YB has to go through hell in Belgrade: “Your heart almost falls in your pants” in this players’ tunnel

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It is foreseeable. Already after round one. YB loses at home against a strong RB Leipzig. Red Star against the best team in the world – even though Manchester City fought the Serbs for a long time and the first goal came only after half time – the bottom line is that this 3-1 was crystal clear – with the Skyblues having 70 percent ball possession and a goal shooting ratio of 37 to 3!

So it should be clear: for YB in the Marakana it is about wintering in Europe. To continue in the Europa League. YB’s stated goal. “That is our ambition,” confirms coach Raphael Wicky. And that’s why they say in Belgrade: Losing is forbidden!

Red Star has significantly expanded its workforce

But the Red Star Edition 2023 obstacle is bigger than people in Bern think. “Under the new coach Barak Bahar, Red Star has become more disciplined and the players run more,” is the brief analysis of player agent Zoran Rasic, born in Belgrade with a Swiss footballer background, who helped YB plan the trip. “In addition, players like Jean-Philippe Krasso or Aleksandar Dragovic came to Red Star to play in the Champions League.”

Krasso is an Ivorian international with a Ligue 1 pedigree and has rejected offers from China and Saudi Arabia. Dragovic is well known in Switzerland. As a former player from Basel (at that time FCB was still busy winning titles, hence the opportunity to pat a federal councilor on the back of the head after a cup win), but also from the Bundesliga such as Leverkusen, when the Pillenklub failed in Europe League against YB. “And then there is the Montenegrin Mirko Ivanic, probably the best player on the team,” says Rasic.

That already happened in 2019 when YB failed in the play-offs in the premier league against the Serbians: “That was my first season. I am better now.” Ivanic does not respond to the question of a journalist who turned the Blick story about the tank scandal into a “provocation on the part of the Swiss”: “We do not read newspapers. So I cannot comment on it.” to report.”

The tunnel had to be extended

But before the first match takes place on the field, the YB players have to take a hundred steps into pyrotechnic hell. The walk through the tunnel from the guest dressing room, which is located outside the stadium belly, to the Marakana field. There you first go directly under the “Delije”, the reckless, the ultras of Red Star. And in order not to end up directly in their throats, the corridor had to be extended to the tartan track.

Goran Obradovic, the former star of Servette and Sion, knows this tunnel very well. With Partizan Belgrade he played many derbies in the Marakana against Red Star: “Of course it makes a difference whether you come out of this tunnel like the YB players or in the Partizan uniform. In the derbies, half the stadium is yours. In the case of YB you have the entire stadium against you.” Is the hallway intimidating? “It is mainly the length of the tunnel that increases the pressure on a player with every step. Your heart almost drops.”

YB has one advantage: with Captain Lustenberger, Janko, Garcia, Von Ballmoos and Nsame and Lauper and Camara, who were injured at the time, seven current YB players know the hot Red Star stadium from the 2019 match. Lustenberger describes the walk through the special cave Alley, which is no longer smeared with red paint that imitates blood, as before, but with nice graffiti and simple white. And for the skull you have to turn left. «The tunnel is very long! And when you come out and there are already 50,000 people waiting for you, whistling, you know what the right mood and heated atmosphere mean,” says Lustenberger. And further: “Very special, but cool. But the mood in Haifa was already very enthusiastic.”

Itten is preparing for a lot of headwinds

Only 53,000 fans are allowed into the stadium today, which at its peak held around 110,000 spectators. That is why the Rajko Mitic Stadium, named in honor of the Red Star hero who died in 2008, is almost better known by its unofficial second name: Marakana. Analogous to the Brazilian temple in Rio.

Also special: the mood is hostile! Because the home team is not warming up on the field. Only the guests are thrown in front of the hot-blooded fans. “It’s something I’ve never seen before,” says Cedric Itten, who has already experienced the incredible atmosphere of the Old Firm, the Glasgow derby. “It will be a situation you have never experienced before, with all the fans booing and insulting you. We have to prepare for the fact that we will not have any friends there.”

But as Obradovic says, once you get into the game, it’s all gone after a few minutes of play. And that was also the case in 2019, when YB scored 1-1.

Source : Blick