Political flashpoints add a bad taste
Egypt’s superstar Salah and Switzerland embroiled in episodes at the Russia World Cup
■
The World Cup was thrust into the combustible mix of politics and football — dangerous ground that world football takes great pains to avoid — as a growing number of disciplinary proceedings and a star player’s threatened retirement brought several sensitive international flashpoints to the tournament’s doorstep this weekend.
The crises involved players for several teams and touched on a range of topics: Kosovar independence, Serbian nationalism, a beloved Egyptian striker and a controversial Chechen leader. At least one of the disagreements could potentially force Fifa, world football’s governing body, to issue suspensions in the middle of the tournament — possibly affecting which teams advance out of one of the tournament’s first-round groups.
Fifa announced that its disciplinary committee had opened three more proceedings related to Friday’s testy Switzerland-Serbia match — bringing the total from the game to six. Hours later, it emerged that one of the tournament’s most popular players, Egyptian striker Mohammad Salah, was considering retiring from his national team in the wake of his interactions with a Chechen politician.
Fifa’s political problems began when Swiss players Granit Xhaka and Xherdan Shaqiri both made the so-called double-eagle symbol with their hands after scoring in a 2-1 victory against Serbia. The gesture, made by linking the thumbs and fanning out the fingers on both hands, is a nationalist sign that many with ethnic Albanian roots make to symbolise the black eagle in Albania’s flag. (Both Xhaka and Shaqiri have roots in Kosovo, an ethnically Albanian province that fought a war of independence against Serb-dominated Yugoslav forces in the late 1990s.)
Disciplinary proceeding
Serbia’s football federation faced its own disciplinary proceeding, though, for a display of political messages by its fans during the game. Serbia.
Then, on Sunday, Fifa opened three new inquiries: against Switzerland’s Stephan Lichtsteiner, who is not of Albanian descent, for making the double-eagle gesture, and against Serbia’s federation president, Slavisa Kokeza, and its coach, Mladen Krstajic, for statements they were accused of making after the game.
Then came word that Salah, Egypt’s biggest star, was considering retiring from the national team once the World Cup ended after he was drawn into a political controversy related to his federation’s decision to live and train in Chechnya during the tournament.
“In football you have emotions,” Shaqiri said in his short appearance before the news media after the game. “You can see what I did. It was just emotion.”
The Serbians, though, were enraged. Kokeza, the federation president, called the gesture “scandalous and shameful.”