It’s the same old story, typical when discussing football hooliganism in a country like Croatia: abhor the consequences without trying to understand the causes and the context. After incidents that took place on Sunday night in the away section at San Siro in Milan, where the referee was forced to bring the players off for a period, the vast majority of the nation’s media and the general public is at loss to explain what happened or why.

There can be no justification for what was, in effect, an act of terrorism that endangered the safety of others and brought the match against Italy to the verge of being abandoned, which would have meant losing points for the team those people are supposed to support.

But this was not just a random outpouring of mindless violence by thugs whose only goal was to create disorder. It was a statement; a planned, desperate cry for attention. The logic behind it was to send a message to the Croatian Football Federation (CFF) that it cannot just do whatever it wants and expect to get away with it. That the way this message was delivered harmed the team became secondary for those who planned it, because it was their clear intention to hurt and embarrass the federation and bring out its dirty laundry.

Croatia dominated Italy for most of the game and scoring the winning goal looked like a matter of time but then all hell broke loose in the stands, as away supporters started lighting flares, throwing them on to the pitch and fighting police. It remains unclear how they were able to bring all those pyrotechnics to the stadium and part of the blame must surely be taken by organisers. But even days before there were rumours that a certain fans’ group would try to provoke incidents in a bid to stop the game. According to early media reports, the CFF’s safety officer Zoran Cvrk has blamed the Bad Blue Boys, Dinamo Zagreb ultras.

“Around three hundred of their members came to the stadium in their own arrangement. They didn’t buy their tickets through the federation and didn’t come with the rest of the fans. They received help from their Italian colleagues who bought the tickets for them,” Cvrk was quoted in Vecernji list, the daily newspaper. Other sources also speculate Hajduk Split’s Torcida, the bitter rivals of Dinamo and the BBB, joined in.

Many football fans in Croatia, not just the ultras, feel they have become an endangered species in a habitat fully controlled by the CFF and, particularly, the Dinamo Zagreb chief executive, Zdravko Mamic. Dinamo supporters have been systematically oppressed – hundreds, perhaps thousands of people have been blacklisted by the club and banned from the stadium just for chanting against Mamic, who is running Dinamo as it were his private business, whereas it is legally a citizens’ association which should offer all of its members a right to freely elect their leadership.

Niko Kovac apologises for Croatian fans’ behaviour – link to video

Hajduk fans, who have had that right since 2011, feel they have been intentionally targeted by the federation – where Mamic, routinely described as the ‘Puppet Master’, holds key influence – and punished severely for incidents that result in only small fines (or none at all) for others. Recently their team received a one-match stadium ban after serving a previous two-match punishment – and for (not so dramatic) events that took place in an away game.

Incidents within the federation – including convictions for match-fixing and even a physical attack on the Hajduk chairman by a highly ranked CFF official – are swept under the carpet, as are many obvious irregularities in domestic football. As for the national team, many feel it has become a shop window for Dinamo players to gain transfers abroad at inflated prices. Hajduk fans are particularly resentful and in recent years Croatia have played more often in London than in Split.

However, no matter how much we try to understand what drove the Croatia fans in Milan to such desperate measures, they don’t deserve any sympathy for the way their message was delivered. But there is an even darker side to things than throwing flares and fighting police.

There were banners with a stylised letter ‘U’ in the stands – a symbol of the Ustase, Croatia’s fascist movement from the second world war, responsible for mass killings of Serbs, Jews, Roma and Croatian anti-fascists in concentration camps and elsewhere.

Large groups of fans were shouting the notorious Za dom – spremni salute that got Joe Simunic a 10-match ban from international football last year. They also chanted Ajmo ustase (Go Ustase). The irony of it all is that it happened in Italy – and in 1941, the Ustase ceded parts of Croatia, including the Split region, to their allies in fascist Italy. High treason, anyone?

But while football fans in Croatia are persecuted for sometimes petty reasons, like wearing a T-shirt with Mamic’s silhouette crossed out on it, this sort of thing has been tolerated domestically for years. When the CFF recently took part in Uefa’s FARE action week against racism and discrimination, its “action” consisted solely of players holding paper tiles with “No to racism” written on them before kick-off. And they did so mainly in grounds that stood empty, because most regular football fans feel the league is a joke and not worth the hassle.

It is usually only after crowd incidents attract attention abroad that the federation (and most of the media) react and compete in condemning the hooligans for bringing shame to the nation and making the country look bad internationally. But the shame is always there and Croatian football really is in bad shape, despite all the glitz that the likes of Luka Modric and Ivan Rakitic provide on the big stage.

Remedying the causes of this madness is what Croatians should care about first and foremost – not how it looks from the outside, but how it actually is.

@AlexHoliga