Notes
Yugoslav club and national team football was the most attractive, popular and wide-spread sport in the Kingdom of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs/Yugoslavia. It attracted masses and thus represented a strong lever for the continuous dissemination of political ideas for the then political elite at the club and national team level. Sports enthusiasts and other people from the Slovene, Croatian and Serbian territories, from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, the Vardar Macedonia and other parts that in 1918 became the Kingdom of SHS and in 1929 the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, were introduced to football at the end of the 19th century, around 30 years after the football association of England was established in London on 26 October 1863. The first "footballers" in this part of the world were high school and college students from wealthy families, whom the parents sent to school to various Western European countries. They did not have a direct contact with English football "missionaries"; instead, they developed an interest for football in various Western European countries (Switzerland, Germany and Austria-Hungary), where football was well developed at the time they went to college. Many trained and played football in local clubs, where they learned the basics of football. The majority took footballs home during the semester break because they wanted to introduce the dynamic ball game to their friends in their homeland. Even though the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later Yugoslavia, did not meet the expectations because of the internal conflicts and unresolved social and national issues, the new joint state opened up new and better opportunities for the development of physical training. Despite the problems and weaknesses that the new kingdom experienced, the new economic and political environment provided fertile ground for the development of sport. The foundation and activities of many new clubs led to the establishment of the Yugoslav Football Association on 15 April 1919, and it became the first professional association in the country that connected Yugoslav football clubs or sections and systematically supported the development of Yugoslav sport. It should be emphasized that sports politics in the Yugoslav Football Association was based on the conflicts between Beograd and Zagreb, whereby smaller subassociations, including the Ljubljana one, were the decisive factor in the voting that almost exclusively regarded the interests of the main players. A common thread of Yugoslav football in the period between the two wars was that both club activities and the activities of the national football association in the country too often became the area of misuse, corruption and rigged voting. Of the 17 national football championships between 1923 and 1940, five were won by the Zagreb 1.HŠK Građanski and the Belgrade BSK; SK Yugoslavia, HŠK Hajduk and HŠK Concordia won two championships; one championship was won by the Zagreb HAŠK. 1. HŠK Građanski and BSK thus became the two most successful Yugoslav football teams in the period between the world wars. In contrast with the club football, Yugoslav football national team - also nicknamed the White Eagles by the home fans and media - grew from a football Lilliputian to a world football superpower in just nine years (between 1919-1930) and won the historic third place in the world football championship in Montevideo in 1930. In spite of the considerable potential, the White Eagles' historic achievement at the first world championship in Montevideo did not influence the development of Yugoslav national team football to the extent that was expected by the home sports enthusiasts. Many expected that the Montevideo results would launch the White Eagles among the best teams in the world; instead, however, Yugoslav national football team slumped to the low point and failed to recover until the Second World War. After the brief April war, when the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was attached by the Axis powers, the Yugoslav royal army capitulated on 17 April 1941. The consequence of the April disaster was occupation and the breaking up of its territory. Most territory was annexed by aggressors from the neighboring countries (Germany, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria). Its central part became the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), while Serbia kept the borders from 1912 plus Banat and Kosovska Mitrovica and was under direct German military administration and had limited autonomy under Milan Ačimović and Milan Nedić. The new situation soon hampered the development of Yugoslav football because all sports activities, not only football, were seriously affected by the war. Football clubs were faced with many problems: many football fields were destroyed as well as stadiums and club equipment, and many footballers and club officials died on the front or were imprisoned. In spite of the problems the football activities during the occupation set the foundations for the development of football in this area after the war.