All around the world, there are people with zero Yugoslavia links and tons of Yugoslavia love. Today, we meet a yugophile in England.

With Toby Kinder (England).

Listen: “Yugophiles 2: Football, Fusion, and the Flag” (Episode #134)

Bonus Extras: “Yugophiles 2: Football, Fusion, and the Flag” (Episode #134)

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Transcript: “Yugophiles 2: Football, Fusion, and the Flag” (Episode #134)

PETER KORCHNAK: This and every other episode of Remembering Yugoslavia is brought to you by Yugoblok, a member-supported global community and resource hub for all who remember Yugoslavia. Through membership contributions, Yugoblok members make this podcast (and a whole lot more) accessible and freely available to all. Members can also listen to episodes ad-free and have access to extended and bonus episodes.

Visit Yugoblok.com to explore and join today. 

[JINGLE]

PETER KORCHNAK: This is Remembering Yugoslavia, the show exploring the memory of a country that no longer exists. I’m your yugophile Peter Korchnak.

All around the world, there are people with no formal links to Yugoslavia but having feelings for it. People like me. In the series Yugophiles of All Lands, I track their stories. Today, we go to the UK, with a few World Cup-related tangents.

[SOUNDBITE]

PETER KORCHNAK: Toby Kinder is a retired local government worker living in Birmingham. 

TOBY KINDER: I’m 64 now, and like a lot of people my age, I got into politics really through punk rock, and particularly through anti-racist movement, and within a couple of years I’d sort of got involved with the left of the Labor Party, and beyond. A couple of years after that, I joined the Communist Party, the declining British Communist Party, and got very interested in all sorts of stuff that was going on in Eastern Europe.

And I’d never traveled much when I was young, and then in my mid 20s, through my contacts in the Communist Party, I started to visit Eastern Europe, and I’d been to Leningrad, as it was then, Moscow, East Berlin in the mid 80s. 

And then the third trip I think I did with this communist travel agent was to Albania—

PETER KORCHNAK: In 1988.

TOBY KINDER: On the way we stopped for nights in Slovenia and Croatia. And having seen how grim things in Moscow and East Berlin were, and how comparatively well, sunny and happy, I guess the Yugoslavia seemed. I kind of suddenly thought, oh, this is, I hadn’t really expected this to be so different. And just started to really get very interested in, in how Yugoslavia did, had ended up being so different from, from the rest of Eastern Europe, and that, that’s really where it began, I guess, with the sunny week in Croatia,

PETER KORCHNAK: Maybe I really underestimate the effects of climate and the weather, the sun, the sea on Yugoslav socialism, or on people’s perception of their life there. So thanks for the reminder, I may need to look into that. How does that work?

TOBY KINDER: Yeah, I guess if that’s your first exposure, it really has an impact, but obviously other things, like you know, there were things on the shelves in the shops, and there weren’t huge. I didn’t see huge queues for bread, anyway. You know, it just, it just felt so palpably different to what I’d seen elsewhere.

PETER KORCHNAK: And then what happened?

TOBY KINDER: So I started to get interested, started to start to read quite a lot, that you know, a lot that I hadn’t known about about the Partisan victory. I actually knew quite a lot more about Italy at that point, and kind of looking at the comparisons between the Yugoslav partisans and the Italian partisans, and what happened afterwards.

PETER KORCHNAK: As Kinder put it in an email to me some years ago when we first connected, “The more I learned about Tito’s achievements, the more I became convinced that this was the closest thing to functioning socialism we’d seen in Europe.”

TOBY KINDER: Of course, then the war happened, and I probably would have gone to the Western Balkans a great deal more in the 1990s it hadn’t been for that. So I kind of sat at home watching what was happening there on the news every night, and trying to work out why it was happening, and finding out more about it.

The focus for us, obviously, in the 90s was was Bosnia, and you know, like most people, there’s this horrible kind of feeling of helplessness, that this was this was all going on really so close to us,

That was probably, you know, a decade or so, where, where it was a purely academic interest.

PETER KORCHNAK: Kinder resumed his travels to the region in the late 1990s.

In his retirement, Kinder among other things plays music, including with his band The Imperfektionist, with a K. Their debut album features the song, “The Yugoslavian.”

