UCL - Red Star (A)

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Morning Spurs supporters,

First and foremost congratulations on your victory last night, it was deserved for sure and we were completely outplayed for the full 90 minutes.

This was our heaviest defeat at home in our entire European history so it is quite a bitter pill to swallow at the moment. PSG, Napoli, Liverpool, and your dear friend Woolwich and more have been to Stadion Rajko Mitic in recent years and we have never been humiliated in this manner by 4 goal difference.

I will provide a perspective from Red Star of where things went wrong for us. Usually we are positive, attacking, and create chances at home, with zero fear. For some bizarre reason in the first half we played a completely different style yesterday, sitting back and allowing Tottenham to play their game to their own tempo.

1) Our manager got our tactics all wrong - we should have been more direct and play to our strengths and what we are used to doing.

2) Our main players had a terrible, terrible game. I have never seen Pavkov play so badly. My grandmother could have scored his one-on-one in the first half. And in the second half when we was 3 vs 2 he played some terrible pass, god knows what he was thinking. Marin is usually very influential and creative but he was not himself - I'm not sure if the early knock impacted him. Mateo Garcia was non-existant, he has been incredible all season but did nothing yesterday.

Maybe if Pavkov had scored and then it is 1-0 and it is a different game but there is no need for these thoughts because Tottenham were far and away the better team.

I was really impressed with Lo Celso in particular, he seemed to be so assured of himself on the ball and never put a foot wrong, he caused us big problems all game. Son was also very dangerous and looked threatening every time he had the ball. In my opinion, these 2 players were the most impressive Tottenham players last night, but the whole team played a great game so once more, congratulations for this!

Now, please do us a favour and beat our brothers Olympiakos (I say this with a heavy heart) to help us finish 3rd and enter the Liga Europa Last 32 :)
 
BBC:
During his 86 minutes on the pitch, Lo Celso touched the ball more times (102) and made more tackles (five) than any other player on the pitch, while he won the ball back eight times. He made 79 passes with an accuracy of 90%.
 
A possible reason why our tunnel is so long is because the distance between the stands and the pitch is quite big. If your eyesight isn't the best you may struggle to see the other side of the pitch from the opposite! Also, from the front of the stand, there is a big drop and a gap, as well as a spiked fence, to ensure no spectators can go on to the pitch. It is impossible to pitch invade at Rajko Mitic stadion, these measures were introduced following past riots.

I believe the anti-fascist element who started out at the club was from 75 years ago, so this is a long distant past for many. Serbia used to be a communist state and many of the buildings and structure still reflect this to this date. The way our city looks is still very different to modern European cities.

In terms of the football, our standard is so much below Tottenham Hotspur. The Serbian league is possibly a similar standard to Championship (top half of the Serbian league) and League One (bottom half of the Serbian league), although I cannot make this comparison with any certainty. This difference of ability has been noticed in our away games in the UCL in the past 2 seasons, we have lost 4-0 at Liverpool, 5-0 at Tottenham, 3-0 at Bayern, 6-1 at PSG and 3-1 at Napoli.

What gives us any sort of chance is our home form, which is quite incredible considering how much lower our standard of football is. The stadium when it is full is very, very intimidating for every team who comes. It is deafening noise, everybody is stood up, and even all our ball boys, camera men, media crew are all passionate Zvezda supporters who cheer and sing through the game. Our home fixtures against the earlier mentioned teams have finished: 2-0 win vs Liverpool, 0-0 draw vs Napoli, 3-1 win vs Olympiakos. So we stand a much better chance at home.

My head is saying Tottenham will be too good for us, as you should be, so the score should really be 0-2/1-3. But with our home advantage we are strangely capable of anything.

Thank you
 
AnAussieYidinLondon said:
Cheers mate. The Pavkov effort was also a brilliant save from Gazzaniga, he made himself big and didn't commit til the last minute.

What's your relationship with Olympiakos? Hadn't heard of that.
Click to expand...

We have a long standing brotherhood with Olympiakos, since the 1980's. We are both of orthodox christian descent, and both play in Red & White. Also, the Serbian and Greek culture is very similar. Feel free to research greater details but these are the main reasons we became friends, and this friendship has grown ever since. Sometimes our supporters will attend Olympiakos matches, and they sometimes come to our matches. The link and friendship is very strong and we call ourselves "Orthodox Brothers". Spartak Moscow is also in our friendship circle, it is consisting of Red Star, Olympiakos, and Spartak Moscow. But we would consider to be closest to Olympiakos.

Here is our display before our Champions League group stage game on Match Day 2.

The TIFO was of both our club badges in unison, and the message below reads "Let today win the one in better mood - We will be brothers forever in evil and good"

EF0MZJPXUAApS4a.jpg
 
Hi everyone,

Red Star fan in peace.

I would just like to clarify and correct a few of the posts on this thread with regards to suggesting racism is almost inevitable in this game.

The reason our fans were not officially allowed in your stadium was because of an incident in the Helsinki away game in the 2nd qualifying round, where Albanian people infiltrated the home section near to the red star section, and waved provocative flags, banners and sung anti-Serbian songs at Red Star fans. Red Star fans responded to the provocation and were given a 1 match ban on away supporters. HJK Helsinki were not punished because they pleaded that the Albanian's who were provoking us were not HJK fans.

Furthermore, we have 4 black players in our squad; Boakye, Ben, Zander and Van La Parra - all of which are strongly backed and supported by all of our supporters the exact same as any of our Serbian players.

Apart from international matches where you often get ultra-right wing Ultras from very nationalistic clubs attending, there has not been any racist incidents at Red Star matches for a very, very long time.

The British media has seen 'banned for racism' and assumed it is against black people and made a big uproar of your visit to us.

I can assure everyone there won't be any racism - but there will be the most hostile fierce atmosphere you will have experienced in recent memory! :)

Best of luck.
 
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