Dejan Savicevic - the Montenegrin Genius

At that time, my parents had lived for almost 20 years in the southern part of Germany and the only live match I had been able to see until then, was a Bundesliga game between VfB Stuttgart and Hamburger SV. Clearly, there was no comparison to the atmosphere in the Marakana and the rivalry between Zvezda and Partizan. As an immigrant child, who grew up in Germany, I hadn’t had a chance to see Serbian teams until that very moment - neither live nor on TV, but the stories about former Zvezda glories or astonishing wonders made by Partizan players, were well alive in my family.

In fact, most families in Serbia seemed to have been either Partizan or Zvezda supporters and I’ve never encountered anybody, coming from a “Zvezda family” and being a Partizan supporter. My best friend in Kacarevo was a neighbourhood boy called Dejan, with whom I had spent almost all of my days during the summer vacations “at home” (as my father used to call Kacarevo). Football was one of our favourite games during our childhood and teenage days and we kicked the ball on the dusty streets of Kacarevo when the sun was breeding and also when it was raining.