Group E Thread - Costa Rica, Serbia, Switzerland, Brazil

[ilia]

looooooool would like to see you if this had happened to iran

[Zamboor]

I am messing around guys, that was a clear penalty

[milad_b]

Two Albanians score vs. Serbia - both Xhaka and Shaqiri did the Crossed Eagle hands (Albanian nationalistic symbol) when they celebrated their goals. Touching on many Serbian sensibilities.

This can restart a war. Jesus.

wow how many albanians do they have? Shaqiri , Xhaka , Behrami ... who else? really interesting , didn't know Shaqiri was albanian

[Tehranto]

Granit Xhaka on his goal tonight: "The world might not know the story, but ask any Albanian. This is history being made. A team that's not even at the World Cup scored today, not once, but twice. Serbia one, Albania two!"

Xhaka's father was a political prisoner before emigrating from the former Yugoslavia to Switzerland in 1990 - after serving 3 years in prison whilst being a student in Pristina for protesting against Yugoslav rule in Kosovo. 28 years later Xhaka scores a rocket & does the Eagle symbol in-front of Serbia fans

[freak]

^ I grew up around a lot of ex-Yugoslavs in the mid-1990s when the Serbian/Bosnian war was happening.

As much as I despise the fact that Serbians take their political BS everywhere and those ethnic groups have a hard time getting along (a lot of it has to do with the history of Yugoslavia and the fact that it was never a unified country to begin with), and as much as I have sympathy for Albanians in general, I find what Xhaka and Xaqiri did to be pretty disgusting, tbh. These guys are where they are because many people in their adopted country invested in them, from social welfare supported by Swiss citizens which supported their immigrant families, to all the coaches and human capital spent to develop them into professional athletes in that country.

And yet, they inject their own political bullshit into the game on the world stage for all to see. I find it extremely disrespectful to Swiss fans in general and to all lovers of the game collectively. You want to make a statement about why it means so much to you to score in a game like this? Fine. But those hand signals, provoking the fans, and inflaming ethnic/nationalistic sentiments are never welcome in this game.

[PEJ]

If they have so much Albanian pride, why didn’t they just play for Albania?

[persianballer]

Tbf fair guys most Serbian and Albanian people I've met have been really cool people

[persianballer]

^ I grew up around a lot of ex-Yugoslavs in the mid-1990s when the Serbian/Bosnian war was happening.

As much as I despise the fact that Serbians take their political BS everywhere and those ethnic groups have a hard time getting along (a lot of it has to do with the history of Yugoslavia and the fact that it was never a unified country to begin with), and as much as I have sympathy for Albanians in general, I find what Xhaka and Xaqiri did to be pretty disgusting, tbh. These guys are where they are because many people in their adopted country invested in them, from social welfare supported by Swiss citizens which supported their immigrant families, to all the coaches and human capital spent to develop them into professional athletes in that country.

And yet, they inject their own political bullshit into the game on the world stage for all to see. I find it extremely disrespectful to Swiss fans in general and to all lovers of the game collectively. You want to make a statement about why it means so much to you to score in a game like this? Fine. But those hand signals, provoking the fans, and inflaming ethnic/nationalistic sentiments are never welcome in this game.

I agree that politics should be outside football, but I don't see how this is disrespectful for Switzerland. In the end these guys have this political baggage and wanted to celebrate it for their other country. The politics thing is bad, but the part showing love for their parents country is fine. They're thankful enough for Switzerland by scoring two goals for them and playing for them .

[teammelli8080]

Switzerland is a very multicultural country, and many of their players are first generation. I don’t think it’s a big deal particularly the emotions of their having been a genocide involved and their parents having been directly affected. Their captain was doing it at the end in solidarity so clearly not a big deal to him. I’m not going to start making it a big deal if the team captain who is not ethnically Albanian or Kosovar does the same thing. Also maybe the Serb fans shouldn’t have booed them and some of them shouldn’t have come to the stadium wearing sweaters with pictures of one of the Serbian butchers (a convicted genocide war criminal).

Serbian fans wearing hoodies with photos of Ratko Mladic, a convicted genocidal war criminal along with wearing uniforms of chetniks, a WW2 guerilla movement which advocated a greater serbia through ethnic cleansing:

https://bih.ba/254109-teske-provokacija-navijaca-srbije-na-tribinama-u-rusiji-slike-ratnih-zlocinaca-motivi-osudjenih-zlocinackih-pokreta

[Azeem98]

I wonder how anyone of you would have reacted after scoring a 90th minute winner against Iraq/Saudi at the World Cup in a crucial game with Saddam/Bin Salman sitting in the stadium booing at you.

[suissi]

We have more than just 3 albanians in the swiss team this is typically swiss german secondo mentality, they just stupid. I know what in talking about lol. Im a swiss secondo too, but was cheering for serbia. Because serbia is like iran, evrebody talks bad about it.

[teammelli91]

Neymar wanted to kill that referee lol.

One can only imagine the pressure on Neymar to perform well for Brazil. And he did just that. He played a decent game for the amount of hype he gets. Hopefully he’ll take this performance against a stingy Costa Rican team and do even better for Brasil.

It was an entertaining match. Specially towards the end.

[GolfePersique]

When you play for a national team, you should only represent that national team. It's not a club business.

It is even more disgusting when sports get mixed with politics.

[Azeem98]

When you play for a national team, you should only represent that national team. It's not a club business.
It is even more disgusting when sports get mixed with politics.

The First part was never the way with football. Football is a tribal sport at least in Europe, South and North of Italy have aggression for each other and even rascism at times.
The reason why Spain underachieved at international stage pre 2008 has to do with the Barca Real rivalry with some generations of NT.
Second part i totally agree with.

[Azeem98]

There is no way you would find a person from Naples who has sympthay for Juventus to do well in Europe because they are Italian.

There are incidents of Fathers disowing their sons for supporting the rival club in Spain.