Mitropa Cup

Central European Cup

Crvena Zvezda In its rich history, it has participated in many world and European competitions and won a handful of important trophies, including the Mitropa Cup, which it won. Crvena Zvezda arrived in 1958 and 1968.

The 1958 Danube Cup was an unofficial edition of the Mitropa Cup club football competition. The competition lasted from 24 May to 12 July 1958, and featured teams from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Romania.

In the round of 16 of this competition Crvena Zvezda met in a two-legged tie with the Czechoslovakian representative team Dukla Pardubice. Zvezda advanced to the next phase with an aggregate score of 2:0, and that score was taken from Belgrade by our then first team players with goals from Bora Kostić and Ranko Borozan, which was ultimately enough to qualify for the next round where we met Lokomotiv from Sofia. In the first match in Bulgaria, Bora Kostić shone with four goals, and the final score was 4:4, only for the same player to be the scorer for our team in Belgrade, and it was with that goal that the red and whites qualified for the semifinals.

In the semi-finals, Red Star met with Radnički Belgrade, and the result at the "Zemun" stadium in front of four thousand spectators was 2:1 in favor of our team. Stipić scored twice in the 17th and 58th minutes of the match, while there were no goals in the second leg. The interesting thing about this tournament is that two matches were played in the final, so our team first welcomed Ruda Hvjezda from Brno as the host and won convincingly in front of 22 thousand spectators with a score of 4:1. Bora Kostić scored twice in that match, and Milošević and Milanović also scored. In the second leg in Brno, our team won again, this time with 3:2 goals from Kostić, Šekularc and Milanović. The red and whites thus won with a total score of 7:3 and brought home the Danube Cup trophy for the first time.

The following players participated in the tournament: I. Popović, Zeković, V. Popović, D. Stojanović, Spajić, Gajić, A. Stojanović, Radunović, Tomic, Stipić, Borozan, Kostić, Šekularac, Milanović.

Coach: Milorad Pavic.

Ten years later, a new generation of red and whites, on their way to the final in this competition, eliminated the Hungarian Diosdőr, Inter from Bratislava, and Újpest Dojo, only to suffer a minimal defeat in the first final match against Spartak from Trnava.

It was the last major Central European Cup, as it featured the champion teams of the Danube Basin, Yugoslavia, Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, as well as three Italian clubs: Roma, Cagliari and Atalanta. Spartak managed to eliminate Roma in the opening round, followed by Sarajevo's Željezničar and Skopje's Vardar in the semifinals.

In the second leg, Belgrade's Marakana gathered 40,000 fans who believed that Crvena Zvezda can make up for the loss from the first game, although Spartak Trnava did not record a single defeat in this competition that season.

But one of the toughest tests for all European clubs has always been Belgrade's Marakana.

Miljan Miljanić's team attacked fiercely and created chances, but the attackers failed to capitalize on them. However, in the 35th minute, Džajić hit Hagara in the head with a volley, and the ball bounced off him, so the cunning Aćimović ran at it, sent it into the middle, where goal scorer Vojin Lazarević managed to catch it with the tip of his boot and with a gentle lob he checked the running goalkeeper for a 1:0 lead. However, Kuna equalized four minutes later at 1:1 and the Czechoslovakians went into half-time with a score that guaranteed them the trophy.

Crvena Zvezda went all-or-nothing. The red-whites regained the lead in the 57th minute. A great move was made by Džajić and Krivokuća, who crossed from the left, Lazarević headed the ball sharply, and the goalkeeper barely saved the ball, which Ostojić then put into the net. Zvezda took a 3:1 lead in the 64th minute. Lazarević shot, and Zoran Antonijević reached the rebound and through the "forest" of his feet hit the bottom right corner of Kozinka's goal. The home team put an end to the big victory in the 69th minute. Branko Klenkovski suddenly decided to take a shot that the visitors' goalkeeper only briefly blocked from the force to Lazarević, who had no difficulty scoring his second goal for, as it turned out, the final 4:1.

That year 1968 remained inscribed in golden letters in the history of the club and our football, because Crvena Zvezda won three trophies there, the championship title, the Yugoslav Cup and the Central European Cup. The quality of Spartak Trnava's team is also demonstrated by the fact that in the 1968/69 season they reached the semi-finals of the European Champions Cup, where they were narrowly eliminated by Ajax (3:0, 0:2), who managed to make it to the second leg despite losing 0:2.

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