TOBY KINDER: I use quite a lot of samples in the backing tracks and I really wanted to do something with the Yugoslav anthem, which I’ve actually got set as my— it wakes me up every day, that’s my, it’s my alarm. And I kind of know that I know the intro of it so well, I thought I ought to, I ought to turn it into a tune. So I kind of created this tune, which had the, which had “Hej Slaveni” at the at the beginning, and then thought it really needed some, some sort of narrative over the top, so I just wrote a few really simple, simple lines in celebration of Yugoslavia and Tito, and called it “The Yugoslavian.” So I put that on the CD, and it all goes down really well, actually, it’s a tune that’s always well received live.

PETER KORCHNAK: That’s great. It reminded me a little bit of Sleaford Mods.

TOBY KINDER: Interesting, because an American friend of mine, when I sent him the album, he said, “He said, I really like it. It’s like a gayer Sleaford Mods.” I’ll take that. I’m actually using that in my publicity now.

PETER KORCHNAK: “Gayer Sleaford Mods…” I like your friend.

[SOUNDBITE] 

TOBY KINDER: One of my other great interests is football, and I’d still had contacts with the Morning Star, the British communist newspaper, and I ended up writing an article for Morning Star, essentially about Velež Mostar and their Red Army, and the way that they were still using symbols from the Tito era as part of their sort of support for the ethos of the former Yugoslavia, which I found really interesting, and through that I then started to read some academic stuff about Yugonostalgia.

And I then got asked if I would expand the thing, the article that I’d written for the Morning Star, into an academic paper, which was quite a surprise, just came completely out of the blue. There was a publisher was publishing a book on left-wing ideology in football fan culture, and thought that I could extend that article, so I sort of turned it into an 8,000 word piece, and within that talked a bit about how Bosnia as an emerging nation was using its national football team as a symbol of unity.

PETER KORCHNAK: In the article “Bosnia, the Bridge, and the Ball”, also published in the journal Soccer & Society in 2013, Kinder writes about how members of the Red Army, Velež Mostar’s fan club, quote “who primarily identify themselves as members of a socially-oriented club, assume and promote identities and ideologies as part of self-defining their place in fan culture.” The article suggests that quote, “a state whose viability depends on reconstruction and reconciliation, the emergence of Bosnia-Hercegovina as a footballing nation could engineer the bridge-building that still eludes peace-makers and politicians.”

TOBY KINDER: One of the things about Mostar is that it’s very divided by the river. And there are two football teams, and the Zrinski Mostar, the other team, is Croat, and has a very kind of right-wing element to its support. So I think one of the drivers for Velež supporters is it was keeping this kind of pro-Yugoslav [id]entity in opposition to what was what was really quite a right-wing and anti-Yugoslav fan base over there.

The national team— when I wrote this, they were they were coming through to qualification for the World Cup for the first time, and there really was a sense, certainly in all the areas I visited, coming up to that, that this really was a kind of force for unity, and that Bosnia was kind of flying the flag for the Yugoslav ideals, if you like, because it was still a, it was still a very multi-ethnic team.

I went and watched the 2014 World Cup in Sarajevo. It was just absolutely incredible. Everybody was out on the street, everyone was involved in, in supporting the nation, and I, you know, could really sense this as a sort of a way that communities were being drawn together.

PETER KORCHNAK: I happened to be in Sarajevo the day that Zmajevi, the Dragons, Bosnia and Herzegovina team’s nickname, defeated Slovakia in a qualifying match, in September 2013. It was absolute mayhem in the streets afterward, so I can imagine what the World Cup must have been like. Alas, the Dragons didn’t make it out of the group stage in 2014. 

Based on my experience, I wrote an article for a Slovak weekly titled, “Only Football Connects People Here,” a loose quote by a friend of mine. 

Of course, it’s a lot more complicated than that. 

TOBY KINDER: In 2014 I actually flew in to Dubrovnik, and I came and I went up to Sarajevo by coach, and I spent a couple of nights in Trebinje. So here we are, the World Cups actually started, and there was nothing, nothing in the bars, nothing in the streets, no sign that there was a World Cup going on, because obviously Serbia hadn’t qualified, and that town is not Bosniak majority, and so it was kind of, wow, even in countries that aren’t in a World Cup, generally you get some sense of, wow, this big thing’s going to be happening, bars are going to have bunting outside the front. Of course, then I turn up in Sarajevo, and was blue and yellow bunting— So as far as Trebinje was concerned. We don’t have a team in this World Cup, so I thought that was fascinating. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Trebinje is in Republika Srpska, the part of Bosnia and Herzegovina that is predominantly Serb by ethnicity; at the time of Kinder’s visit, 94 percent of the city’s population was Serb. Part of Republika Srpska’s population considers Serbia, rather than Bosnia and Herzegovina, to be their homeland, and there’s a distinct lack of support for the Dragons in that constituent part. Prominent sporting figures there have come out as saying they won’t or can’t support the national team.

