From vision to miracle

By Stig Matthiesen

Four hours drive north from the airport in Sarajevo, through beautiful landscapes and Bosnian villages filled with red brick houses marked by bullet holes, lies Orasje – one of those towns in the Balkans, where too many graves were dug during the nineties.

Here, where everybody has to live too close to the stories of war, the reigning president of Bosnian-Herzegovinian football resides.

The meeting with Iljo Dominkovic, aBosnian with a Croatian citizenship, takes place on a boat anchored on the river Sava. The river makes up the border to Croatia, which, on this first real spring-night of the year, can be seen faintly on the other bank. For ten long years of war the river was the only passageway to a civilised world. To the South, East and West the mines lay; in the city the hatred ruled.

Today the new concrete bridge by the hotel Riviera secures contact with Zagreb.

Dominkovic has just driven his sick mother across the bridge to the hospital in the Croatian capital, and in spite of it having been a moving day, and the fact that he has to fly to a meeting in the UEFA committee tomorrow, he has not even thought about cancelling the interview. The football president has a story he would very much like to tell.

“Anders Levinsen came here with a dream in 1998. The war had barely ended and none of us knew how to move on with our lives.” Darkness and hatred ruled. Dominkovic remembers and he tells about the boys and young men, who were not at the front, but who in spite of the horrors of the war still spend the waiting between battles playing unorganised football. “But none of us dreamt that we one day could play against the ‘enemy’.” At that time we had no personal contact with each
other. Everything took place on a diplomatic level in Zurich or Geneva, while we barely dared believe that the killings had stopped.”

The football president remembers how the infrastructure of the country as well as the football association was destroyed, and how the football fields were often mined.

“We stood in the middle of a human catastrophe. Young men had died by the thousands. Others were left with no limbs – not being able to play football. Not forgetting all of those who had fled and now lived other places in the world. It was pure hell.” The president maintains with empty eyes and points out under his breath that he does not wish to speak more of the war.

After the silence he continues to tell about the world star Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and with him the hundreds of other great talents, who today play the noble game under the flag of other nations. Young men in the prime of their football age, who all should carry the national shirt on this latitude. This fact torments the well-intentioned leader with the large heart for football. The president tells me of the eleven players, nominated to the Croatian national team for VM 1998 in France, who were born in Bosnia.

“The idea about the football schools bringing children together across borders changed everything at the time.” Iljo Dominkovic maintains and speaks with a clear voice again after another passage under the power of his emotions.

“Anders Levinsen came with an utopia. He spoke about one football for each child. He spoke about playing and happy children. But
how could it be like that again? We were preoccupied and fascinated by the question, but many also had misgivings.”

The first year 12 football schools were successfully arranged. “But it cost us a lot of effort, because you can not move people, who does not want to be moved. It was difficult to break the ice and make parents traumatized by war understand the importance of especially our children getting on after the war. The hatred between the adults clouded the project. They had a very hard time accepting that the children were our future. The bloody war was, and still is, deeply rooted in everybody in this region. Precisely because of this it was animating for everyone that Anders showed up with the idea to bring together the parties of the war around that which engage us all – football.”

“Especially in Croatia and Serbia-Montenegro the idea of the schools was hard to take in. But for me Bosnia already was a multiethnic society, where all people should be allowed to live in peace. The football schools have helped in this regard and have brought back hope. Children with different nationalities and religious backgrounds, who really suffered during the years of war, were brought together with children from the neighbour towns, who had suffered accordingly. Anders Levinsen worked hard tireless. Everything was build from basis. He found good people all over the country, who understood his thoughts.”

According to Dominkovic Danish Levinsen’s great love for the game and for the people here in the Balkans has carried him, and infected everyone. “His vision of bringing people together has succeeded. The football schools are still important for the identity of this new nation, and the importance of the schools in the early years after the war can not be overestimated. Open Fun Football Schools – CCPA – has in so many words had a historical importance for this entire region. Without the schools we would not have been where we are today.”

The president from Bosnia has told all this and more to the management of UEFA through the years. And he informs about the spin offs. That is to say that Dominkovic sees that the football associations in Bosnia-Herzegovina have been unified into one, and clubs, destroyed during the war, have been rebuild, using the logistics and the contacts that were
made to organise the football schools. The football schools has today been exported and has spread in the Trans-Caucasus and the Middle East.

“I am glad and proud of having been involved from the time the first football school came here. The schools have brought so many good things with them – first and foremost hopes for a better future for thousands and thousands of children, who have met each other in play rather than war. This way the children have educated the adults and lead us all further. This is in truth a miracle!” The voice of Iljo Dominkovic leaves no doubt.

(Translated by CCPA)

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