Matches have
been stopped / abandoned due to host of reasons right from weather, rain,
lightning, crowd behaviour, stadium collapse, ground being dug up,
assassination of political leader elsewhere and more… now, there is another
addition to that list – hitherto unthought of !
It was tempting to think
Serbia's Euro 2016 qualifier against Albania - the latter's first visit to
Belgrade since 1967 - was going to conclude without incident. The match in
Belgrade was stopped after 41 minutes when a drone sparked a brawl. Drones are male honey bees which develop from
eggs that have not been fertilized, and they cannot sting. An unmanned aerial
vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without a human pilot
on board. Its flight is either controlled autonomously by computers in the
vehicle, or under the remote control of a navigatoron the ground or in another
vehicle.
Serbia is a country situated at the crossroads between
Central and Southeastern Europe, covering the southern part of the Pannonian
Plain and the central Balkans. Serbia is landlocked and borders Hungary, Romania
and Bulgaria, Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Montenegro and also claims a
border with Albania through the disputed territory of Kosovo. The capital of
Serbia, Belgrade, is among Europe's oldest cities and one of the largest in
Southeast Europe.
Albania is a country in Southeastern Europe. It is
bordered by Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia and Greece. It has a coast on the
Adriatic Sea to the west and on the Ionian Sea to the southwest. The
double-headed eagle, as featured on the Albanian flag, is imposed upon
so-called 'Greater Albania' where ethnic Albanians live. The word
'autochthonous' refers to Serbia's alleged attempts to control Kosovo despite
not being indigenous to the region. Nato waged a 78-day air war in 1999 to halt
the killing and expulsion of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo by Serbian forces
fighting a two-year counter-insurgency war. Serbia does not recognise Kosovo as
independent.
2016 UEFA European Championship, commonly referred
to as Euro 2016, will be the 15th European Championship for men's national
football teams organised by UEFA. It is scheduled to be held in France in June
2016. For the first time, the European Championship final tournament will be
contested by 24 teams, having been expanded from the 16-team format that had
been used since 1996. Under this new format, the finalists will contest a group
stage consisting of six groups of four teams, followed by a knockout stage
including three rounds and the final. As hosts, France have automatically
qualified for the final tournament, while the other 53 national teams will
compete in a qualifying competition. Among
these teams are back-to-back defending champions Spain, and for the first time
since their affiliation with UEFA, Gibraltar. The winners will earn the right
to participate in the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup hosted by Russia.
The qualifying competition for UEFA Euro 2016 is scheduled
to be played from September 2014 to November 2015 to determine the 23 teams to
join France. Group I of the UEFA Euro
2016 qualifying tournament is one of the nine groups to decide the teams which
qualify. Group I consists of five teams: Portugal, Denmark, Serbia, Armenia,
and Albania, where they play against each other home-and-away in a round-robin
format. European football governing body UEFA banned Albania fans from
attending the clash in Belgrade but elected to allow the two countries to face
each other, despite long-standing political tensions.
The politically-sensitive
Euro 2016 qualifier between Serbia and Albania was abandoned yesterday following a brawl between players from both
sides after a flag stunt, with Olsi Rama - the brother of Albanian Prime
Minister Edi Rama - reportedly accused
of starting the trouble. The Group I game, with no away fans permitted, was
interrupted when a flag depicting so-called Greater Albania, an area covering
all parts of the Balkans where ethnic Albanians live, was flown over the
terraces and pitch by what appeared to be a remote controlled mini drone near
the end of the first half.
A Serbian player
eventually grabbed the flag at the Partizan stadium, prompting an angry
reaction from Albanian players and an unsightly melee ensued. Riot police then moved in when around a dozen
fans invaded the pitch and attacked the Albanian players, forcing them to
retreat into the tunnel as flares were thrown from the terraces. After a delay of around half an hour, English referee Martin
Atkinson abandoned the game, which stood at 0-0.
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
15th Oct 2014.
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