Tekst Sasa Ibrulj
It was always destined to be in St. Etienne this Friday. After all, Nick Ames was there, and as we all know, he is a magnet for stadium troubles. We were in Belgrade for that drone match between Serbia and Albania, you had a chance to read about it in Josimar. After that he was in Malabo, for 2015 AFCON semifinal, when Equatoguinean fans stormed the pitch just to be escorted back by a helicopter. He was one to be blamed for the troubles between Hungarians and Romanians in the qualifers, simply because he was there.
Jokes aside, there was much more in to this than Nick being in St. Etienne and reporting from this match. Anyone who has at least basic knowledge on Croatian football and all the problems that it has knew that something could happen at this tournament. We all knew.
But, let's go back to start and answer some basic questions. What happened?
It was 86th minute and Croatia was just losing the plot against Czechs; they conceded a goal in 75th minute and the Czechs were all over them when a small group of Croatian fans started to throw flares in to the pitch. If I counted good; there was 12 flares on the pitch. Mark Clattenburg suspended the match briefly, while Croatian fans were fighting each other on the stands. When the match was restarted Czech Republic got a penalty and captured unexpected point.
But, how did we know that this is going to happen? Well, you know that a very old guy called Cicero? Historia magistra vitae est, he wrote in De Oratore, which suggests that "history is life's teacher". And it kind of is. It happened so many times so far - couple of weeks before the EURO UEFA fined them for racist chants in...
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