for
several decades.
The sixties – a crisis and a new stadium
The end of
the fifties was the first period of dominance
of one club on the Yugoslav football scene, but the beginning of
the decade to follow shifted the focus of events to the other side
of Topčider
Hill
. In the following seven seasons, Red Star will
win only one championship (which will not repeat before the
nineties) and only one cup, its placement will
be the worst in its history (seventh place in 1963) and it will even
drop four times bellow the first three in the table (before and
after that only seven times more has Red Star been bellow the third
place in 54 football seasons in SFRY
, FRY
, SCG and
Serbia).
Even then it was clear that Red Star was the most popular club in
the country by far, and its defeats came down hard on its
supporters, so accidents happened in which they used to burst into
the field and literally burn both goals.
In 1962–63 season, our
club also set a negative record by scoring only 21 goals, which
was, for example, half the result of Vojvodina
, five places lower in the table.
Still, on the other hand, Red Star was developing and setting the
final grounds for the great rise that followed - at the end of
1959 building of a new stadium began on the
same spot that was occupied with the outdated
Avala. In
the following four years Red Star played as a host at the stadiums
of Partizan and
OFK Beograd (which can
also be considered a reason for the bad results it achieved at that
time), and the new building was opened on
1st September in
1963,
when a match with
Rijeka took place.
The first season on the stadium of its own, which could receive the
amazing one hundred people, was celebrated with double crown,
seeing
Miša Pavić
off the bench who had won five trophies in the previous decade and
who had set a record by keeping his place on the club’s bench seven
seasons in a row.
The key moment took place in the summer of
1966, when
Miljan
Miljanić joined the club’s bench. For the following eight
years, Miljanić will lead the club that grew into a highly-rated
club in Europe. Up to then, Yugoslav football had gone through an
introductory testing stage and a five-year dominance of
Red Star and
Partizan. In
the remaining 25 years of the existence within the borders of the
same country, Red Star will be a constant, whereas only rivals
would change.
Miljanić and Red Star’s hard-shooting kids (1966-1974)
Miljan Miljanić was a football player in Red Star back in the
glorious
'50s, but it was his position of the
first coach in the summer of 1966 that he found the right for him
and the club. Miljanić was a leader of the new orientation in the
club - relying on its own forces. In the first season he completely
changed the generation of players and won the fifth place, the same
as one year before. And after that triumphs began.
The generation led by
Dragan
Džajić, officially the best player in the history of this
country (the choice of the Football Association on the 50th
anniversary of
UEFA) and certainly one of the
best left winger in the history of the world, will leave a deep
mark and make a great difference compared to all the greatest
rivals. It will be the first time Red Star has won three
championships in a row (two times double crown), and every child in
Yugoslavia will know the names of
Dujković,
Đorić,
Dojčinovski,
Klenkovski,
Karasi,
Aćimović,
Lazarević,
Krivokuća,
Ostojić...
It is of special
importance to know that most of the above mentioned football
players joined Marakana
very early and went through many selections in the
club’s youth school.
At that time Red Star became a sound name on the European level as
well, setting standards which only a small number of clubs from the
east could follow. It was focusing on Yugoslav Cup in
1971 that made the
league’s second worst placement ever – the sixth place – and that
impression was improved by winning the Cup. Miljanić will win
another Cup with the team, in
1973, and some new
names will already appear among the players, such as
Vladimir and
Ognjen Petrović,
Bogićević,
Filipović,
Keri... Many of them will, at the end of the
eight decade, lead Red Star into the new era of great
triumphs.
Apart from bringing lots of joy to its supporters, in that era Red
Star was a club that was watched with pleasure: during the eight
years of Miljanić’s leadership, seven times it was the most
efficient club in the league (in
1972 Velež scored one goal more), and in the
last two seasons it left its rivals first by 12, and then by 18
scores.
Zec and Stanković, maintaining dominance
As it usually happens, when a great coach leaves, this entails a
drop in results, and the two seasons after Miljanić had left passed
less successfully for Red Star. It will not be before the arrival
of
Gojko Zec in
1976
that the club will achieve stability and as soon as the following
May the twelfth victory of the national championship was celebrated
at Marakana. It was an introduction into an era of
Branko Stanković, which was to last
four years and bring Red Star three trophies and the first great
European finals.
