ABSTRACT
In the context of the growing turn in the historiography on Yugoslav sport towards the socialist period, the dominant ‘Big Four’ football clubs have not been taken into systematic account so far. The example of Red Star Belgrade illustrates how multiple and often contradicting representative contents ranged from domestic and international socialist symbolisms to nationalist representative dimensions. This was possible due to the specific context of socialist Yugoslavia with its two-level national concept of ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ under the umbrella of socialist patriotism. At the same time, the heritage of pre-1945 Yugoslav football and the ‘Big Four’s’ political connections played a significant role in the ascription of ‘identities’ to clubs. Grasping this multitude of possible symbolic understandings of the ‘Big Four’, requires broadening the theoretical perspectives of Yugoslav football history on ‘identity’ towards a more fluid and processual conceptualizations of social representations.
