Once in the stadium, Serbian men, women and children sang at the top of their lungs for 90 minutes about how Kosovo represents the heart of Serbia, explained in great detail by a 14 year old joint-smoking ruffian beside me.
Luckily, Alex turned up soon and we scoured the 50,000 or so people mulling around outside the stadium for ticket touts.įrom this evening, I learned the following: Securing a ticket was going to be a challenge. The Austrian national team had suffered a slow fall from grace from the glory days of Toni Polster and Andreas Herzog, with a tame showing at the recently concluded Euro 2008 indicating that pessimism was the order of the day amongst the home fans.Īt the behest of my Serbian friend Alex, I decided to show up to the cavernous Ernst Happel Stadion ticket-less, without any knowledge of Serbo-Croat vocabulary past ‘hello’, ‘ how are you doing’, ‘really?’, I love you’, etc. At the time I was living in Vienna, and Austria were to take on a Serbian side including Branislav Ivanovic, Milos Krasic and Dejan Stankovic in a FIFA 2010 World Cup Qualifier.
I wrote this back in 2008, and it remains one of my most intriguing match day experiences.
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