This is a compilation of footnotes about the street tamers of rag-balls who grew up to be the masters of fateful shots in unforgettable football matches. Koprivica does it on paper just like Di Steffano does it on the pitch, in an all-encompassing manner. He writes with his brain, his blood and his heart… Koprivica is marked by his love for the game as a true, devoted soccer fan, whose memory is that of a wise man, whose understanding of things belongs to a true philosopher, and whose words are those of a bard.
Peca Popović
When Božo Koprivica writes about soccer, he does it in the manner of a great poet, or a great prose writer, or even as someone would write about aesthetics or theory… This conundrum regarding the genre of his book, in his own words, is a consequence of a terrible laziness… He is an amalgam of a great poet and an old-school soccer fan.
Miljenko Jergović
Myth and cruel reality, winning and losing, a team and an individual, joy and sorrow, dream and awakening… these oppositions can be united only by a mind that sees art where nobody else sees it, and by a hand that knows how to describe everything indescribable and hitherto undescribed. Reading the book Only the Gods Can Make Promises opens an entirely new horizon in which literature and soccer, similar to a canoe double calmly peddling along a never-ending river, touch the shores of Loneliness, Solitude and Desolation.
Vladislav Bajac
Božo Koprivica (Nikšić, 1950), graduated from the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade where he studied world literature. He is the author of the books: Volej i sluh (Volley and Music, 1992), Vreme reči, Razgovori s Borislavom Pekićem (The Time of Words: Conversations with Borislav Pekić, 1993), Kiš, Borhes, Maradona (Kiš, Borges, Maradona, 1996), Dribling (Dribbling, 2006), Samo bogovi mogu obećati (Only the Gods Can Make Promises, 2010, revised edition 2014). He was the editor of a special edition of Ars magazine dedicated to Danilo Kiš (published by the Otvoreni kulturni forum, Cetinje, 2005 and 2009). Koprivica worked as a freelance dramaturge for various theater houses such as Jugoslovensko dramsko pozorište, Bitef Theater, Zvezdara Theater in Belgrade, Royal Theater “Zetski dom”, National Theater of Montenegro and “City Theater” festival in Budva. He made a feature-length documentary film with Emir Kusturica, Seven Days in a Life of a Bird for French television. He has two daughters, Ivana and Jovana. Božo Koprivica lives in Belgrade and is a Partizan F. C. fan.
