Serbs view Switzerland as neutral

Serbian nationalist football fans hoped to restore their national pride by defeating the Swiss team led by Kosovo stars. Instead, Kosovo-born Gerdan Shaqiri gave them a humiliating loss.

So begins the prestigious magazine Foreign Policy dedicated to Serbia's relationship with Kosovo and Friday night match.

For most World Cup fans, it was easy to lose the importance of Friday's match between Serbia and Switzerland. At first glance, it didn't seem particularly important, but it was certainly the most politicised game of the entire World Cup.

Switzerland's three starters ) Gerdan Shaqiri, Granit Jaka and Valon Behram are of Albanian origin from Kosovo. Fourth, Blerim Xhemaili, born of Albanian parents in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. For many in Serbia, this was not a football match against Switzerland's national team. This was a hate-led battle.

On February 17th of 2008, Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia, nine years after a NATO-led bomber campaign ending wars in Yugoslavia, writes Foreing Policy, broadcast Koha.net. But, while the Serbian people had come to realize that they are at the end of the loss of the long conflict that would break Yugoslavia, the loss of Kosovo felt like an unacceptable insult to the country's collective feeling.

That night in Belgrade, a crowd of people gathered in front of the US Embassy to express their anger. Protests and cheers “Kosovo is Serbia” erupted in violence as the crowd attacked the Embassy and set it on fire. Since then, the Kosovo issue has become the only most controversial topic in Serbian politics.

Kosovo's majority Albanian province has been part of the Serbian state in various forms since mid-life, writes FP. According to nationalist mythology, Kosovo is the cradle of Serbian national identity and culture. It is home to many ancient Orthodox monasteries and place of Battle of Kosovo 1389, where Car Lazar has died in an attempt to prevent the Ottoman invasion. This battle, for many Serbian nationalists, is the determining event in Serbia's history.

The clash between Christianity and Islam planted seeds of religious and ethnic tensions that have led Balkan politics for the past three decades, and the roots of the two Bosnia and Kosovo wars could be traced on that fateful day in June more than 600 years ago, Coha.net broadcasts. Figuratively, former leader of Serbia Slobodan Milosevic chose Fushë Kosova (Kosovo) the country where the battle of 1389 took place as the country for a notorious 1989 speech in which he positioned himself as champion of the Serb people in Yugoslavia and Marshall Titos, exploiting the nationalist passions that started to boil in the region and leading to a series of genocide wars during the years of dealt with 90.

Although many Serbs have never entered Kosovo, the region's attitude towards Serbian national folklore promotes a deep sense of emotional attachment, so many Serbs consider Kosovo's independence a national disaster, Koha.net conveys. Political careers have been made and broken by the Kosovo issue; to support any kind of compromise or reconciliation with Pristina constitute electoral suicide. Even Serbia's all-powerful, despotic president, Aleksandar Vuciq, must be very careful with the Kosovo issue, calmly normalising relations with the breakaway province while holding his conservative base hard on its side.

In such a political environment, the Kosovo issue is an easy way to score points, and Serbian politicians have the impossible to resist. Just days before Friday night's match, Serbia's Foreign Minister Ivica Daciq held a press conference with his Liberian counterpart, using it as “the opportunity to reap hanging fruits”, when he described the victory in Serbia's match against Costa Rica as the sweet, revenge “, the Koha.net broadcasts. Outside Serbia, the fact that Costa Rica was among the first countries in the world to recognise Kosovo's independence is little known. This terrible disregard for political fraud suddenly turned Serbia's incredible victory to 109 against a distant Central American nation into a historic triumph against foreign submission.

Continued anger against the international community undermines support for the European Union and returns many Serbs more and more decisively towards Russia, a country with which Serbia enjoys long diplomatic ties and deep cultural ties. This was strengthened by the stare of Serbian and Russian fans who joined Kaliningrad on Friday evening, where they sang “Russia, Serbia, Brothers, always” in unity as they went to the stadium.

