The footballers of Belgrade's Crvena zvezda and Zagreb's Dinamo played their first official match against each other on 1 September 1946 at Belgrade's JNA stadium, under rather peculiar circumstances. A week earlier, in the 1st round - the very first day of the inaugural season in post-war Yugoslavia's league - Dinamo had visited Budućnost in Podgorica, then called Titograd. At the end of the 90th minute, the score was 2-2, and in the very final moments Mijo Etlinger found the net for Dinamo's 3-2 victory. The referee allowed the goal and the blues celebrated their win... However, the next day they received news that their celebration had been in vain. The Federation leadership subsequently 'determined' in their Belgrade office that the referee's watch had been - faulty! They then changed the official match report and with a simple stroke of the pen altered the result from 2-3 to 2-2. They simply annulled Etlinger's goal with the official explanation that Dinamo's player had scored it in 'irregular time', a few seconds after the 90th minute had expired.

After Podgorica, Dinamo's players returned to their hotel in Dubrovnik from where they later travelled to Belgrade for the match. It was small consolation that in that following round Dinamo defeated Crvena zvezda 1-0. Shortly afterwards, the blues also outplayed Željezničar from Sarajevo 9-1...

The only goalscorer in Belgrade was Ivica Braco Reiss in the 59th minute after being set up by a return pass from Franjo Mara Wölfl. By then the blues already had a numerical advantage on the pitch as Zvezda's striker Kosta Tomašević had been sent off right at the start of the second half. He had to leave the pitch after attacking Dinamo's defender Dragutin Lojen during a break in play. Although the home team continued the match with ten men, it's hard to say that Dinamo was at full strength as Lojen mostly remained stationary for the rest of the match. For this attack, Tomašević received a three-month suspension. At that time, substitutions were not possible, so Lojen, instead of leaving the pitch, remained to 'limp' around the field so he could at least somehow disrupt the opponents.