If many European players, especially in England and Germany, are gradually raising their voices against homophobia, in Eastern Europe it is quite different. Lovren, who is enjoying his third World Cup after being runner-up in 2018 in Russia, caused quite a stir a few months ago when he discovered that the Disney group would make an effort to introduce same-sex characters into its series and films. they love The Zenit Saint Petersburg defender wrote on social networks that he would resign immediately, as he did not want his children to grow up with these values. Lovren, a self-proclaimed practicing Catholic, went further, calling on people to boycott Disney. And in the past he has also been opposed to homosexuals being allowed to marry, saying it goes against what a “traditional family” should be. When the Croatian constitution, which condemns discrimination against homosexuals but prohibits their marriage, adopted a measure to allow two people of the same sex to adopt, he spoke out against it.
It is not the only debate in which Lovren has scandalized more than one. In a national team, Croatia, where many players have played in Ukraine and have stood out for their messages of support for that country after being attacked by Russia, he is the opposite. If players like Domagoj Vida, who played for many years at Dinamo Kyiv, had to apologize for going too far in his messages against the Russians, Lovren remained silent. After many years at Liverpool, in 2010 he had signed for the Russian Zenit Saint Petersburg. And when Russia attacked Ukraine, instead of asking to leave the Russian league like other foreign players did, he decided to keep quiet, said nothing against the war and started following Vladimir Putin on the networks. A fact that surprised in a country, Croatia, where relations with Russia have always been complicated, since Moscow’s traditional ally in the Balkans has always been Serbia. Lovren was the only Croatian player who did not take a position against this war, although he, in fact, is the son of another war, that of the Balkans.
A refugee in the heart of Europe
Lovren was born in Zenica, a city in central Bosnia where, until the 90s, Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croats lived together. The Lovren, however, lived in a very nearby Croat-majority town, Kraljeva Sutjeska, which was too close to Serbian troops when the Balkan war broke out. Dejan was three years old when his parents, suffering from the bombs and news of war crimes, fled to Germany, where they had an uncle, although they could not get the papers to stay and ended up in Zagreb. It was a hard childhood for a boy who had not quite adapted to that nomadic life. Football, which he had already played in Germany in a neighborhood club in Munich, saved him. And little by little, being the son of a war radicalized him. Lovren became a political party in the most radical Croatian nationalism, watching the matches of Dinamo Zagreb, where he played in the lower categories, with his neo-Nazi-leaning ultras.
Like so many Croatian players, once he excelled in Primera, he was discovered by a club in a bigger League, in this case French Lyon, where he left in 2010. Becoming one of the best defenders on the continent, Lovren has never hiding what he thinks and now four years ago, when the Croatians beat Argentina 3-0 in the World Cup in Russia, he posted a video on the networks singing the song Cavoglava Battalion, by the Croatian group Thompson, a song about the war in the 1990s with lines like “You Chetnik Serbs, our hand will reach wherever you are, even in Serbia,” referring to the Serbian nationalist armed groups that performed during World War II. The song uses slogans from the Ustaše, the Croatian nationalist political party founded in 1929, with a fascist nature, which committed so many crimes during the Second World War, when they were allies of the Nazis. Ustaše who are claimed today by the Croatian extreme right. In fact, in 2014 FIFA had already sanctioned the captain of the national team Josip Simunic for shouting “ For the Home, prepare ”, a Ustaša motto that means something like we are ready to defend the land no matter what. The song sung by Lovren in the dressing room four years ago begins, precisely, with this expression.
