Saturday, November 13th, 2021
From the war to Germany
Salihamidžić “cried every day for three months”
Hasan Salihamidžić got to know Germany as an open, friendly and fair country when he arrived here in 1992. Today’s Bayern manager tells in a touching way about his escape from the Balkan War, about the advantages of football and how close a bombing came to him.
Bayern Munich’s sports director Hasan Salihamidžić gave very personal insights into his life. He spoke in “DFL Magazin” about the war in the Balkans, his escape to Hamburg – and his image of Germany. He got to know this “in 1992. Germany is open, friendly and fair – apart from the people who express their hatred on social media. Nobody ever said anything xenophobic to my face,” said Salihamidzic.
And “if it does,” he added, “I missed that – because I think very differently. For me it is completely irrelevant how a person looks, what religion he has and what passport”. In football in particular, according to Salihamidžić, “what you can do that counts. Not who you are. And football also makes it relatively easy to make friends”. Even after his escape, sport “played an important role” in integration.
In 1992 Salihamidžić fled from his birthplace Jablanica in what was then Yugoslavia and now Bosnia and Herzegovina to Hamburg to escape the horrors of the Balkan War. “Those were terrible times. Jablanica was bombed. A dud hit us in the hallway. Thank God we all survived,” he said in retrospect.
At the age of 15 he was finally “smuggled into Croatia in a bus past several checkpoints”. At the border with Slovenia the Croatian soldiers “laughed to pieces” when he said that his goal was Hamburg to become a professional there. But Salihamidžić reached the Hanseatic city via Split and Dortmund – and his dream came true there.
The separation from his family was very painful. “During the first three months I cried every day,” said the 44-year-old. Salihamidžić was sent to Hamburg by his family in 1992 at the age of 15, where he was later able to start a career in the Bundesliga. “Before I left, I had written the most important sentences and expressions in a small book. One of them was: ‘I want a lemonade’,” said Salihamidžić, remembering his first sentence in German.