Vladimir Ljubinkovic, 44, is a Serbian football fan living in the town of Jakovo, located roughly 20km from Belgrade, Serbia’s capital. For the past 15 years, Vladamir has been avidly collecting football tickets to different games from throughout the years, eventually garnering around 4,000 different tickets.
Since starting his collection, one ticket in particular has eluded Vladimir and with the help of the Dundalk Leader he is hoping that his prayers to find a ticket for the Dundalk V Red Star Belgrade game that took place in Oriel Park in 1988 can be answered.
He has reached out to this newspaper to appeal to anyone who thinks they may have a ticket from this match lying around the house and who are willing to part with it to please contact him.
He first started collecting tickets in the early ‘90s, when his older brother and uncle would give them to him after they had attended different games. He said that during this time he “collected maybe 7 tickets” and stored them in one of his comic books. He then says that, unfortunately, his mother unknowingly threw out all of these tickets when cleaning out his room.
Years later, Vladamir went on to complete a degree in Economics, and began working for Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer in 2008. He recounts that he needed to access online economics books during his daily work, and one day found himself browsing Limundo (a Serbian alternative to Ebay) wherein he came across a tab labelled “memorabilia”.
According to Vladamir, his entrance into the hobby of sports memorabilia began when he got a ticket for the 1962 Fairs Cup Quarter Final between Red Star Belgrade and Espanyol.
“I remembered my Red Star Belgrade tickets from years ago. I searched the site and found tickets from a 1962 Fairs Cup quarter final of Red Star Belgrade V Espanol.” This marked his first purchase of vintage tickets in nearly 20 years.
He continues, “I bought it for 42 Serbian dinar, which is equivalent to 50c in Euro,” he laughs to himself, “I was very lucky of course. It was my entrance into the hobby of Sports Memorabilia.”
Red Star Belgrade are considered to be one of the finest footballing sides ever to grace Oriel Park and when they came to town in 1988 they arrived with no less than eight full Yugoslavian internationals. Unfortunately that gulf in class was evident on the pitch with the Lilywhites eventually losing 5-0 after going in scoreless at half-time. The return leg saw the Yugoslavian side win 3-0 to complete an 8-0 aggregate victory against Turlough O’Connor’s double winning side.
Vladamir is asking that anyone who may have a ticket from the 1988 Red Star Belgrade V Dundalk match to please contact him at vljubinkovic@gmail.com or email editorial@dundalkleader.com if you think you can help.
