National Teams, Multiple Loyalties. A Discussion of three Football Case Studies

1 * Correspondence to: Albrecht Sonntag. ESSCA School of Management, 1 Rue Joseph Lakanal, 49000 Angers (Francia) – [email protected] – http://orcid. org/0000-0003-0428-6336 How to cite: Sonntag, Albrecht, y García García, Borja (2020). National Teams, Multiple Loyalties. A Discussion of three Football Case Studies. Papeles del CEIC, vol. 2020/1, papel 224, 1-17. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1387/pceic.20832). Received: May, 2019; Final version: October, 2019. ISSN 1695-6494 / © 2020 UPV/EHU This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Papeles del CEIC, 2020/1 http://dx.doi.org/10.1387/pceic.20832 ISSN 1695-6494 Na t i o N a l te a m s , mu l t i p l e lo y a l t i e s . a Di s c u s s i o N o f t h r e e fo o t b a l l ca s e st u D i e s Selecciones nacionales, lealtades múltiples. Una discusión de tres casos de fútbol Albrecht Sonntag* ESSCA School of Management (Francia) Borja García García School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, Loughborough University (UK) Keywords National Identity Dual Identities Football National Team AbstrAct: In several Western European countries, multi-ethnic societies are also reflected in national football teams that field players of migrant origin. This article presents an empirical analysis of how football players with dual identities have negotiated their allegiances to their ‘home’ and ‘adoptive’ footballing countries. Research is conducted through inductive analysis of empirical data based on three case studies from Germany, Switzerland and France, dating from 2018. These cases highlight the different manners in which such football players are confronted with their dual identities when opting for the National Team of their «country of adoption». Our findings reveal that, while the national identity of professional players seems to be largely irrelevant in the globalised Football Clubs and Leagues of Western Europe, players with migrant background face serious difficulties when expressing, spontaneously or intentionally, their dual allegiance. The main theoretical contribution of the article is the conceptualisation of a process in which large parts of public opinion and media discourse, even in countries with a long-standing history of migration, have trouble to come to terms with dual loyalties. In those cases, football players face a demand to explicitly make public their allegiance when bearing the nation’s «colours» on the football pitch. Palabras clave Identidad nacional Identidades duales Fútbol Selección nacional Resumen: En varios países de la Europa occidental podemos encontrar sociedades con una composición multi-étnica que se refleja también en la composición de sus equipos nacionales de fútbol, los que cada vez alinean más jugadores de origen emigrante. Este artículo, con un énfasis principalmente empírico, analiza cómo los jugadores de fútbol con identidad nacional dual negocian su adhesión a su país de origen y al país de adopción futbolística. La investigación se plantea mediante tres casos de estudio situados en Alemania, Suiza y Francia en 2018. En estos casos se analiza la manera en que distintos futbolistas se han enfrentado a su identidad dual al jugar en la selección nacional de su país de adopción. El principal resultado de la investigación sugiere que, mientras la identidad nacional de los futbolistas parece no ser excesivamente relevante en las competiciones Europeas de clubes, no ocurre lo mismo con las selecciones nacionales. Jugadores con origen emigrante encuentran tremendas dificultades para expresar, de manera sencilla o espontánea, su identidad dual dentro del fútbol de selecciones. La principal contribución teórica del artículo es una conceptualización del proceso por el que una gran parte de la opinión pública y del discurso de los medios de comunicación, incluso en países con una amplia tradición de acogida de emigrantes como Francia, Suiza o Alemania, tienen dificultades para entender las complejidades de las identidades duales. En esos casos, los futbolistas se ven forzados a hacer pública, de manera clara y expresa, su lealtad hacia los «colores» de su país sobre el terreno de juego. Albrecht Sonntag, Borja García García 2 Papeles del CEIC, 2020/1, 1-17 INtRODuCtION AND PROLOGuE: «HeimAt» «Heimat» is one of those perfectly untranslatable German words loaded with emotion. It stems from the same lexical field as «Home» («Heim»), but carries many additional semantic connotations of romantic soul-searching, regional roots and cultural belonging. The term «Heimat» is a singulare tantum, a noun that describes an abstract concept that only exists in its singular form. Therefore, it is all the more surprising that the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in his quality as official Head of State, deliberately ignored this grammatical restriction by declaring, at the official annual celebrations