This Euro Cup has been marked in its first days by the exchange of insults between Balkan fans: Albania and Croatia have been sanctioned for “broadcasting inappropriate messages” against Serbia, and in television statements Jovan Surbatović, general secretary of the Serbian Football Association, requested to UEFA to severely punish both countries; There was even speculation that the Serbian team would abandon the championship. In fact, Albanian player Mirlind Daku was banned for two games for insulting North Macedonia at the end of the match against the Croatians. All of this seems like a theater of shadows, a representation of the reputation that the region has in the common imagination.
The Table of Peoples, an anonymous oil painting from the 18th century, of Austrian origin, exposes what the stereotypes of the nations of that time were. The Turks and Greeks (in relation to the Balkans) are said to die from “starvation”. Anyone who has traveled through the Balkans over the past few decades knows that local rations were copious; but also, if he has really followed current events, he will know that these have been reducing due to tourist overcrowding. Albania has become an attractive destination: Tirana airport, between 2019 and 2023, has gone from receiving one and a half million travelers to more than seven million. The region is experiencing changes.
Stereotypes about the Balkans abound, but interests also diversify. Áxel Torres has just published Balkan Chronicles (Contra), a travel book focused mainly on Albania and Kosovo, over a decade, with round trips (five). “Football journalist”, as he defines himself, had traveled by Interrail through the area between 2005 and 2007: “Sarajevo inspired respect for everything that had happened”, but it would not be until 2013 when he embarked on the adventure of this book. Moved by a vitalism in the style of the travels of Evliyá Çelebí, Ami Boué, Edith Durham or Rebecca West, he travels accompanied by a photographer or his partner, to navigate the local soccer anthropology, and draw an intrepid, conciliatory and intimate portrait, flecked with their mental health problems. Balkans often use the expression: “Having a black cloud over your head.”
This story of curious approach is eager for exploration, through the quasi-universal language of football. Accustomed to the stories traced by the magnetism of “that typically Balkan jumble of crumbled and incompatible pieces of history” as he described in his Far from Toledo the Bulgarian writer Angel Wagenstein, Balkan Chronicles It is innovative because it is a personal development, different from the archetypal parachutist who becomes infatuated with a place until the exoticism fades away. The text is transparent due to the naturalness with which the local world and the author himself open up: “And even more so in a place like Kosovo, which was clearly eager to tell its version of the events to get its federation to receive recognition from UEFA and “FIFA.”
Torres plans his calendar, takes planes, suffers his absences, sends messages to his new friends about the Albanian and Kosovar victories and creates a bond beyond the lines of the text, beyond the chronologies, because time does not stop in the Balkans. When asked, Torres alleges: “It is a region in which there is always new content. “That the Kosovo soccer team is playing World Cup qualifiers seemed unthinkable ten years ago.”
It is not difficult to penetrate Balkan consciousness through the ball. The terraces of Tirana or Pristina have vibrated all these springs with Messi or Ronaldo. But Torres, stubborn, contacted journalists and authorities, among them the legendary Fadil Vokrri, player for Partizan Belgrade and president of the Kosovo Federation (died in 2018). He gets into vans and taxis, makes friends with a string of figures, with his radar set on the clubs, his idiosyncrasies, his talents, no matter how filthy the surroundings, ready to eat grilled meat, inhale smoke and listen to the dreams, digressions, phobias and chores originating between glasses of raki. The region exudes hospitality and Torres expresses it between memories and learning.
In that search, follow the progress of the Albanian team in the qualifying rounds (especially memorable the passage dedicated to Serbia’s victory in Elbasan against Albania during the qualifying rounds for Euro 2016, after the incident of the flag of the “Greater Albania” in Belgrade), and the monitoring of Kosovo’s recognition as a member of FIFA, with all the genealogy involved in the selection of players in the diaspora and the tensions between Albanians and Kosovars over awarding the best stars.
The networks speculate, between jokes and Eurocentrism, with the celebration of a Balkan Cup, so that viewers can enjoy dog-eat-dog confrontations between the teams of the region. The shouts of the Albanian and Croatian fans (“kill the Serb”), the provocation to the Serbs of the Kosovar journalist Arlind Sadiku, manufacturing the symbol of the double-headed eagle, or the Serbs with flags of “No surrender” (against recognition of Kosovo) and Daku’s proclamations (“fuck the Macedonians”) feed back the desires of those who want a Balkan substitute for The Hunger Games.
Balkan Chronicles recognizes the normalization of hate language: “There is graffiti in the streets glorifying war criminals. Souvenirs with the faces of war generals are sold. There are statues of combatants in cities that are a few kilometers from territories in which these people are considered terrorists,” says Torres, but also like Albania or Kosovo they change, so do their characters and their stadiums, the moments of emergence they accompany. skepticism or resignation. Life changes in Albania or Kosovo. Possibly that is where the greatest value of Balkan Chroniclesin which even the author himself recognizes his personal changes, in the ability to think about himself and transmit the Balkans, from different approaches, without it being a still photo.
Miguel Roán is director of ‘Balkanismos’.
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