One football point on the other side of the world, and tension flares in the center of Novi Travnik. After Bosnia and Herzegovina's draw against Canada (1:1) at the World Cup, Bosnian fans came out to celebrate in the streets - and in front of the "Caffe Star" bar collided with a group of Croatian fans.

A bigger incident was avoided only because the police were already on site with reinforced security. Officers quickly wedged themselves between the two groups, formed a cordon, and separated them before the physical clash could escalate. It stayed at a verbal confrontation with shoving - no injuries, no significant damage, and no arrests.

And here's the whole point. One national team plays a draw on another continent, and on the streets back home the old lines of division wake up at once. In a country where coexistence always hangs by a thread, one match is enough to remind us how shallowly buried what we call "normalcy" really is.

The Balkans watch this with one eye smiling, the other worried. Football here has long been more than a sport - it's an excuse, a valve, sometimes a fuse. It's good that the police prevented a brawl in Novi Travnik. It's worse that every celebration has to be guarded, because there's always a risk that the joy of one side becomes a pretext for a reckoning with the other.