Red Army ultra supporters at Bijeli Brijeg Stadium

The ultra movement is a youth sub-culture that can be found throughout the Mediterranean and beyond. Whether in Casablanca, Naples, Istanbul or Mostar, like in this image, young football fans unfurl flags and banners, encouraging their teams by banging on drums and chanting into megaphones. Here, we see the Red Army’s ultras, who encourage their team in Bijeli Brijeg Stadium by setting off red flares, the colour of the Fudbalski Klub Velež, the club associated with the Bosnian contingent in the city of Mostar. Today, the team is playing the Hrvatski Sportski Klub Zrinjski, Mostar’s Croatian club. Through this match and the symbolic confrontation of each club’s ultras, we catch a glimpse of the rift between the Bosnian and Croatian parts of a city that, before the war of 1992-1995, had been the symbol of the Titoist ideal: “Jedinstvo, Bratstvo” (“Unity, Fraternity”) between the peoples and nations of socialist Yugoslavia.