Sturm Graz is and was a workers club when I came to the club in the 90s, one year before Ivica Osim arrived. We knew he was a mathematician, soccer player and coach, and he knew workers clubs, from Željezničar, in Grbavica, back home in Sarajevo, the city then under a yearlong siege in the Bosnian independence wars. But he added something else. To him, the game was discourse, it was beauty. He explained soccer to us in a way we’d never seen it. Professorial and sometimes grumpy, but always extremely humble. He made us see things in football that we hadn't seen before. And even on the day of his funeral, he made me see things about life that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

Osim, an Agnostic and philosopher of football and of the world, is a kind of saint most Bosnians can agree on. He is recommended reading in Japanese schools. And he is the reason why I went to Sarajevo this hot August.

This is Part 1 of an unusual episode, on the move through countries, memories, wounds, war, peace and the beautiful game.

HELPFUL LINKS AND SOURCES FOR THIS EPISODE:

Uni of Michigan Libraries, resource guide for Bosnian history and culture

Ivica Osim (Wikipedia)

Tifa (Mladen Vojičić) - Grbavica, live in 1994 (YouTube); intro

Tifa - Grbavica at Grbavica stadium, with Zeljo's fans; (Youtube) outro

Ivica Osim memorial ceremony in Graz (Youtube), during intro

Sev Dah - Grbavica (Youtube) (background track)

CNN's Christiane Amanpour reporting after the Srebrenica genocide (Youtube - warning, brutality and dead bodies)

Sarajevo (wikipedia)

Visit Sarajevo

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Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/