Fifa on Saturday opened disciplinary proceedings against the Serbian Federation because of the flag placing Kosovo in Serbia exhibited in the locker room of the “Orlovi” before their lost match against Brazil.
A Serbian flag placing Kosovo in Serbia was displayed in the football team’s dressing room ahead of their first World Cup match in Qatar. Fifa has decided to open disciplinary proceedings. The body does not cite any specific violation of its disciplinary code but relies on the general obligation of “fair play and non-violence” imposed on the 32 participants in the Qatari tournament.
The scale of sanctions that can be imposed on the federations ranges from a meeting behind closed doors to a defeat by forfeit, without Fifa indicating where the seriousness of the fault with which the Serbs are accused lies.
Taken in the changing rooms of Serbia before the match against Brazil, the offending photograph shows a map of Kosovo printed on a square of white fabric hung on two pegs. Kosovo is stamped with the flag of Serbia and the inscription: “There will be no surrender. »
The dissemination of the photo led to an official protest on Friday from Kosovo, via its Minister of Sports Hajrullah Ceku, who denounced “shameful images” relaying “hateful, xenophobic and genocidal messages”.
“We expect concrete actions from Fifa, of which Kosovo is a full member,” continued the Minister of Sports. Kosovo joined the international football federation as well as UEFA, the European body, in 2016.
For its part, the Kosovo Football Federation (FFK) announced that it had filed a complaint with Fifa against “Serbia’s aggressive action” during its first match at the 2022 World Cup. “Such a chauvinist act did not its place in sporting events and even less inside the enclosures where the biggest world football event takes place, ”denounced the FFK.
