Croatia Rijeka make amends
Acafe on the Rijeka seafront tells the city’s history with a series of photographs. One shows Danko Matrljan, arms aloft after putting Rijeka 2-0 up against Real Madrid in the 1984-85 UEFA Cup, a match that Rijeka would go on to win 3-1. The legend underneath, however, starts with a different story, reading: “Once full of sadness and tears, like in 1999, when Rijeka failed to beat Osijek in the last game of the championship…”
On the last day of the 1999 Croatian First League, Rijeka needed to win at home against Osijek to be crowned champions. But the first half didn’t go according to plan and Osijek led 1-0 at the break. Rijeka fought back after the interval, equalising with a penalty, before Admir Hasancic added what he thought was a second in the 89th minute, only for the goal to be ruled out for offside.
Subsequent replays and computer animations suggest that Hasancic and his team-mates were all onside. It’s a decision that still rankles in Rijeka.
The team that won the title that day was Croatia Zagreb, who would revert to their more traditional name of Dinamo Zagreb the following season. In whatever guise, Dinamo have dominated Croatian football ever since the country gained independence, and that title win in 1999 was their fifth in the first eight seasons of the Croatian First League.
More recently, the club’s grip on the country’s top tier has been even tighter, with Dinamo winning every league title from the 2005-06 season to 2015-16, an impressive 10 in a row.
However, in May 2017, Croatia finally crowned a new champion. Eighteen years to the week that Rijeka fluffed their lines against Osijek, they faced another team from Slavonia – Croatia’s most eastern district – knowing that a win would seal the title. This time it was Cibalia from Vinkovci, who themselves needed points to keep distance between themselves and last place.
Cibalia’s precarious position in the table was largely caused by a propensity for conceding goals. Before the Rijeka match, they had leaked 74 goals in 34 matches – at least 20 more than any other side in the league. And it didn’t take long for Rijeka to make it 75. Barely 10 minutes had gone when Alexander Gorgon’s flick-on found Mario Gavranovic clear of the defensive line and he rounded the goalkeeper to score.
Rijeka added two more before the break, with Gavranovic scoring a tap-in and Roman Bezjak chipping home a third in first-half stoppage time. Dario Zuparic added a fourth in the 72nd minute to remove any doubt.
No nerves, no contentious decisions, no agony. Rijeka had done it with a game to spare, saving themselves from needing to take points from an away trip to Dinamo on the final day.
Although the title was secured in May, the hard work had been done in the autumn and winter of 2016, when Rijeka went the first half of the season unbeaten, winning 16 games and drawing four before the winter break. Their success was built on a solid defence that was breached just eight times in the league between July and December. Consistency was a key part of that solidity, with keeper Andrej Prskalo and a back four of Leonard Zuta, Matej Mitrovic, Josip Elez and Stefan Ristovski starting nearly every game.
Disruption to this well-oiled machine loomed as Mitrovic was sold to Besiktas for 4.2million during the break. As a cast of hastily signed replacements tried to fill the gap, Rijeka lost their almost unbreachable defence, conceding as many goals in the first seven league games without Mitrovic as they had in the previous 20 with him.
But if Rijeka won the title in the winter, Dinamo lost it in the spring. In April, they had gone to Rijeka, knowing that a win would narrow the gap to two points. A spectacular bicycle-kick from El Arabi Hillel Soudani five minutes from time salvaged a point for Dinamo, but the HNK Rijeka stadium, a temporary home for Rijeka while their Kantrida stadium is renovated, celebrated the 1-1 draw like a victory, with fireworks illuminating the night sky, reflected in the sea. A banner proclaiming that the Champions League was coming was hoisted aloft by two cranes above the stadium.
Two last-minute goals in April sealed Dinamo’s fate. First, on April 22, Marko Futacs’ 90th-minute breakaway sealed a 2-0 win for Hajduk in Zagreb as Dinamo desperately pressed for an equaliser. Then, four days later in Koprivnica, Bruno Bogojevic’s 91st-minute goal secured a 2-1 win over Dinamo for Slaven Belupo, a team whose entire wage bill is less than that of some Dinamo players.
It wasn’t just the two defeats on the pitch that seemed to signal the end of an
The title was secured in May, but the hard work was done when Rijeka went the first half of the season unbeaten
era for Dinamo Zagreb, either. On April 28, in a court in Osijek, the trial of Zdravko Mamic began. Mamic was the club’s president for 13 years, but left in February 2016 after being indicted alongside his brother, Zoran, who is a former Dinamo coach, and Damir Vrbanovic a former club director. Mamic faces charges of bribery, abuse of power and tax evasion, with prosecutors especially focusing on the transfers involving Luka Modric to Tottenham Hotspur and Dejan Lovren to Lyon.
Fittingly, it was Osijek that Rijeka beat 2-0 at home just a few hours after Dinamo’s loss to Slaven, taking an eight-point lead in the title race. Even a first defeat of the season, 1-0 away at Lokomotiva, couldn’t deny them a first championship.
Rijeka’s success was particularly sweet for the club’s top scorer Franko Andrijasevic who, after failing to make the grade at Dinamo, went to Rijeka as part of the deal that took centreback Marko Leskovic to Zagreb.
While Andrijasevic looks forward to Europe next term, Dinamo face an uncertain future. Without Champions League money they may struggle to keep their key talent as an ongoing trial slowly reveals a clandestine world behind their most successful era.