of «Germany Unity Day» on October 3rd, 2017, that «Heimat also exists in the plural» (Der Spiegel, 2017). He did so by insisting on Germany’s remarkable success-story of decades of integration of migrants, as an antidote to current migration anxieties following what is generally referred to as «the 2015 Refugees Crisis». He added: «a human being can have more than one Heimat, one can find a new Heimat, and our Federal Republic has already provided proof of this claim for millions of people» (ibídem: par. 43). Listening to this speech, it was easy to predict that the sentence «Heimat also exists in the plural» was likely to make the headlines the next day and to be passionately and polemically discussed in both traditional media and social networks. In hindsight, however, it was rather difficult to anticipate that within a few months, the President would have to use the very same message when trying to extinguish a particularly heated public debate about the «Germanness» of two pillars of the national football team. It was in vain: on Sunday July 22, 2018, Mesut Özil resigned from the German National Team, precisely because he claimed he was denied the right to have a plural Heimat. The focus of this contribution lies with the question of dual identities in contemporary football and the loyalty pressure it produces on players in both their culture of origin and the society of their country of adoption. Our objective is to discuss whether, in the context of national football teams, Heimat can actually be in the plural. How do professional football players of migrant origin negotiate their dual identity? Rather than on Football Clubs or Professional Leagues, the article focuses on National Teams, as they have been widely considered an important element of national identity formation or consolidation. Thus, we aim to discuss the extent to which footballers of migrant background are, against their will, forced to explain themselves publicly on their loyalty to the country of adoption, and the socio-cultural reaction to cases when the loyalty issue becomes problematic. Based on several decades of research on international football and national identity, as well as on expert interviews before and after the 2018 World Cup in Russia, this paper aims to discuss three case studies, to understand recent evolutions in attitudes to players with migrant background in National Teams. The three case studies are presented in the form of vignettes or episodes: the first involving Mesut Özil and his German-Turkish identity. The second presents the French National Team (World Champions) and their players of migrant origin. Finally, the cases of Granit Xhaka and Xherdan Shaqiri and their controversial reivindication of their Kosovar origin whilst representing Switzerland in the World Cup. Following the exploration of these case studies along five episodes, we put our findings into perspective in the last one. The article concludes with a discussion on what lessons can be drawn from the analysis of these case studies, and ends with a short epilogue that reflects on the future challenges that immigration is posing to national football teams. National Teams, Multiple Loyalties. A Discussion of three Football Case Studies http://dx.doi.org/10.1387/pceic.20832 3 Episode 1. GERMANy, SuMMER 2018: AN INtEGRAtION SuCCESS StORy WItH AN uNHAPPy ENDING. When Mesut Özil publicly resigned from the German National Team only one week after the 2018 World Cup finished, his decision sent a shockwave through German media and society. His open letter in English, posted in three parts on his Facebook page, cited «racism and lack of respect» as main motivations for this step, which he said he had taken «with a heavy heart» (Özil, 2018). Mesut Özil had played 92 international matches for Germany; he was a member of the World Cup winning team in 2014. Özil’s resignation was the result of a highly charged public debate in Germany, across all traditional media and social networks, following the publication of a photo taken on May 13, 2018 with the Turkish President Reccep Tayip Erdoğan at an event in London. In that picture, Özil and Erdoğan were also accompanied by two other German-born players of Turkish origin, Ilkay Gündoğan (also a German international), and Cenk Tosun (who had opted to play for the Turkish National Team). The three players offered dedicated jerseys of their respective clubs to Mr. Erdoğan, addressing him as «my President» (Olterman, 2018: par. 3). That photo opportunity, organised by the three players’ agents, was interpreted as an active support for the election campaign of a politician, whose autocratic and authoritarian tendencies were deemed perfectly incompatible with the democratic values embodied by the Federal Republic of Germany. Moreover, President Erdoğan had, over recent years, repeatedly slandered Germany in an aggressive manner, comparing current German politics to Nazi methods, and encouraging German citizens with