Sport is sometimes described as the “continuing policy by other means” and nowhere is more obvious than in Serbia. The “Kosovo is the heart of Serbia” are an inevitable feature of club and international matches in the country. When Belgrade giant Partizan met with Albanian champion “Skenderbeu” from Korca in a European League match last fall, Partizan's fierce fans took advantage of the occasion by discovering a giant flag bearing the image of the 19th century Serbian martyr Car Lazar. The symbol was twofold: it epitomised Serbia's ancient connection with Kosovo and expressed the common view that members of the Albanian majority of the region are foreign aggressors, like Ottomans who killed Car Lazar in 1389.

In October 2014, a qualifying match for the European Championship between Serbia and Albania erupted in a riot when a fear bearing a map of Albania's Etnik, which included most of southern Serbia and neighbouring Montenegro, flew to the stadium in Belgrade, ending the match after flying over the field.

When Serbian player Stefan Mitrovich tried to remove the flag so that the match could continue, Andy Lila and Taulant Jaka, the biggest brother of Switzerland's midfielder, Granit Jaka, forcibly grabbed the flag from Mitrovici's hands. This caused a massive clash between players from both nationals and prompted Serbian fans, many of whom cheered “murder, kill, kill Albanians” all night long, to invade the field and attack against opposing team players. The match has ended and at the exit of the field has created a shield so that the players of the Albanian national team could flee to the dressing rooms, but in their direction there was a hail of seats and other objects coming from the tributaries.

Given recent precedents, politicising Serbia's match against Switzerland was inevitable. When the game in the group was learned in December, Gerdan Shaqiri wrote in the Instagram: “Hmm i like this lot!” It was a rather unambled comment, but Shaqiri, whose family left Yugoslavia as refugees in 1992, is a noisy patriot who takes on the field shoes decorated with the flag of Switzerland and Kosovo. This was perceived by him in Serbia as an act of provocation ʹ opening up a new Kosovo Battle based on football.

Earlier this month, the Serbian attacker of Newcastle United, Aleksandar Mitrovic, used an interview with a local sports broadcaster to fire: “They [players] all talk about that flag, but then refuse calls to play for their nationals. That says a lot about them”, he said, broadcasts Time.net writing Foreign Policy. “If they love Kosovo so much, why do they play in the colors of another country?”. Even Serbian President Danilo Vuciq's son is seen in Serbia's opening match against Costa Rica, along with a number of the notorious Partizan hooligans who are known for links to organised crime. Young Vuchiq and his friends were wearing T-shirts on which the map of Kosovo was drawn with the inscription “No delivery”.

In the match between Serbia and Switzerland took place Friday evening, Mitrovich scored Serbia's first goal with a powerful shot in the fifth minute and was later denied a clear penalty after being stopped by Swiss defenders. Serbia has dominated the first part of the game. A noisy crowd cheered on Serbia to victory, while Swiss Kosovar stars abused, making <x0y” whenever they touched the ball or appeared on stadium screens. In the second half, the wave began to return.

In the 52nd minute, Jaka, the son of a political prisoner who left Kosovo after being imprisoned for his involvement in independence protests, attacked with an unstoppable blow at the lower corner of Serbia's gate. While celebrating, he raised his hands towards his chest and made an eagle's symbol two proud of the Albanian flag directed towards Serbian supporters who make “y” throughout the game. Then, at the last minute of the game, Kosovo-born Shaqiri broke Serbian defence and “slipped the winning goal of” between the feet of the Serbian goalkeeper, Vladimir Stojkovic. All are surprised and, as he gladly left, Shaqiri removed his fanfare making the same gesture as Jaka, the eagle with his hands in front of Serbia's silent fans. (Serbia has officially complained about the Swiss players' gestures, and now FIFA is investigating them, along with offensive political messages attributed to Serbia's coach and fans. )

The reason a match against a small number of Swiss-Kosovo players took on such great importance in Serbia is because it presented a rare opportunity to regain a lost national pride. Local politicians may wish to claim that they have not accepted defeat on the Kosovo issue, as they refuse to recognise its independence, but the fact is that Serbia may delay accepting this political reality; Belgrade is powerless to return it.

Kosovo is now a state of its own, while Serbia has diminished. But instead of agreeing to this new status quo, Serbia has chosen to take refuge in mythology, turning to the past because the future seems so hopeless.