"Tonight," Bepo rasped, his voice like gravel under a boot, "we drink for the ones who can't."

As the chorus hit its peak, Bepo stood up, his glass raised high. He remembered the away trips to muddy fields in the nineties, the flares that lit up the Adriatic night, and the brothers he’d stood shoulder-to-shoulder with in the rain. "To the White!" someone yelled. "To the White!" the tavern screamed back.

The tavern’s owner, a man whose loyalty to Hajduk Split was as old as the stone walls themselves, slammed another tray of glasses onto the wooden table. The sound triggered it—the spontaneous combustion of a song. “Noas draga, opet ću se napiti...”