It rarely happens that during a football match the offended party is neither the fans nor the players of one side or the other but a third team unrelated to the match: in this case, at the 2024 German European Championships, the managers of the Football Federation of Serbia have threatened to abandon the competition if the fans are not properly punished Croatia And Albania.
The chants against the Serbs
On Wednesday 19 June the match between the two national teams included in the Italian group ended in a draw, 2-2, but this time what was of interest was what happened in the stands from where chants were chanted against the Serbs in the second half: the Serbian federation attacks by saying that I heard clearly”Kill, kill, kill the Serb“. The secretary general of the Serbian Football Federation, Jovan Surbatovic, was especially furious and called for the most severe sanctions to be adopted to punish these behaviors. In a separate statement that arrived on Thursday, the Serbian Football Federation condemned the “shameful racist behavior” of the Albanian and Croatian fans underlining that the match should have been suspended at the beginning of the chants. “Such an insult to a nation with cries that they should be killed has not been seen at sporting events for a long time“, the note adds.
The request to UEFA
“What happened is scandalous and we will ask UEFA for sanctions, even at the cost do not continue the competition“, Surbatovic told the Serbian broadcaster Rts. “We will ask UEFA to punish the federations of both teams. We don’t want to participate in this, but if UEFA doesn’t punish them, we will think about how to proceed.”. The Serbian Football Federation then announced that it had sent a letter to the general secretary of UEFA, Theodore Theodoridis, highlighting the “shameful joint choirs“.
In addition to the fans, he also has complaints against a journalist for whom he would have asked for the cancellation of press accreditation as reported by the BBC: this is the Kosovar Arlind Sadiku who allegedly made the nationalist gesture of the two-handed eagle against the Serbian fans during the match against England. That gesture would mimic the eagle on Albania’s national flag and is likely to inflame tensions between Serbian nationalists and ethnic Albanians who make up the vast majority of Kosovo’s population.
The reason for the rivalry
For now, UEFA has not commented but an official note is expected in the next few hours. But why is there this hatred between Croatian and Albanian fans towards the Serbs and vice versa? These are historical facts that date back to the wars in the Balkans of the 1990s. UEFA, meanwhile, fined both the Albanian and Serbian federations ten thousand euros because the fans displayed banners with nationalist maps.
Since each federation is responsible for the conduct of its fans, the highest European body accused Serbia and Albania of “having transmitted provocative messages unsuitable for a sporting event”.
