SK Jugoslavija

History

The club was founded on August 6, 1913 in the restaurant "Kasino" in Belgrade by a group of dissidents from BSK, who were dissatisfied over a decision to travel to Austria-Hungary for a friendly match with Hajduk Split. The leader was Danilo Stojanović, known as Čika Dača, a major pioneer of football in the Kingdom of Serbia. The squad included former BSK players, footballers from SK Slavija, players from FK Šumadija, and Czech footballers Edvard Mifek, Venčel Petrovický, and Alois Machek.

Their first match was a 2–0 loss to BSK. In 1914 they won the Serbian Olympic Cup, considered the first organised club competition in the Kingdom, defeating Šumadija 3–1 in the final on May 11 at Košutnjak, with two goals from Alois Machek and one from Mileta Jovanović. With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the club suspended activities. It reappeared in 1919 renamed SK Jugoslavija, after the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

The first post-war match was a 9–0 win against a team of British sailors, the first time the club wore red kits, which became their characteristic colour and the reason for the nickname Crveni. Previously they had worn green. That year the field Trkalište was reconstructed with an athletic track and new football and tennis fields. Trkalište was demolished in 1925 when the club moved to a new stadium at Topčidersko Brdo, on the site where the Red Star Stadium now stands.

The new stadium, capacity 30,000, included an athletics track, grass pitch, training field, and club house, and was inaugurated on April 24, 1927. In 1932 an illumination system was installed, and the exhibition match against Racing Club Paris on June 22, 1932 became the first night match in Yugoslavia. In the period between the wars, two sports newspapers in Belgrade followed the city derby rivalry: Sportista, close to BSK, and Sport, close to Jugoslavija.

SK Jugoslavija won the Yugoslav Championship in 1924 and 1925, and participated in 14 out of 17 final stages of the Yugoslav Championship. They also won the Yugoslav Cup in 1936. In 1941 the club changed its name to SK 1913 after the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia. During the occupation, the Serbian League became the national championship of German-occupied Serbia, and SK Jugoslavija won the first edition in 1941–42, with BSK winning the following two.

In February 1945 the Serbian United Antifascist Youth League began establishing a new multi-sports society. The remaining footballers and facilities of SK Jugoslavija were expropriated by the Communist Party. On March 4, 1945, a mass meeting at the State Institute for Physical Culture proclaimed a new sports society called Crvena Zvezda. The football branch included former Jugoslavija players Milovan Ćirić (first captain of Red Star), Predrag Đajić, Božidar Drenovac, Ljubomir Lovrić, Mladen Kašanin, Mile Kos, Milivoje Đorđević, Dragomir Diklić, Miomir Petrović, Aleksandar Petrović, and Miodrag "Mališa" Petrović, alongside a contingent of BSK players including Svetislav Glišović (first coach), Kosta Tomašević, Rajko Mitić, Branko Stanković, Miodrag Jovanović, Srđan Mrkušić, and Đura Horvatinović.

Slobodan Ćosić and Zoran Žujović from Slavija Belgrade were appointed club directors. On May 5, 1945, Communist Party Secretary of Sports Mitra Mitrović-Djilas signed a decree dissolving all football clubs without formal ties to the regime, labelling them as "bourgeois collaborators." The new club carried much of SK Jugoslavija's fan base and served as the national team of SR Serbia, winning the first post-war tournament in September 1945. The SK Jugoslavija Stadium, colloquially named "Avala," was appropriated and renamed "Red Star Stadium."

Red Star inherited the red and white colours of Jugoslavija, reviving the vertical stripe jersey in 1950 as worn by Jugoslavija in season 1943–44, and adopted a new crest resembling Jugoslavija's shield with a superimposed petokraka. Although Red Star Belgrade has at times acknowledged its historical links with SK Jugoslavija, it does not consider itself a formal successor. By the late 1980s all living former Jugoslavija players were inducted as honorary Crvena Zvezda veterans in an association headed by Rajko Mitić.

In 2020 Miodrag "Mališa" Petrović died at the age of 94, the last surviving former member of SK Jugoslavija and the last witness to the formation of Crvena Zvezda.