Belgrade - Blackmailed by hooligans, probed by police and fined by football authorities, its bank accounts blocked over unpaid debts, Red Star Belgrade is in utter agony. Its violent fans, Delije, are the tottering club's most acute problem, causing it losses through fines and sanctions such as matches without spectators, including the forthcoming top clash of the season, against arch-rivals Partizan on October 5.
Red Star was fined Monday for unsportsmanlike conduct of fans and players who showed support for a hooligan, Uros Misic, whom a judge sentenced to 10 years in prison for a near-fatal assault on a plain-clothes policeman at a match last December.
But the woes of Red Star - Serbia's only international football brand name, the 1991 winner of the European Champions Cup - go far beyond fines and possible loss of revenue from 42,000 tickets already printed for the Partizan game.
A day after the hooligan was sentenced, on September 20, Red Star players showed up for a first-league match wearing T-shirts demanding "justice for Uros Misic" and Delije posted a sign threatening the judge who delivered the verdict.
The affair brought police into Red Star offices and dressing rooms. All, from acting president Dobrivoje Tanasijevic to janitors, were questioned, but nobody said who ordered players to wear the shirts.
"Red Star afraid of Delije," was one of newspaper headlines describing the menacing atmosphere in the club.
Enraged when poor results spanned last season to this, hooligans bashed a dozen cars belonging to the management and players, interrupted a practice and slapped the winger Ognjen Koroman.
Speaking for Wednesday's edition of the daily Press, Koroman downplayed the slapping incident as "not so bad" and said "players were told in the club" not to discuss the shirts with the media.
Thugs also barged into Tanasijevic's office, threatening him. "Three men showed at my door when I said T-shirts were against the rules," Tanasijevic said in a recent interview. Under such attack just two weeks after taking over, he said "I was shocked."
Red Star is perpetually on the verge of bankruptcy - its accounts were blocked for days over unpaid credit instalments until money finally arrived from the transfer of defender Dusan Basta to Italy's Udinese on Monday, reports said.
At the moment it is unclear where Red Star stands financially - the club is formally still in the obsolete, murky social ownership. Insiders, such as former Red Star, Roma and Inter player Sinisa Mihajlovic, say it is in fact controlled by tycoons.
In an interview with Wednesday's edition of Blic, Mihajlovic said "individuals" had become involved in Red Star "to make a buck."
The situation was further aggravated when its top sponsor, Toyota, apparently became fed up with everything and quit, leaving it to local businessmen to finance, but also run it without a challenge.
The current crisis follows the February arrest of its former star player, then top executive Dragan Dzajic, who faces trial for allegedly embezzling millions of dollars from player transfers.
Now, after the worst-ever start in the national championship and yet another new coach, Macedoninan Cedomir Janevski, Red Star is lingering in mid-table, eight points behind Partizan with 18 and with waning hope of a challenging for the title.
