It is about time for Serbians and Croatians to bury their animosities and start promoting reconciliation and respect for each other as Bosnians do, Miroslav Ciro Blazevic, a locally famous football coach who was born in Bosnia but now lives in Croatia told N1 on Wednesday.

Nationalistic outbursts marked soccer matches in former Yugoslavian countries for years but Blazevic thinks those times should be over.

“The antagonism between Serbs and Croats must stop. This is not going anywhere,” Blazevic said.

“We incline toward overblowing simple behavior,” he said, describing how the smallest incidents in this region can grow into a serious conflict.

“It is easy to create a conflict, but try to build relations,” he said, noting that he himself is a Croat. “I grew up with Muslims and Serbs and we were never searching for differences. That’s primitive. It is hard to believe this still exists today,” he said.

Blazevic recently expressed solidarity with the leader of Croatia’s Serbs, Milorad Pupovac, for which he came under fire from Croatian nationalists.

“I knew this will create chaos, as it did,” he said, adding that nationalists are not allowing him to develop a dialogue, to explain to them that this is leading nowhere.

“We don’t have any reason to behave like this,” he said of Croats. “We got our county. Serbs are citizens of Croatia and we have to treat them like every other Croatian. That’s the only normal thing to do in a civilized world,” Blazevic said.

He told a story from Belgrade, when during a match between Serbia and Croatia suddenly the lights went off, which may have been sabotage. When it came on, 70,000 people saw that every Serbian player had hugged a Croatian player to protect him just in case.

“It was a gesture that showed that athletes do not recognize chauvinism and hatred,” Blazevic concluded.

He praised Bosnians as being the best people he knows because of their attitude toward each other, regardless of ethnic or religious background.

“I live in Croatia, but I always say – the best people in the world, and Ciro has traveled the world, are Bosnians,” he said, counting himself as a Bosnian.

“We are so good – just don’t mess with us too much,” he said, adding that his time as the coach of the soccer representation of Bosnia and Herzegovina was “the best time of my life.”