FOOTBALLERS as soldiers of the nation, violence in the stands that heralded war, outrageous corruption and fans belting out fascistic slogans: Croatian football has been a dramatic affair for the past three decades. In few other countries are politics and the beautiful game as closely entwined. When Croatia beat Russia on July 7th its president gyrated for joy in front of Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s prime minister. With reason: she, her party and other Croatian political parties have all benefitted from football-related election financing. On July 15th Croatia’s footballers, spurred on to avenge defeat at the hands of France in the World Cup semi-finals in 1998, take on les bleus again in Moscow.

“Football victories shape a nation’s identity as much as wars do,” said Franjo Tudjman, independent Croatia’s first president and the man who led the country through the traumatic disintegration of Yugoslavia and the wars of the 1990s. It is sometimes said that Croatia’s war of independence kicked off in May 1990 when fans from Zagreb and Belgrade clashed at Zagreb’s Maksimir stadium. It is not true, but it was a hugely significant event in the downward spiral. Two weeks later the dying Yugoslav football association held a World Cup preparatory match in the same stadium, only for Croatian fans to jeer at the Yugoslav national anthem.

Tudjman became president in December 1990. As the country declared independence and plunged into war in 1991 he declared that its athletes were ambassadors, not least because Croatia then had none. According to Dario Brentin, a specialist in Balkan politics and sport at Graz University, Tudjman had a clear notion that football and sports were “nation-forming”. In 1998, says Mr Brentin, he attributed the team’s success at the World Cup to “Croatian spirit” rather than footballing skills.

Today, Mr Brentin goes on, Croatian football is the last bastion of “Tudjmanite institutions”, by which he means that it is dominated by strongmen, riddled with nepotism and corrupt. The biggest strongmen of them all was Zdravko Mamic, a former head of Dinamo Zagreb and vice-president of the Croatian Football Federation. He helped finance the election of Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, Croatia’s president. On June 6th he was convicted for corruption in a case involving Luka Modric, Croatia’s World Cup team captain and defender Dejan Lovren, who face trials for perjury when they return home from Russia. Mr Mamic, who is appealing against the verdict, has now fled to Bosnia.

As if all that were not enough, for years Croatian footballers and fans have been chanting: “For the Homeland! Ready!” That slogan is indelibly linked with the genocidal quisling Ustasha regime which ruled Croatia during the second world war. It has brought Croatian teams and fans, who in the past have been accused of racism, years of problems with international football bodies.

For all the dark sides, the country will still rejoice at victory. “Historic” is a much overused word. But if Croatia, a country of 4m people, wins the cup its use will surely be justified. Not since Uruguay in 1950 would a team from such a small country have won. Calculating the economic impact of sporting trophies is hard, but there can be little doubt that a victory could be worth more in terms of positive publicity for Croatia than years of splurging on global PR campaigns. No wonder the entire cabinet met wearing football shirts on July 12th.