After
Džajić had left for Bastia, the team was
lead by the fourth star of Red Star, Vladimir Petrović
Pižon, and Dušan Savić and
Srboljub Stamenković, who
was to become a great football star in the United States
, were equally popular. The first season of
Gojko Zec was a real demonstration of force – the championship was
won with nine points’ advantage, which was up to that moment the
greatest difference in the history of the league, and strikers,
with Filipović at the head, scored 67 times against their rivals
(the first to accompany them on the list was
Borac with 53 goals scored).
In the following season Red Star won the second place and thus made
its way for great performance in the
European Cup in
1978–1979 season. The first
championship for Stanković as a coach (as a player he was a
champion for four times) was won in
1980, when Red Star
missed double crown, and a year later Red Star was the champion
again.
An eleven years’ period without winning the cup, the longest in its
history by far, ended in the spring of
1982,
when two matches were won (2:2 in Zagreb and 4:2 in Belgrade) and a
new champion was defeated, Dinamo from Zagreb. By that time, the
first change of coach during a season took place since the fifties,
Ostojić replaced Stanković.
Gojko Zec returns to the team in
1983, finding
only one player from the champions generation he was coaching back
in
1977 –
Miloš Šestić. Zec similarly
repeats the team’s triumph from his previous mandate by winning the
championship immediately upon his arrival.
And in the same
manner as during that season, the Cup finals ended in Split
, and Red Star won the trophy in the most massive
competition in 1985, again playing
against Dinamo.
Especially after Petrović and Savić had left during
1982–1983 season,
Šestić became a leader of the new generation, the players of which
were
Ivković,
Elzner,
Boško and
Milko Đurovski,
Musemić,
Janjanin,
Mrkela.
The end of the era of Gojko Zec coincided with the greatest scandal
in the history of Yugoslav football, a
Scheiber’s case,
that made the country have two champions in two seasons. Our club
first lost and then won the championship in
1986, before it was
taken away from it at the green table.
European and World Champions
In the summer of
1986 there were great changes
in the club. The management run by Dragan Džajić and
Vladimir Cvetković began to build a
team that could compete with the most powerful European teams.
During that summer
Velibor
Vasović sat on the bench, the first Serbian national to raise
the European Cup’s cup, and the team was strengthened with a number
of players, among whom
Dragan
Stojković and
Bora
Cvetković stood out.
In the first season that started with penalty points, Red Star
focused on the European Cup, achieving good results. It was not
later than the summer of
1987 that a five-year
plan was developed with the goal to win the European Cup. The
history is a witness that all the plans were fulfilled.
Starting from the club’s birthday in 1987, when
Real Madrid was defeated at Marakana,
through
March 1992, Red
Star lived the best period in its history. In the five seasons they
won four championships (in
1989 Vojvodina was the
championship winner with Šestić,
Mihajlović,
Ljupko Petrović as a coach and
Kosanović as a director), in
1990 with as many as
11, and a year later with eight points of advantage compared to the
first rivals (both times Dinamo). All four seasons in which Red
Star won the championships it also played in the finals, but won
the cup only in 1990.
The fact that Red Star was managed by as many as five coaches in
the glorious five years’ period (Vasović, Stanković, Šekularac, Lj.
Petrović and Popović) seems strange, but at the same time is a
confirmation of extreme power of the
red-and-white both in
management and in the field. In the summer of
1987 Binić and
Prosinečki arrived, and in
the following order came
Šabanadžović,
Pančev,
Savićević,
Belodedić and Mihajlović. At the same
time the youth school was working well, which brought
Stojanović and
Jugović to the club.
At the very beginning of the nineties, Red Star simply did not have
any competition in domestic contests, whereas in Europe it was high
ranking.
Although it was certain that transfers of at
least several players would happen, the war in the Balkans, disintegration of Yugoslavia and sanctions
imposed by the United Nations
accelerated the process, which would, only thirteen months after
Bari
, practically leave Red Star without entire
generation of champions.
