ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses police repression and practices, with a focus on the Bad Blue Boys in Zagreb, Croatia. It draws on both terrace observations and fan narratives of the police. A distinction several fans have made between normal, or expected police repression, and ‘personalised’ repression, which the Dinamo management directed at certain individuals, is discussed and related to the wider post-socialist political economy of Croatia, where ambiguities and grey zones emerge between ‘crony-capitalist’ figures such as the executive director (now advisor) of Dinamo, Zdravko Mamić, the government, the police and the judiciary. Repressive techniques are described, including the manipulation of bureaucratic grey zones, physical repression, the introduction of extensive body searches, ‘institutionalized unpredictability’ and Mamić’s attempt to make inroads into the BBB and fan scene through cultivating a small pro-Mamić faction, the Plaćenici (Sell-outs), who have come into conflict with the Bad Blue Boys.