To my knowledge there is only one player from Republika Srpska on the national team in the 2026 World Cup under way. The coach, Sergej Barbarez, has all three main ethnicities in his background, a Serb father and Croat-Bosniak mother.

This is only the second time that Bosnia and Herzegovina has qualified for the World Cup. The only other Yugoslav successor country to play in Canada-Mexico-USA this year is Croatia, the team boasting one runner up and two third place achievements out of their 6 prior appearances.

While some bicker about the ethnic stuff, a more serious problem plagues Bosnian football. “Not a single member of the current 24-man squad plays for a Bosnian club, and as many as seventeen players were born abroad, with twelve having previously represented another country.” writes Nadan Hadžić in Sports Politika.

You may remember Hadžić from Episode 91, “The Name of the Game: Yugoslav Football.” 

The great Bosnian emigration, which you can also learn more about on the podcast, it indeed affects the sports as well.

TOBY KINDER: Everyone kind of has a second team, I guess, apart from their own, and Bosnia’s mine.

PETER KORCHNAK: I was in Bosnia and Herzegovina a few weeks ago and I can testify that the Federation lives the World Cup. 

Blue and yellow of the Bosnian flag are everywhere. T-shirts, banners, even a billboard sport the slogan, “I’m from Bosnia, take me to America,” which is a line from the song, “U.S.A.” by Dubioza Kolektiv, who remixed the 2011 track into Bosnia’s 2026 World Cup song.

[SOUNDBITE]

PETER KORCHNAK: Kinder will be in Croatia and Slovenia during the World Cup, on the lookout to see if and how those nations would root for the Bosnian team.

TOBY KINDER: I was interested because, just to give the case of Great Britain and English people generally, if Scotland, Wales, or Ireland are playing, will support them all, whereas Scotland and Wales, particularly, will want anybody to beat England, so it’s not reciprocated.

Just going back to the unity thing, and my various travels. As soon as a taxi driver knows your English, they usually mention football. They’ll usually say, “Ah, Manchester United,” or whatever. So, if they speak English, it’s always a conversation you get into very quickly. 

But it’s very interesting. I always go for, “Wouldn’t Yugoslavia have a great team now if the best players from all the countries played for for them, which is always kind of safer than trying to find out what people’s prejudices may or may not be. And it always ends up being a fascinating conversation, actually. And I’ve had that in, in Montenegro, Macedonia, Belgrade… A taxi driver can always be relied upon to come up with a Yugoslavian 11.

Well I’ve never had anyone say no, no, no, an 11 of Serbian players would be best, no so it’s a safe topic. 

PETER KORCHNAK: And speaking of World Cups and team songs. Yugoslavia last appeared in the world cup in 1990, in Italy. The song then was “Plavi, napred, plavi”, or “Forward, the Blue, Forward”, blue being the team’s main color. Snežana Babić AKA Sneki sang the composition by Milutin Popović AKA Zahar. The first verse goes: “May our flag flutter, the blue squad is the dearest team, and whether they lose or celebrate victories, we support our boys with all our hearts.”  

[SOUNDBITE]

PETER KORCHNAK: Digging a bit deeper because it is the World Cup after all: The year 2000 saw the release of the Dutch documentary, “Het laatste Joegoslavische elftal”, literally, “The Last Yugoslav Eleven” by the director Vuk Janić. The film is about the Yugoslav youth soccer team which won the Junior World Soccer Championships in 1987 in Chile. The squad included the likes of Zvonimir Boban who became a prominent symbol of Yugoslavia’s disintegration (again check the soccer episode for that story) and the film tracks them all the way to the qualifiers for the 2000 European Championship, where they now play for opposing teams.

I actually found the film through its title track. Micha Molthoff composed “The Last Yugoslavian Football Team” inspired by the film itself and, as he wrote to me in an email, by “the remarkable fact captured in its title: there was indeed a last Yugoslav national football team. I found that idea deeply evocative. Not because of football as such, but because it represents a moment when a shared national story was drawing to a close. While composing, I responded mainly to the images and atmosphere of the film. What interested me was the human dimension behind the story: memory, loss, identity and the passage of time. Those themes seemed to resonate far beyond the world of sport.” End quote.

