On Sunday afternoon, shortly after 4pm, Croatia's A1 motorway heading towards Zagreb simply stopped. Not because of an accident, not because of roadworks. Police closed part of the country's most important road because a clash between football fans was expected at the Draganić service area, past the Karlovac junction.

According to Croatian media, two supporters' groups were due to meet - Bad Blue Boys and Torcida. Police sent several vehicles, and some footage shows a police helicopter was scrambled as well. For a scheduled brawl. Not for a terrorist threat or an accident with casualties, but for an agreed showdown in a car park.

„We have been standing here for half an hour. Three police vans just passed us, they closed the road,” said a passenger caught in the queue.

Police confirmed the stoppage was not caused by a traffic accident but by an intervention over the possibility of a mass clash between fans. Footage posted on social media shows a group of masked supporters running along the motorway's hard shoulder, with police in the background.

Everyone knew, nobody prevented it

This is the part that deserves more attention than the brawl itself. Media report that the clash „was due” to happen at a specific service area, at a specific time. The fans knew where they were going. The police clearly knew too - otherwise they would not have scrambled a helicopter and shut a motorway.

So the information existed before the event. The only thing missing was somebody using it before people got into cars and set off. Instead the response arrived at the moment hundreds of drivers were already stuck on the asphalt, with masked men running down a lane that exists for broken-down vehicles.

The incident happened just before several matches scheduled for the same day in Croatia. That is not a coincidence and nobody is pretending it is. The question is why, in a region where every serious match has followed the same script for years, the response still arrives after the blockade rather than before it.