This is Part 2 of an unusual episode, on the move through countries, memories, wounds, war, peace and the beautiful game.
Sturm Graz is and was a workers club when I came to the club in the 90s, one year before Ivica Osim arrived. We knew he was a mathematician, soccer player and coach, and he knew workers clubs, from Željezničar, in Grbavica, back home in Sarajevo, the city then under a yearlong siege in the Bosnian independence wars. But he added something else. To him, the game was discourse, it was beauty. He explained soccer to us in a way we’d never seen it. Professorial and sometimes grumpy, but always extremely humble. He made us see things in football that we hadn't seen before. And even on the day of his funeral, he made me see things about life that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
Osim, an Agnostic and philosopher of football and of the world, is a kind of saint most Bosnians can agree on. He is recommended reading in Japanese schools. And he is the reason why I went to Sarajevo this hot August.
HELPFUL LINKS AND SOURCES FOR THIS EPISODE:
Ivica Osim (Wikipedia)
Tifa (Mladen Vojičić) - Grbavica, live in 1994 (YouTube); intro
Tifa - Grbavica at Grbavica stadium, with Zeljo's fans; (Youtube) outro
Ivica Osim memorial ceremony in Graz (Youtube), during intro
Sev Dah - Grbavica (Youtube) (background track)
CNN's Christiane Amanpour reporting after the Srebrenica genocide (Youtube - warning, brutality and dead bodies)
Uni of Michigan Libraries, resource guide for Bosnian history and culture
Sarajevo (wikipedia)
Please leave a quick voicemail with any feedback, corrections, suggestions - or just greetings - HERE. Or comment via Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky or Facebook.
If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please
- Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
- Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.
Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind
Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/
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