Violence was sparked at a soccer qualifying game between Serbia and Albania when a drone carrying an Albanian flag and a map showing Kosovo as part of “Greater Albania” was flown over Belgrade’s Partizan Stadium. WSJ’s Niki Blasina reports. (Photo: Getty)
A European Championship qualifying soccer match between Serbia and Albania came to an abrupt end on Tuesday evening after a drone flying an Albanian nationalist banner buzzed the stadium in Belgrade. Amid the confusion in the Serbian capital, Serbia defender Stefan Mitrovic pulled the flag down, sparking an on-field melee that forced the referee to call off the match after 41 minutes of play.
In a bizarre sequence of events, as flares rained down on the Albanian players, two of them snatched the flag away from Mitrovic and began running away. At this point a fan ran out of the stands and attacked the Albanian players with a chair. The benches cleared, brawls broke out at midfield, and fans pelted the players with objects. The Albanian team ran to the tunnel, soon followed by the Serbian players.
The English referee,
Martin Atkinson,
kept the teams off the field for almost 45 minutes before deciding to abandon the match altogether. The incident will be reviewed by the disciplinary committee of UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, which can impose fines, ban players, and force the teams to play future qualifiers in empty stadiums.
“We considered our physical situation, with some injured players, which was not good,” Albania captain Lorik Cana said, according to the Associated Press. “Our situation was clear, we could not continue the match. And the security situation was not adequate either.”
Serbia’s defender Stefan Mitrovic grabs a flag with Albanian national symbols flown by a remotely operated drone during the match between Serbia and Albania in Belgrade on Tuesday.
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
It was the first time that Albania and Serbia met as independent nations, although Albania visited Belgrade in 1967 to face Yugoslavia. Albania lost 4-0 on that occasion.
The major source of tension between the two countries is over Kosovo, a former Serbian province with a majority ethnic-Albanian population. Kosovo has been independent since 2008, and is recognized by the U.S. and major European countries. But Serbia and ethnic Serbians within Kosovo continue to reject its legitimacy. The banner on the drone depicted a so-called Greater Albania, which includes Kosovo.
“Football should never be used for political messages,” FIFA president Sepp Blatter wrote in a statement on Twitter Wednesday morning. “I strongly condemn what happened in Belgrade last night.”
Officials had already identified the potential for disruption around the game, with Albania fans urged not to travel to the stadium in Belgrade. (The Serbian national soccer federation had also promised not to bring fans to the return fixture in Tirana.) But about 3,000 away supporters congregated outside anyway, according to local reports.
A skirmish between Serbian and Albanian players breaks out on the pitch after an Albanian flag that was flown above the stadium by a drone.
Associated Press
It’s hardly the first time that international politics have spilled onto the soccer field—the two are often inextricable—but the tension wasn’t enough to make UEFA think twice about letting it go ahead.
Indeed, Europe is fraught with historically loaded matchups. And in some cases, UEFA steps in to prevent them from happening. For Euro 2016 qualifying games, for instance, UEFA made special provisions to keep Azerbaijan from facing Armenia (due to a bitter, long-standing territorial dispute). It also kept the newly-recognized national team of Gibraltar away from Spain, which disputes its status as a British territory.
Write to Joshua Robinson at joshua.robinson@wsj.com