Find Micha Molthoff (that’s Micha with a c-h) and his music at michamolthoff.com, and follow him on Instagram at micha_molthoff, TikTok at violin.micha, and YouTube @michamolthoff9094, among other places. All the links are at Yugoblok.com/RememberingYugoslavia.

[SOUNDBITE]

PETER KORCHNAK: Kinder takes his love of football and Yugoslavia to his team’s matches too. 

TOBY KINDER: My English team I support wears red and blue, so we’ve, I think I’ve sent you a picture previously, we’d adapted a Yugoslavian flag to take to big games, which has got the name of our Crystal Palace on it, and the so that gets a lot of remarks. We’ve just been playing in Germany this week and people are saying why do you have the Yugoslavian flag.

PETER KORCHNAK: How did this happen? The Yugoslavia flag, is it just, you just started bringing it one day, or what’s the story? 

TOBY KINDER: We had a big game, we played at Wembley in 2013, and people get flags made with where they come from, or just use an English flag and put their names on it, whatever. And I thought, well, it’s you know, having a having a star with a red flag on kind of makes a political statement as well, so I bought this flag and we stuck the CPFC, which stands for Crystal Palace Football Club, and our London postcodes, because in London it’s quite, you kind of identify yourself by your postcodes, we’re all from South East London, so we have SE11 and SE17 on this flag, which were, which were where me and my mates came from, so and it, and we won that day, so it’s sort of since then it’s always been a, you know, it’s a priority to make sure the flag comes with us. And our little, we sit in blocks at the ground, and our little group now is called the Partizani. So that’s kind of gone on now for 13 years, and we’ve got— We were playing in Leipzig last week, and we had 27 Partisani behind the flag, when we, when we went to the game, it’s a little, little cult thing.

PETER KORCHNAK: How big is it? 

TOBY KINDER: Ooh, you know, proper, proper flag size, yeah, yeah, it takes kind of five of us to hold it up.

We’ve played in Florence this this year, so we’ve made sure that we got a picture of the flag in front of the Duomo. You can get us, you know, wherever we’ve been. We took one in front of Thomas Kirche, the Barks Church in Leipzig, so it’s been everywhere.

PETER KORCHNAK: That’s fantastic. So a Yugoslav flag carried by the British… You never know where this is gonna come from.

PETER KORCHNAK: Even more fantastic:

TOBY KINDER: Actually through the podcast, you interviewed this guy Nadan who supports the same team as me

PETER KORCHNAK: —that’s the aforementioned Nadan Hadžić—

TOBY KINDER: —and I’ve kind of got in touch with him. He’s a Bosnian guy who lives in South London so he’s kind of become part of our little, our little fan group as well, with our Yugoslavian flag.

PETER KORCHNAK: Aww Remembering Yugoslavia podcast, bringing people together. Yay!

TOBY KINDER: Exactly. 

PETER KORCHNAK: I love hearing that. 

PETER KORCHNAK: The Imperfektionist has a new album out, check it out on Bandcamp. Track 12 of Plunderfoniks is—

TOBY KINDER: —a tune called “Star of the East,” which I ended up writing a lyric when I was in Sarajevo last year, so it’s a little Sarajevo-inspired tune as well.

[SOUNDBITE]

PETER KORCHNAK: Are you a yugophile with a story to tell? Get in touch. Drop me a message at Yugoblok.com/Contact and we’ll take it from there. 

[OUTRO MUSIC – “Jugoslavijo / Od Vardara pa do Triglava” by Horn Orchestra]

PETER KORCHNAK: That’s all for this episode of Remembering Yugoslavia, thank you for listening. 

All guests’ opinions expressed are solely their own; unless otherwise noted they do not express, reflect, or represent the views or opinions of any third party, including myself. 

Find additional information, sources, links, embeds, and the transcript of this episode at Yugoblok.com/RememberingYugoslavia. 

Also at Yugoblok, listen to the ad-free version of this and every other episode. Become a member today. 

Outro music courtesy of Robert Petrić.

Interludes courtesy of Sticky Keys. Tracks “I’m from Bosnia” courtesy of Dubioza Kolektiv; “The Last Yugoslav Football Team” courtesy of Micha Molthoff – thank you all. “Plavi, napred, plavi” used under Fair Use – thank you all. 

I am Peter Korchňak. 

Ćao!

[SOUNDBITE]