The dark nineties
At the
very beginning of 1992, the club was at the
height of its fame – the champion of Europe and the
world, weakened by the departure of several members of the
champions generation from Bari, but still with rather good chances
to defend the trophy in London
won at the
European Cup. In domestic competition, great rivals,
Dinamo, left the league, just as all the other clubs from Croatia
and Slovenia
did, and the championship in a Yugoslavia that was
cut in size was played on the edge of observance of regulations,
because, in April, the war broke out in
Bosnia and
Herzegovina
. Red Star defended its title and for the
second time made a champion hat-trick (for the first time since the
era of Miljanić), but at the Cup’s finals, won by Partizan, it was
already clear that hard days for our club were ahead of us.
In the period between
May 1992 and May
2000, only one championship victory was celebrated at
Marakana – the twentieth cup arrived to our glass closet in
1995, and it
was brought by another great generation of players, such as
Milojević,
Stojkovski,
Đorović,
Stefanović,
Sakić,
Živković,
Krupniković,
Kovačević,
Petković... Heading for the title, the
hundredth derby was also won (2:1), and Ljupko Petrović was again
sitting on the bench.
Still, it was a short break in a very unsuccessful decade. The
league of SR Yugoslavia of that day did not resemble a kind of
sports competition we used to attend before the country fell apart,
and under new and strange circumstances it was difficult for our
club to find the right way. Red Star used to frequently have the
best team in the country by far, but it was simply not enough. As
the nineties were approaching their end, irregularities were
reaching their climax, and the
1997–98 championship
was won by a debutant in
Obilić
league.
The following championship was not finalized
due to NATO
aggression,
and Red Star ended at the third place, which was the only placement
for the club below the second position in the last 20
years.
During the seven seasons, Red Star won one championship and even
five cups, along with several glorious European performances. For
most clubs it was by all standards a successful period, however,
demands of the Red Star’s army of supporters were different. The
time of pleasure was yet to come back for them.
New century and new triumphs
The summer of
1999 was a new beginning for our
club. Immediately after NATO aggression had finished, Red Star won
the seventeenth cup in its history by winning a match against
Partizan resulting in 4:2, and after a bad beginning of the
following season the team was taken over from
Miloljub Ostojić by
Slavoljub Muslin. As a member of the
glorious generation of
Pižon
Petrović and
Dule Savić,
he brought a fresh philosophy to its team – during the two seasons
spent with him Red Star set defensive records and cut the number of
goals scored against them to a half (only 19 in 40 matches of
1999–2000
championship).
The title was practically ensured on the day
of Đurđevdan, when Obilić was
defeated at Marakana, and Partizan won only one point in Kragujevac
. Three days later, the cup was won and four
points of advantage were kept as a routine in the remaining three
rounds. In March, April and May, Red Star won all 20 matches in the
league and the Cup.
The following season Muslin remained in the club, and the champions
title was defended. The trophy was lost in the cup, a competition
on which Red Star had a kind of monopoly – in the last 18 finals it
played 16 times and won 10 times. Muslin was to leave the bench of
our club in
September 2001, after which Red Star was to lose two
championships in a row in an identical manner – after five rounds
our falling behind our greatest rival was huge (in the first one it
was 7, and in the second one it was 10 points’ difference). The
return of Muslin to the bench in the summer of
2004 also brought back the necessary strength to Red
Star and set a new record – only 13 goals scored against it in 30
matches.
During
that summer our club, with Ljupko Petrović at the head for the
third time, achieved great results at preparations and entered a
new championship with a great dose of optimism, but two heavy
defeats in European matches (in Eindhoven
and St. Petersburg
) psychologically disturbed the team, it started
losing the fight for the title, and it ended the bad season with a
defeat from Železnik in the Cup
finals (the second time in three years the cup was lost by
receiving a goal against them in the last minute).
