Was reading about these two Eastern Europeans in the Guardian on Sunday.
Wish we got a bit more of this sort of thing over here, closest thing that came to mind is Mourinho making Wenger his bitch.
Before their teams were drawn in the same qualifying group for the 2014 World Cup, Croatia's Igor Stimac and Serbia's Sinisa Mihajlovic hadn't spoken to one another for more than 20 years.
Over time, the story of their animosity reached almost epic proportions and this was probably the only thing that could make them set aside their differences for the greater good, at least temporarily. Because when they did talk two decades ago, it was only to exchange death threats.
"In one moment we were face to face," Mihajlovic later revealed, reminiscing their encounter in the 1991 Yugoslav Cup final. "He leaned to me and said, his voice full of hatred: 'I pray to God your whole family in Borovo gets murdered.' I blacked out; I could slay him with my teeth."
Years later, he said Stimac was "the only person he could strangle with his bare hands", while the man who became his nemesis never admitted to saying what Mihajlovic claimed he did, but continued to let off poisonous arrows in his direction. "I realise he has to try twice as hard as anyone else to prove his allegiance to Serbia. But his mother is Croatian, his wife Italian, he married and baptised his children in a Catholic church; they [the Serbs] will never accept him," Stimac said 10 years ago in an interview with the Croatian weekly magazine Nacional.
Wish we got a bit more of this sort of thing over here, closest thing that came to mind is Mourinho making Wenger his bitch.
