The symbol painted on the pitch in Split was most likely intended to shame and bring down the top people at the Croatian Football Federation. It may still do that but could also lead to the team being banned from Euro 2016

Unbeaten, two points ahead of Italy and four in front of Norway, Croatia are top of their qualifying group and seemingly on their way to Euro 2016. Yet their qualification for next year’s tournament in France is now hanging by a thread, entirely in the hands of Uefa’s disciplinary committee.

The reason is very unusual: a swastika pattern that appeared on the turf of the Poljud Stadium in Split during the qualifier against Italy on Friday. The grass was sprayed with a chemical, making a swastika sign on the pitch that was only noticed once the game had already started – or so was initially thought – but we will get to that a bit later.

However odd the incident may be, the understanding of it should be simple enough – except that nothing involving football, politics and symbols in Croatia is ever simple and one-dimensional. The true context is always buried under layers of meaning and, above all, hypocrisy that stretches all the way to the top of the football federation. And beyond.

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“I was utterly shocked to see it,” Piara Powar, the executive director of Football Against Racism in Europe (Fare) told the Guardian. The network of organisations is Uefa’s partner in campaigns against racism and discrimination, with their independent observers responsible for reporting incidents at international football matches. “It’s indefensible, regardless of the context. Given their previous disciplinary record, disqualification is now a very real option for Croatia, which would be a huge shame for such a quality team.”

That, actually, may exactly be the point. We can only speculate until the perpetrators are found but, based on previous experience and context, it seems unlikely that the deed was ideologically motivated. Rather, it could have been an attempt to hurt and shame the federation.

So far the crowd incidents at Croatia matches mainly revolved around chanting the “Za dom – spremni” (For home – ready) slogan, used by the Ustase, the Croatian fascists in the second world war, and the defender Joe Simunic was given a 10-match ban for shouting it, along with the crowd, in November 2013.

Repeated offences had already led to a crowd ban for last week’s match against Italy. In the past, the Croatian Football Federation (HNS) has failed to clearly condemn the chants and distance itself from them. Commenting after the game against Norway in March, the HNS president, Davor Suker, said he was “proud that no serious incidents were recorded”. He was not the only one: the nation’s newly elected president, Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic, called the atmosphere at the stadium “wonderful”.

There were, however, plenty of those chants at that game, too, and Uefa duly sanctioned Croatia for it, ordering the next match to be played behind closed doors. Even then, the HNS was more concerned about who reported the chants to Uefa than actually doing something about it. The executive director, Damir Vrbanovic, said he was “shocked that Croatia were punished for just two racist chants” and the federation issued an open letter to Zoran Stevanovic, whose organisation is part of the Fare network, accusing him of “making a living off informing Uefa against Croatia supporters”.

Animosities between the fans and the federation have escalated domestically – especially in Split, where more than 30,000 people took to the streets in November, demanding a more fair football and the top people at the HNS to resign.

Over the past few years, a small group of people took complete control of Croatian football and concentrated all power in the hands of the seven-man urgency committee, which can decide on anything it finds urgent without the need of approval from the HNS’s executive committee. It is controlled by Zdravko Mamic, the Dinamo Zagreb executive who has strong ties in politics, the judicial system, the police and the media.

In an attempt to ease the tensions, the HNS awarded the match against Italy to Split, where only one competitive game had taken place in the past 18 years. On the same day the venue was confirmed, however, Uefa announced that it would be played behind closed doors. Many in Split saw it as a mockery, insisting Suker – who is also a member of Uefa’s ExCo – must have known about the sanction beforehand. From then on, trouble was to be expected.

HNS thought it took every precaution. It hired the stadium in Split from four days before the match and had the police block half of the city – for a game that was to be played without fans. It even had the police form a special “anti-drone unit” for fears someone would try to land one in the stadium. It even brought its own, well, Dinamo’s, groundsman from Zagreb. Yet, despite the 80-camera surveillance system at the ground, someone was able to sneak in and draw a huge, 12-metre swastika on the turf.

If the action was ideologically motivated, then surely it would have been the “ZDS” (Za dom spremni) or a stylised letter “U” – symbols of the Ustase, which can be found scribbled on the walls all over Split and many other cities in the country. There has been a worrying rise in historical revisionism in the depression-stricken Croatia, reflected in – among other things – attempts to destigmatise the slogan as simply patriotic and distance it from its fascist context. It is as if the perpetrator wanted to make sure the symbol on the Poljud turf would be indefensible, universally and immediately offensive: hence the swastika.

In the fight against the HNS, supporters have so far tried various legal options but to little avail. Radicals among them have come to realise the only way to really hurt the federation – and perhaps get the politicians involved – was shaming it in the eyes of the world and exposing its incompetence. That they are massively hurting the team as well in the process has seemingly became secondary to them.

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Now it appears that this is a battle the HNS cannot win: the radicals have already proven they can cause trouble abroad; the game against Italy at San Siro in November was interrupted twice because of crowd trouble in the away end as well as at an empty ground.

Uefa has opened the disciplinary proceedings and while Croatia may not be kicked out of the qualifiers just yet, any subsequent match they play will be a magnet for those people and their diversions, as long as there is no change at the top of the HNS.

Meanwhile, as the police are still looking for the culprit, the HNS is refusing to take its share of responsibility. Pictures and videos have emerged showing the swastika pattern on the pitch was already visible two days before the game – in fact, Croatia players trained on it, running around the cones on the exact patch of turf where it was drawn. It is also very odd that neither the HNS people, the Uefa delegate, nor the match official, Martin Atkinson, noticed it in time and allowed the game to kick off. In the end, it was some Italian journalists who reported it.

The HNS key men keep insisting they only found out about the swastika once the game had already started, reporting it to the Uefa delegate and trying to delete it at half-time. However, various claims saying otherwise have since surfaced, the latest from none other than Ranko Ostojic, the country’s interior minister. “We have proof that the HNS knew about it before the game,” he told Jabuka TV on Tuesday evening. “I’ve heard lots of lies from them. That shame should have been removed immediately.”

Croatian football is definitely in need of a catharsis. Let’s just hope that it will not come at the expense of a team that includes players such as Ivan Rakitic, Luka Modric and Mario Mandzukic, each of whom has won the Champions League in one of the last three seasons.

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