During the summer of
2005 a great change
occurred in the club because Dragan Džajić left the president’s
chair and his function after whole 20 years. The third star of Red
Star was replaced by the fifth star – Dragan Stojković – and for
the first time in the history a foreign coach
Walter Zenga has joined the club. Two years of
Red Star’s full dominance in the sphere of domestic football
followed, represented by double crowns and initially seven, and
later seventeen points of advantage compared to the closest rivals
in the league.
Red Star has entered
2007–2008 season
with clear ambitions, which, again, are inevitable at Marakana – to
defend double crown and make a step further in
Europe.
Stadium
Red
Star's home ground is Stadion Crvena Zvezda ( ). It has a capacity of 55,000 and is the
largest stadium in Serbia.
Due to the former capacity of over 100,000
the stadium is commonly referred to as Marakana after
Maracanã
stadium
in Brazil
. It
was opened in 1963 after construction which had started three years
earlier.
The largest crowd was recorded that autumn at a derby against
FK Partizan–74,000 people. Next year,
after the stadium was fully completed its capacity increased to
110,000 spectators and it got the unofficial moniker -
Marakana, in honour of the famous Brazilian stadium. Apart
from the exciting look, the new stadium also featured a magnificent
grass pitch with drainage, which made the overall playing
experience much more enjoyable.
Still on
the subject of records, according to the number of tickets sold,
Marakana saw its largest crowd on 23 April 1975 at the
Cup Winners Cup semi-final
home leg against the Hungarian side Ferencváros (2-2). There were
officially 96,070 spectators in the stands that night with
purchased tickets, but it is believed that the stadium was filled
to the maximum allowable capacity which at the time was
110,000.
In the years since, the stadium's capacity was gradually decreased.
Following different modernisation touch-ups more seats were put in
each time. During mid 1990s in order to meet
UEFA demands for spectators' comfort and security,
standing places at the stadium were completely done away with.
Seats were installed on all four stands so that the Marakana‘s
maximum capacity today reaches 55,538.
Today the
stadium has a modern press box, with a capacity of 344
seats,including seven extra-comfortable seats.The stadium also has
a modern media center for promotions,
press conferences etc. On the west stand of Marakana there is an
official Red Star Shop along with Nike
shop.
In
August 2008 the club
reconstructed the pitch in the stadium. Under-soil grass heaters
and an improved drainage system were installed and new modern turf
replaced the old surface. The training pitch was also renovated by
laying down synthetic turf and installing new lighting
equipment.
Club culture
Supporters of the various Red Star sports teams are known as
Delije ( ). A rough English translation might
be "courageous and brave young men" or simply "The Heroes". They
are generally concentrated in the North Stand of the Stadion Crvena
Zvezda. The
Srbija do Tokija (lit.
Serbia to Tokyo) chant originated
with Red Star supporters following their victory in the 1991
Intercontinental Cup in Tokyo
. It
was later adopted by Serbian paramilitaries during the various
Yugoslavian wars of the 1990s. The Delije were involved in the
notorious
Dinamo Zagreb–Red
Star Belgrade riot in 1990, which highlighted the ethnic
tensions in Yugoslavia at the time.
Red Star's main rivals are fellow Belgrade club,
FK Partizan. Matches between the two are known
as the "
Eternal Derby" ( ,
Večiti derbi). The record attendance for a Red
Star-Partizan match is around 108,000, the lowest 8,000 for a
Yugoslav Cup semi-final in 2005. In
league matches, the derby has been played 133 times; Red Star
winning on 57 occasions and Partizan 34 times. In cup games, Red
Star have won 17 of the 31 fixtures, Partizan 10.
In
addition to their rivalries, Red Star have two friendship clubs,
Olympiacos of Greece
and Spartak Moscow of Russia
. The
fans of the three teams have been dubbed "Orthodox Brothers".
Honours
International titles
The
following titles include only those which are recognised by
UEFA and FIFA
.