Turkish origins to willingly resist integration in German society. In the two months between the day the photo was published worldwide and the resignation letter posted by Mesut Özil, the (justified) criticism of this more than awkward endorsement of a political leader with semi-dictatorial attitudes was quickly followed by highly emotional reactions on social media. Özil and Gündoğan were massively booed by the spectators of the last preparation games before the 2018 World Cup; the pros and cons for the exclusion of both players from the national squad were the object of a heated debate. At the same time, the output of the social networks was increasingly dominated by a very active minority with strong racist undertones (Schulze-Marmeling, 2018). The helpless and somewhat erratic manner in which the German Football Federation (DFB in German), and especially its President Reinhard Grindel, tried to steer through this crisis contributed to its escalation. Neither the President, nor the National Coach Joachim Löw, who was known to hold Mesut Özil in high esteem, nor the Team’s Manager, Oliver Bierhoff, fully understood the symbolic dimensions of what had become «the Özil Affair». A quickly arranged «explanation» between the players and the three representatives of the Federation had no consequences whatsoever. Similarly, the two players’ visit to Germany’s Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and a joint statement on their conversation, including the President’s insistence on Heimat in the plural (Der Spiegel, 2018), were considered by many as too little, too late. The harm was already done. All the more so as Özil —contrary to Gündoğan, who tried to apologise for the bad impression left by the photo opportunity with Erdoğan, pledging his full identification with the German Team— had stoically refused to apologise for his endorsement of Erdoğan, or at least publicly explain it. A wall of silence that was only broken by his triple Facebook posts on July 22. Albrecht Sonntag, Borja García García 4 Papeles del CEIC, 2020/1, 1-17 Some had hoped that success on the pitch at the Russian 2018 World Cup would calm things down. Needless to say, the simple fact that the German Team was eliminated in the first round for the first time in its long history, after losing to Mexico and South Korea, did not mitigate the inflammation of the public debate. While game statistics provided evidence that Mesut Özil had been one of the rare players to deliver a perfectly satisfying performance, he was nonetheless blamed by a large number of media pundits and anonymous commentators for having unsettled or destabilised the team. When Özil finally published his resignation statement on Facebook a week after the World Cup final, another controversial debate was ignited between those (including other players) who categorically —and rather credibly— rejected the existence of racism within the DFB and the National Team, and those who showed understanding for his act and saw the whole affair as evidence for widely shared, latent anti-Turkish racism in German society. Again, this paper is not about racism or discrimination in international football. The topic has been widely and competently addressed by academic research (Burdsey, 2011; Cashmore and Cleland, 2014; Dembowski et al., 2015; Garland and Rowe, 2001; González and Martín, 2006; Llopis-Goig, 2009; Merkel and Tokarski, 1996). And since racism or discrimination are highly unlikely to be eradicated any time soon for a number of reasons, they will continue to be major issues in the overall debate of professional football’s commitment to ethical and social responsibility (Sonntag and Ranc, 2015). Episode 2. FLASHBACK, EIGHt yEARS EARLIER: HANDLING LOyALty PRESSuRE On October 8, 2010, Mesut Özil had already been the object of a famous photo with a leading politician. Eighteen months after his first cap with the German National Team, and only three months after signing up for Real Madrid following a brilliant World Cup performance that made him an emblematic player of the new multicultural German Team, Özil was in the line-up for a particularly sensitive qualifier for the 2012 European Championship against Turkey in the Berlin Olympiastadion. As could be expected, a large crowd from the Turkish diaspora in Germany occupied two thirds of the 75,000 seats, turning the match into a somewhat surrealistic away-game for Germany. For many of those spectators, «the dogma of singular national identity» described by Yağmur Nuhrat in her excellent study Mediating Turkishness in Transnational Football (Nuhrat, 2015: 133), was clearly not negotiable. Considering Özil a «traitor» to the land of their ancestors —despite the fact that he had been born and raised as third-generation migrant in Germany— they booed and whistled his every move on the pitch. Impressively, given the pressure he was exposed to, Özil delivered a brilliant performance scoring a goal, but diplomatically refraining