Soccer officials from Serbia allegedly took offense to fan shouts during the Albania-Croatia match, so much so that they threatened to withdraw from the European Championship. In Hamburg, the game concluded 2-2 on Wednesday.
Serbia’s second group game against Slovenia got underway in Munich on Thursday afternoon.
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“We intend to request sanctions from UEFA, even if it means abandoning the competition,” stated Jovan Surbatovic, general secretary of the Serbia Football Association.
“We will request UEFA to punish the federations of both teams. We don’t want to participate in that, but if UEFA doesn’t punish them, we will think about how to proceed.”
UEFA was yet to react.
The animosity between Croatian and Albanian fans toward the Serbs, and vice versa, dates to the 1990s wars in the Balkans.
UEFA fined the Albanian and Serbian federations 10,000 euros ($10,700) each after their first group matches for fans displaying banners with nationalist maps.
Each federation is in accountable of its supporters’ behavior, and Serbia and Albania were accused by UEFA of “transmitting provocative messages not fit for a sports event.”
Supporters of Albania hung a banner featuring a map of their nation that showed its borders spreading into adjacent nations. It was seen on Saturday in Dortmund during the team’s 2-1 defeat to Italy.
In the 1-0 loss to England in Gelsenkirchen, a Serbian supporter banner featured the area of Kosovo, a former Serbian province that proclaimed independence in 2008. The banner also had the motto “No Surrender.”
