The disciplinary commission of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) has opened an investigation against the Serbian FA over the events surrounding its national team’s match against Switzerland in the last round of the group stage of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
FIFA said it was looking into several possible disciplinary violations, including misconduct by players and officials and discrimination.
FIFA has referred to “incidents” during the match, which Switzerland won 3-2, which allowed Brazil to qualify for the round of 16 of Group G, without providing details.
Fans during Friday’s game were told to “stop all chanting and discriminatory hand gestures.”
It was not clear at the time the reason for this announcement, but it came after a “battle” with the captain of the Swiss national team Granit Xhaka, which was attended by the latter’s colleague, of Cameroonian origin, Brill Embolo, among the players of reserve Serbs, before the the referee took control of the situation.
Empolo said after the match that the altercation did not include slurs of a racist nature, but what happened brought to mind the scene at the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
At the time, Switzerland knocked Serbia out of the group stage by beating them 2-1 in the second round, with goals from Xhaka and Gerdan Shaqiri provoking the Serbs after celebrating their approach to the fans by getting their hands on their bibs in the opposite direction, in a design of the black coat of arms of the “double eagle”, symbol of Albania.
Shakiri was born in 1991 in Kosovo, the former Serbian province with an Albanian majority, and left with his family when he was one year old, while Chaka was born in Switzerland in 1992 to a family from Kosovo, this region with a Muslim majority, located in northern Albania, which undertook a campaign of secession from Serbia.
The Belgrade regime violently cracked down on attempts at armed secession, prompting NATO to intervene in March 2018 and launch raids on the Serbian capital, forcing its forces to withdraw from Kosovo after 78 days.
Since 2008, the region has become independent after a conflict that has claimed 13,000 lives.
Cavani and the “mouse” screen.
In addition, FIFA has also decided to open an investigation against Uruguayan Edinson Cavani and his colleagues Jose Marial Jimenez, goalkeeper Fernando Muslera and Diego Godin, due to what happened after the end of the match against Ghana in the last round of the group stage.
Uruguay won the match 2-0, but failed to qualify for the final price tag after South Korea snatched the ticket by surprisingly beating Portugal 2-1.
The Uruguayan players were not satisfied with the referee’s performance in the match as he denied them two penalty kicks which prompted them to attack him after the final whistle while Cavani decided to take his anger out on the platform of the screen of the video assistant referee, ‘VAR’, and dropped him to the ground as he entered the dressing room tunnel. .