European titles
European Cup (defunct, succeeded by UEFA Champions League):
- *Champions (1): 1991
Mitropa Cup (defunct):
- *Champions (2): 1958, 1968
World-wide titles
Intercontinental
Cup (defunct, succeeded by FIFA
Club World Cup):
- *Champions (1): 1991
National Titles
- National Championships (25)
- SFR Yugoslavia
Champions (19): 1951, 1952–53, 1955–56, 1956–57, 1958–59, 1959–60, 1963–64, 1967–68, 1968–69, 1969–70, 1972–73, 1976–77, 1979–80, 1980–81, 1983–84, 1987–88, 1989–90, 1990–91, 1991–92
- FR Yugoslavia / Serbia and
Montenegro Champions (5): 1994–95, 1999–00,
2000–01,
2003–04,
2005−06
- Champions of Serbia
(1): 2006–07
- National Cup (22)
- SFR Yugoslavia Cup winners
(12): 1948, 1949, 1950, 1958, 1959, 1964, 1968, 1970, 1971, 1982, 1985, 1990
- FR Yugoslavia / Serbia and Montenegro Cup winners
(9): 1993, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2004,
2006
- Serbian Cup winners
(1): 2007
Other titles and major achievements
European Cup (defunct, succeeded by UEFA Champions League):
- *Semi-finalists (2): 1956–57, 1970–71
UEFA Cup Winners' Cup
(defunct):
- *Semi-finalists (1): 1974–75
UEFA Cup (defunct, succeeded by UEFA Europa League):
- *Runners-up (1): 1978–79
UEFA Super Cup:
- *Runners-up (1): 1991
World of Soccer Cup
(defunct):
- *Champions (1): 1977
European Competitions
Red Star is the most successful team from Serbia (and Yugoslavia);
it competed in Europe 46 times, once becoming European Champions
(90/91). Other notable results include UEFA cup final (78/79), two
European Champions Cup semifinals (56/57, 70/71), one Cup Winners’
Cup semifinal (74/75), and one UEFA cup semifinal (61/62).
European Results Analysis
| Red Star Belgrade |
Seasons |
P |
W |
D |
L |
F |
A |
Match %W |
|
Ties P |
Ties W |
Ties L |
Ties %W |
| Representing Serbia |
2 |
8 |
3 |
3 |
2 |
9 |
8 |
37.50 |
|
4 |
2 |
2 |
50.00 |
| Representing FR
Yugoslavia |
12 |
72 |
28 |
20 |
24 |
112 |
85 |
38.89 |
|
34 |
19 |
15 |
55.88 |
| Representing SFR
Yugoslavia |
33 |
177 |
88 |
30 |
59 |
344 |
234 |
49.72 |
|
85 |
54 |
31 |
63.53 |
| Total |
46 |
255 |
119 |
51 |
85 |
460 |
322 |
46.67 |
|
122 |
75 |
47 |
61.48 |
Current squad
As of November 21, 2009
For recent transfers, see List of Serbian
football transfers summer 2009.
Notable players
The Stars of Red Star
Red Star has almost a 50 year long tradition of giving the title of
the
Star of Red Star (
Zvezdina zvezda) to the
players that have had a major impact on the club's history and that
have made the name of the club famous around the globe. So far,
only five players in the club's history were officially given the
title. They are:
Though it may sound strange, none of the players that have won the
only European Champion title for the club is titled
Star of Red
Star. In fact, no new "stars" have been added to the list
since
Dragan Stojković was
given the title in 1990. In his recent statement, Stojković, then
the club's president, said that the tradition of naming the club's
stars was going to be continued, probably by naming
Dejan Savićević the sixth "star",
although there were opinions that the entire 1991 generation should
be named the sixth star. Ironically, Stojković himself missed the
opportunity to be part of the historical 1991 cup since he moved to
Olympique de Marseille, the
same team that was beaten by Red Star at the 1991 final, in the
summer of 1990.
The 1991 European Champions Generation
Coach: Ljupko Petrović
Other notable players
- SFR Yugoslavia
- FR Yugoslavia/Serbia and Montenegro
- Serbia
- Brazil
- Colombia
- Ecuador
- Portugal
- Senegal
- Slovenia
- South Africa
Award winners
- Ballon d'or
- European Golden Boot
- Copa America Winners
Coaching history
For details see List of Red Star
Belgrade football coaches
Club presidents
Notes and references
External links
- Official
- Supporters
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