all the fault of a flag

In Serbia and in Serbia (yes, in short, the team in Qatar) there is discussion about what was seen on the pitch, in the match lost 2-0 against Brazil: coach Dragan Stojkovic yesterday kept a report on the group on the pitch, before the start of the training session, making a very engaging speech under the banner of “you are worth much more than the little done in the debut match, believe it” and culminated with thunderous applause from Vlakhovic and comrades. But in the rest of the world there is more discussion than what was seen before the match. That is to say the television images of the Serbian dressing room in which a version of the national flag with a map including the Kosovo as part of the country and printed with the slogan “there will be no surrender”. The former Yugoslav province with an Albanian majority declared independence from Serbia in 2008, which Belgrade refuses to recognize.

Kosovo protest

The Minister of Sport of Kosovo, Cekuhe protested: “We expect concrete actions from FIFA considering that Kosovo is a full member of FIFA and UEFA”. And again, the Kosovar Football Federation said in a press release on its website: “Such a chauvinistic act has no place in sporting events and even less within the spaces where the world’s biggest football event takes place. It is unacceptable that this act goes unnoticed and we urgently ask that Fifa strictly enforce its rules and punish the Serbian Football Federation for this aggressive act contrary to the values ​​that football transmits“.