Paul Gonzalez said:Hey Bad Boys... I could use a little intel regarding the group's mindset and identity back during the nineties...
The terrace aesthetic in the late eighties and early nineties was incomparable to what followed in the mid-nineties. To be clear, banners back then actually followed an order; you knew which ones were the main statements, and they stuck to the era's specific ultra trends regarding typography, without all those messy patches... Looking at old photos, there was this massive surge around 1994 where every neighborhood, small town, and city started mass-printing patches without any sense of hierarchy or rules. In some shots, certain banners only seemed to surface for a single match—like a local group from a tiny suburb, for instance. Then, from 1996 through 2000, you see those American flags with various slogans everywhere, especially during away trips to Miami, Budapest, Bratislava, or even Milan...
I’m curious about the reasoning behind this sudden shift in the terrace "aesthetic." Was there a change in leadership, or did everyone just stop giving a damn? Back in the early nineties, looking at old photos, the group had a genuine supporter culture vibe. It would have been nice to see that spirit revived around 2004—at least regarding the layout and design of the banners. This current look feels incredibly amateurish. For instance, during that era, the Bad Boys didn't even bother with scarves. I say this because I know plenty of veterans from that time used to travel to Italy for matches; they followed the scene, watched foreign games, attended the big derbies... You can't exactly call the group "ultras illiterates" back then. I just want to know why we drifted so far away from that authentic ultra style we had in the early nineties...
I've been working on a fan culture retrospective for quite some time now, so I could use some insight into the American scene. For instance, it's interesting that the first small banners started appearing with the Demons, as did the scarves... though it's equally curious that those Burberry checkered caps first showed up with the Bad Boys around 2001 and 2002, becoming an absolute staple for fans across the country just a few years later...
Paul Gonzalez, trying to pull off a supporter retrospective—even one as long-running as yours—is a massive uphill battle if you’re just relying on random internet photos or old fanzines. It’s even tougher when you weren't actually there on the ground during the chaos...
It’s hard for me to weigh in on how things used to be back in the old days, since I wasn't exactly hitting the stadiums back then. Aside from the Demon crowd in the 90s, even the Armada used to rock that Italian bar-scarf look and those tiny little banners...
It’s much easier to build a cohesive visual identity—think banners, merch, or zines—within smaller groups. In massive crowds, the sheer volume tends to swallow up any individual sense of quality or awareness...
Back in '96, when I was working with my buddy Šalov, we had this massive debate over whether to go with a striped bar scarf or one featuring a logo. Since I used to follow the Supertif scene and kept a close eye on the trends coming out of Italy, I was really pushing for that classic three-color striped look... while my friend was dead set on just printing "Dinamo - Purgers" on it.
Honestly, his joke about the scarves was just a deflection because he was fighting to get the club's name back and wanted more highly visible Dinamo gear out there. If we had focused on making bar scarves, we could be bragging about having them back in '96 instead of five years later... personally, I couldn't care less about that stuff. I don't get caught up in the optics; what actually matters is how the group performs on the road, on the streets, and in the core elements of support. It's not all about the "makeup"...
Back around the '93/'94 season, you could see it happening on the old South Stand—fans were finally ditching those foreign club scarves to make room for gear that actually represented our own colors and groups. That whole trend of long, beautifully designed Dinamo scarves was really kicked off by the crew from the BBB Fan Club over by the south end...
There was a certain charm to those old American flags featuring local neighborhood or branch office names... a distinct style that just isn't around anymore...
Back in 2000, I personally hauled around this massive 5ft x 3ft blue banner held up by two wooden poles... though after the absolute chaos outside the stadium, the security guards wouldn't let me through with them. It featured two cartoon dogs stacked on top of each other with a soccer ball floating above them, captioned "Where's the ball?"—a little play on that "Where's the Bone?" line from those old cartoons everyone loved back then...
I have witnesses and a photo of the stands, so frankly, I didn't "upload anything to the internet," which means it doesn't even exist... If they had used PVC poles instead of wooden ones, you’d be able to see it much more clearly on Meazzi...
I could probably go on forever about these visual fan identities, but I’ll save that for another time, Paul Gonzalez...
Aaron Ramirez49 said:The first ones to start rocking those bar scarves back in the States were the Bad Boys; they had them made way back in '91. They also pioneered that whole thing with the small 2x2 flags in '94, which they basically just lifted from the English... sorry for the off-topic tangent...
It’s the same old song and dance, as if they’ve been canonized just for that. Sure, they’re a distinct group and deserve some fan respect, but let's not start treating them like saints... they have plenty of flaws of their own...
Since you’re bringing up those old-school bar scarves from the '91/'92 season, we might as well mention that only a handful were actually finished over in Italy... Back then, they were mostly focused on the hype—sending photos to Supertif and getting coverage in the old Ciao Tifo...
That specific group of characters was being driven by the "Matoš" crew, whom Igor Todorović described quite vividly in your men's magazine, GQ...
That’s just one big, endless joke...
View on imgurWithin the United Force group, there was always that one witty crew rallying around the Matoš banner—named after the old interstate route, much like the Inter City Firm back in London. There were about ten of them, heavily inspired by the Monti Peyton crowd, and they all worshipped at the altar of one man: Ivica Gvozden, a guy who spent most of his career warming the bench over at the local stadium... A few songs were dedicated solely to his legendary status: "Down with the benches and the shackles! Falcons can't be bound, and Gvozden is the Grey Falcon—quick feet, sharp eye!" Or perhaps: "Lightning, tiger, laser, thunder! Strike, Gvozden, strike, with all your might!" Even the group's anthem doesn't fall short when it comes to sheer absurdity and wit...
Yeah, yeah, that’s the spirit... the Matoš brigade, the pride of the city, snacking on pistachios while wearing bright yellow pants... absolute madness, pure insanity... Even within the big four supporter groups, you’d see individuals rocking those modern Italian-style striped scarves, but they usually just blended into the crowd rather than standing out like the guys in smaller crews, such as the old U.F. squad. Personally, I think the best fan scarf from the old Yugoslavia era belonged to that Joint Union subgroup out of Željezničar...
The guys at U.F. started rocking those small banners at matches back in the fall of '94. They didn't pick them up from the English scene, either; they actually grabbed the idea from the Hellas Verona supporters. After their main group, the Brigate Gialoblu, splintered in '91, several smaller factions started pushing those compact 2x2m flags—similar to what the English were doing back in the 80s. It became a huge trend among the right-wing groups in Italy during the 90s, mostly because they were desperate to distance themselves from that classic Italian ultra aesthetic...
In my experience, the groups that really nailed that visual aesthetic were the Demon and the Armada back in the late 90s... whereas over here, it was all about U.F. starting from that '94/95 season, once they actually found their footing and started building a distinct identity to pull in new fans in the city—basically carving out their own space away from the old-school diehards or the Ultras...
EVERYONE IN MIAMI this Sunday, our European run is officially dead in the water...
http://badblueboys1986.blogspot.com/...ir-europa.html