The Eternal Derby, the biggest game in Serbian football played between Belgrade neighbours Crvena Zvezda and Partizan, was overshadowed on Sunday after tributes were paid to the late war criminal Ratko Mladic.Supporters of Crvena Zvezda, also known as Red Star Belgrade — the most successful club in the Balkans region, having won the European Cup (today’s Champions League) in 1991 — displayed a giant tifo of Mladic as a minute of silence was being observed ahead of the match.Mladic, dubbed the Butcher of Bosnia, was serving a life sentence for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Balkan wars when he died last month in custody at the United Nations Detention Unit in The Hague, Netherlands. His funeral was in Belgrade on Monday, with thousands turning out on the Serbian capital’s streets.But why does Mladic retain such a revered status among Crvena Zvezda and Partizan supporters? And will there be any fallout?What happened in Belgrade?On the eve of Mladic’s funeral, fans of Crvena Zvezda chose to mark his death with a huge display behind one goal at Sunday’s match. It depicted the former Bosnian Serb general pointing, against the backdrop of a Serbian flag.Below the image were the words “Direction Potocari”, a reference to the orders of Mladic in 1995, ahead of his soldiers entering Srebrenica, Bosnia, to begin massacring Bosniak Muslim refugees gathered there. More than 8,000 people — the vast majority of them men and teenage boys — were killed and buried in mass graves.Mladic, who spent a decade in hiding, was eventually arrested in 2011 and convicted at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 2017. He was given a life sentence, with the presiding judge in his trial, Alphons Orie, saying his actions were “among the most heinous known to humankind.”On Thursday, August 27, at the age of 84, Mladic died after suffering several strokes in prison, and his passing has reignited tensions in the Balkans region. He remains a popular figure among Serbian nationalists, whose presence is felt among the ultras of several major football teams.