https://arab.news/5ct5f
It was once pointed out to Bill Shankly, the famously irascible Scot who managed Liverpool Football Club from 1959 to 1974, that someone had described football as a matter of life and death. “I am very disappointed with that attitude,” the great man replied. “I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.”
Those of you with an interest in competitive sport will be aware that the finals of the European international football championship are currently taking place in Germany. So far, no two competing countries have actually declared war, but it can surely be only a matter of time.
Serbia and Kosovo, despite the latter’s failure to qualify for the finals, would appear to be the most likely contenders. They have form, after all, going back centuries: Serbian nationalists still look back fondly on the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 as a symbol of their fight for independence, although the result — unlike Serbia’s defeat by England in their opening match at Euro 2024 — was inconclusive.
So far, no two competing countries have actually declared war, but it can surely be only a matter of time
Ross Anderson
“The Balkans” has long been a convenient shorthand to describe almost any series of intractable territorial disputes, and the most recent unpleasantness dates from the chaotic breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Serbia and Kosovo went to war in 1998-1999, a ghastly conflict that took more than 10,000 lives and ended only with the intervention of NATO. Serbia has never recognized Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence in 2008 and there is constant tension between Kosovo’s government in Pristina and the mainly Serbian north.
Even in Germany this month, reminders are never far away. The main city in northern Kosovo is Mitrovica; Serbia’s star striker is Aleksandar Mitrovic; and undeterred by not actually competing at Euro 2024, Kosovo’s football federation has lodged an official complaint with UEFA over what it described as “political, chauvinistic and racist” flags, chants and banners deployed by Serbian fans during the match against England in Gelsenkirchen on Sunday. The governing body’s disciplinary panel will consider a charge against Serbia of its fans “transmitting a provocative message unfit for a sports event” and throwing objects from the stands.
So far, it’s all a bit “handbags at dawn,” and heaven forfend there should actually be a football war: but if there were, it would not be the first. El Salvador and Honduras have never been the best of friends and their enmity erupted into full-scale armed conflict after riots at a World Cup qualifying match between them in June 1969. El Salvador invaded its neighbor, the fighting lasted for four days and, much like the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, nobody won — although El Salvador claimed a moral victory by winning the playoff qualifier 3-2 and going on to compete at the World Cup finals in Mexico in 1970.
El Salvador and Honduras’ enmity erupted into full-scale armed conflict after riots at a World Cup qualifying match
Ross Anderson
Elsewhere, martial references are never far from football. When England play Germany, fans of the former enjoy taunting supporters of the latter by loudly and cheerfully whistling “The Dam Busters March,” the theme music from the eponymous 1955 film that celebrates the RAF’s “bouncing bomb” attacks on the Mohne, Eder and Sorpe dams in Nazi Germany in 1943. And in memory of previous triumphs over their oldest enemy, England fans also like to chant: “Two World Wars and one World Cup …” — despite the fact that, since those events took place in 1914-1918, 1939-1945 and 1966, vanishingly few of those doing the chanting are old enough to remember any of them.
Supporters of my own national team, Scotland, are known worldwide as the Tartan Army. It may be true that the most fearsome weapon at our disposal is the injudicious deployment of the bagpipes, but their chilling effect should not be underrated. For centuries, no Scottish soldier would consider going into battle without the skirl of the pipes to encourage him, and an English commission of inquiry into the 1745 Jacobite uprising ruled that bagpipes were a weapon of war because of their ability to strike fear into the heart of an enemy; that ruling remained in force in English law until it was overturned by a court in 1996. It is not for nothing that, in England, the definition of a gentleman is a Scotsman who can play the bagpipes, but doesn’t.
If there is to be no war at Euro 2024, then, we will have to make do with the football. How will the final match end in Berlin on July 14? Gary Lineker, the former England striker who is now a respected TV pundit, once described football as a simple game in which two teams chase a ball for 90 minutes and, at the end, the Germans win.
You would be unwise to rule out such an outcome this time.
• Ross Anderson is associate editor of Arab News.