It was October 11, the day all football fans marked on their calendars as the day when Croatia was going to face England, right here on the Dinamo stadium. The day that was going to mark our team's progress in the qualifications for the European Championship. Hopes were high, as always, and fans were flocking around town from morning, although the game wasn't due to start till early in the evening.
In accordance to this, the British Council in Zagreb arranged for five groups of English football fans to come visit our school and tell us a bit about their lives as fans. Our English teacher, Ms Sabioni, chose our class, 4.a, to be the one to host one of the groups of fans. We were given their names and a set of questions they would be asking us, and were told that we had to make up our own questions in order to ask them in return.
English fans of all ages arrived to our school, and we got a group of three of them – Daniel, Beverly and Gary – to come to our class. The ice was broken by our presentation of Croatia, which got the trio quite interested. A presentation about the school followed. Soon a conversation was struck, where Gary asked the questions and we answered: about Croatia, about the school, and of course, about football. Since the company was mostly female, he probably didn't get the kind of answers he'd expected: but you can't say we didn't try. The atmosphere was friendly and laid-back, and possibly the only disadvantage was that our time was too short. We learned a lot of interesting things about English football fans: that the stereotype that they are hooligans is completely false, at least based on the people we'd encountered. They just want to enjoy themselves and share their love for football. Even though they support different teams, there is no animosity between them: as there is, for example, with Croatian fans. And that is something we should all learn from – tolerance.
For that one day, a bit of English spirit was brought into the 16th High school: an English flag adorned one of the walls in the classroom, direct opposite a quite small, but not less significant, Croatian one. Thanks to the good will of the British Council, our class and school were one positive experience richer. It was a great opportunity to meet native speakers and have a taste of English culture. Kudos goes to the British Council for presenting our school with such a flattering chance. It was great fun, and we are looking forward to have a similar opportunity again.
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