Football and the collapse of Yugoslavia, with footballer Zvonimir Boban and economist Branko Milanovic

In conversation with Simon Kuper

In 1987, Zvonimir Boban was part of a brilliant Yugoslavian soccer team that won the World Youth cup in Chile. The close-knit group of players included Croats and Serbs, Bosnians and Montenegrins. Pundits tipped Yugoslavia – the “Brazil of Europe” to become one of the great football countries of the 1990s. But by 1991, a terrible war had broken out in Yugoslavia, and the country collapsed.

Zvonimir Boban and Branko Milanovic, in conversation with Financial Times columnist and football writer Simon Kuper, will discuss their own memories of the collapse of Yugoslavia, how football can help us understand what happened, the conflicts but also the surprising bonds of friendship between the country’s ethnic groups - and how Croats and Serbs see each other today. 

Zvonimir Boban was a youth world champion with Yugoslavia in 1987, won the Champions League with AC Milan in 1994, played for the Yugoslav national team, and finished third with Croatia at the World Cup of 1998. He has a history degree from the University of Zagreb. 

Branko Milanovic, a Serbian-American, is one of the world’s leading economists, an expert on inequality at the City University of New York, creator of the famous “elephant curve” graph, and a passionate football fan. 

Simon Kuper is a columnist for the Financial Times.