Crushing the Yanks

Dom Sportova Hall in Zagreb witnessed something really strange on Saturday afternoon, during the doubles matches between Croatian and US team at the first round of Davis Cup. Croatian team, consisting of legendary Goran Ivanišević (Goran Ivanisevic) and Ivan Ljubičić (Ivan Ljubicic), compensated two set deficit and won the crucial doubles game, thus allowing Ljubičić opportunity to finish the business tomorrow.

Ivanišević celebrated victory by breaking into song which contained lyrics "Gazi, gazi Amere" ("Crush the Yanks"). What is significant about this song is not the lyrics, nor Ivanišević's newly discovered anti-Americanism. The melody used had been long adopted by various Dalmatian teams and used whenever their teams played against teams from Zagreb. The lyrics were different – "Gazi, gazi purgere" ("Crush the Zagrebians"). But Zagreb crowd, on this particular occasion, adopted this song as their own.