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MASLO


At that time in early 80's any way of communication with other ultras was thought the Italian Supertifo magazine. Supertifo would be available only at one kiosk on Riva, and in very limited numbers, so if you didn't buy it on time, you would never get one. So it was common thing after you read it to pass it on by to another person. It was in small, pocket format. But the most important thing for us in there was the personal messages from supporters from Italy that would like to exchanged ultras materials and stuff. We'd place a personal there too, trying to fuck someone over, and it sometimes worked. Some naive person would send you a scarves, and you couldn't send him anything because you had nothing of that quality. We would even send an occasional photo and a report from this part of ultras scene, and back then to Italian and other supporters it was all very new, exotic and media wise fairly unknown. And Supertifo would print some of it, we would be all happy, and we would wait for the comments of Italians in the next issue, how they were all surprised that something like that is happening in this part of the World.
Maslo, as a veteran of those contacts, calculated good, he would pick closely who he would reply to, and who is he going to continue writing to in his favor. He would mostly not reply to people from South America because they were far away and there would be no way that he might go there some day. He would pick Italians and would do his calculations when and on what derby of their's he might go to while sleeping at the place of the person he's writing to. We would meet up and discuss and we would write in some broken English, and the funny thing is, we all had the same messages, only with different names under it...
One night Maslo and Mate Zekan were sitting and took out all the letters that they've received and started talking, where would they like to go. After some time, they made a decision. Enzo Deganutti from Cormonsa near Udine, a fan of Udinese. That club at the time was on the top of Italian league so they made up a plan to first call him to Split, and later on they would go to him, for some derby. What was said was done, the letter was sent, and as the days were passing, they were waiting for the response...
And the response arrived. Enzo said that he'll come with his car to Split, and gave them the exact date. Maslo and Mate started calculating, how long will it take him to get to Solin, where they said they were gonna meet him. It was an awful rainy day and the plan was to meet with him and bring him to Riva, so that all of us can see how one supporter outside our country looked like. The rain didn't stop for hours, it only got worse, we were waiting for them to bring him. As the day was turning into night Maslo and Mate arrived. Without him. So we started asking "So where is the Italian?", and Maslo just blinked and moved his head. "What? He didn't come?" we asked again, and Maslo did the same thing again, pointing with his head a short, dark colored person that we didn't even see behind him... "Don't laugh at him, he understands our language" Maslo said...
....First they fucked up because they were waiting for the wrong car. See, the guy knew Slovenian language and wrote to them in Slovenian, he sad that he was driving opel kadet, but they made a mistake with the colors, they thought they were waiting for the red car. So they waited for him to show up in a red car, while he passed with his yellow car and showed up at Maslo's house, because he had the address. So instead of some big and tough hooligan that we were expecting from Italy they got this poor little guy...
....So what can you do? He was there and we had to accept it. We tried not to laugh, and as he was there we tried to accommodate him as our guest. So we asked him where would he like to go, and they to the dinner with him in some nice restaurant that had a view of the whole Split (on his expense of course). The best thing about that night was that because of the weather Split lost all of its electricity. In the restaurant the emergency lights were working. 
His whole trip and experience was eating at restaurants and drinking the wine with us at Matejuska and Bacve (that he bought). During the day we'd go to cafe bars and around the city and shopping where he would buy the souvenirs and stuff. He was on the game Hajduk-Partizan (1:1) , he was on the western part of the stadium, for which he bough 3 tickets for them, so he can get a better view of Torcida from the side. Anyway, the guy was fascinated with the supporting and chanting and took a lot of photos during the game...
When he was leaving, 3 of them made up a plan to meet again, this time in his city, at his place where they would all go to Udinese-Verona (Verona was very strong team at the time, I think that they were even champions of that league that year).
So they went to his place in Carmons, one smaller city near Udina. When they got there, he wasn't home, because he worked at the railway, so for the first two days they didn't even see him. But never the less, his parents took them in and asked them to stay as guests until he comes which was great. But the guests made sure that their experience was even better. First night, when his parents went to sleep, they made sure to look around the house for some alcohol, to check out what was on offer and had some drink. The second night was similar to the first one, they drank even more so. Maslo spent the whole night in Enzo's room with the sizzlers looking through Enzo's collection, and would cut off any photo that was good. Later on he placed everything back together how it was, so that Enzo doesn't notice it (At least until they were there). When Enzo finally got home, his parents already started to get a bit angry (they've must have seen how much alcohol was missing), but never the less Enzo took them out for a night life. One night he hit a some girl in front of some disco with his car, and wanted to stop, but Maslo yelled out "DRIVE!" as a command...
So the day of the game arrived and they went to Udine. When they got there in the morning, the host wanted to buy a souvenirs or a scarves for them, and as he was working, and Maslo and Mate were not, it was an understanding between them. First surprise was when Maslo asked if he could buy him a scarves of Verona instead of Udinese, he was all shocked. And not only did he bought it, Maslo angrily put it on himself. The funny thing was that they didn't even want to go to the side of the stadium where Udinese fans where, but wanted to be with Verona fans...
....After the game Enzo all disappointed and angry drove them back. The day after that they went back to Split, and that was how a 'great friendship' with Italian supporter was supposed to end. But no, Mate and Maslo wouldn't not let go that easily. After a couple of months, they got back, even after Enzo said that they are not welcome, because he had a situation with his family. They went anyway, and Enzo's parents this time didn't want them in, but paid a hotel room for them, where they managed to make more troubles and get into a fight with the workers. This time Enzo drove them to Venece. The final shock was when Enzo was parking in front of some building and said: "Here once lived my girlfriend Sandra"...Them two tried to resist to look each other, but couldn't...after a couple of seconds of trying they started laughing like crazy...

By: MejeSplit
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