from celebrating it. The most important moment of this match, however, took place in the team’s changing room, when Chancellor Angela Merkel dropped by to congratulate the players, most of whom she personally knew already from previous occasions. The photo that was taken on this occasion, showing Mrs Merkel shaking hands with a half- National Teams, Multiple Loyalties. A Discussion of three Football Case Studies http://dx.doi.org/10.1387/pceic.20832 5 naked, smiling Mesut Özil, was turned by the Chancellery’s communication service into an instant icon of Germany’s migration history. It is not exaggerated to claim that Mesut Özil has been instrumentalized twice in his career by political leaders for their respective agenda. One may argue that there is a qualitative difference between being used as symbol for an overall humanistic integration policy and being asked to endorse an increasingly authoritarian regime that raised worldwide concerns on its respect of civil liberties. The fact remains that the footballer himself had not actively asked for either of the photos. It may be convenient to accuse politicians of using football for their own purposes but, how could they do otherwise? In football-crazy countries —of which the European continent counts a significant number— it is only coherent that the highly symbolic character of the National Teams is exploited by leading politicians. In the «stress communities» that our contemporary Nation-States have become (Sloterdijk, 1999), they are in desperate need of the rare and essential moments of emotional cohesion that football can provide. Football players have always been «ambassadors against their will», as Ilkay Gündoğan’s brother Ilker, a PhD student in East Asian Studies, formulated in a reflective blogpost in Spring 2018 (Gündoğan, 2018). From the moment national football teams appeared at the beginning of the 20th Century, they have been perceived as «uniquely effective a medium for inculcating national feeling» (Hobsbawm, 1990: 143). It is only logical that Benedict Anderson’s (1983) seminal concept of the «imagined community» —which, according to Eric Hobsbawm «seems more real as a team of eleven named people» (ibídem.) — has undoubtedly been the most-quoted reference at each and every international football conference. Today, however, the community they are supposed to embody has changed. In multicultural societies, dual identities are no longer a rare exception, but a reality experienced by a significant number of individuals in a variety of configurations. Of course, rather than mirror the effective ethnic diversity of a given society, a National Team mainly reflects the rules and practices governing citizenship and access to nationality that are currently in vigour in the Nation-State concerned. But even in countries where the acquisition of national citizenship by migrants —often referred to as naturalization, a revealing term on our conception of Nation-States— is facilitated and dual citizenship is legally possible, the question of loyalty never seems entirely settled. In the midst of the Özil Affair, on July 2018, the German journalist and book author of Turkish origin, Baha Güngor, summed this issue up in an interview for the Cologne Daily Kölner Stadtanzeiger: «This young man is currently suffering the fate of hundreds of thousands Germans with Turkish origins, who have entirely integrated into German society, but who, precisely because they also acknowledge their Turkish roots, find themselves permanently between the frontlines. This is something that each normal citizen of Turkish origin experiences, the fact that he is asked again and again to make a profession of loyalty for one of the two sides. Society does not grant him to be both at the same time: German and Turkish.» (Nägele, 2018: par. 14) Clearly, Turkey, with its rather archaic understanding of nationality, does not have the monopoly of the dogma of singular national identity. Quite on the contrary: Football, with the highly emotional discourse it triggers, reveals that the dogma seems just as well and alive in Albrecht Sonntag, Borja García García 6 Papeles del CEIC, 2020/1, 1-17 the mindset of large parts of one of the most open and multicultural societies in Western Europe. One might argue that Germany’s acceptance of its undeniable character as mass immigration country and its introduction of a new citizenship law including the option of dual nationalities in 1999 are still very recent phenomena1, and that the internalization of such massive cultural change simply needs time. But Germany is not alone in having trouble to come to terms with multiple loyalties in practice, while tolerating them in theory and principle. In a country like France, which looks back on 150 years of rather successful integration of massive successive waves of immigration (Noiriel, 1988), the question has been flaring up regularly over the last decades. Episode 3. FRANCE, SuMMER 2018: AFRICAN WORLD CHAMPIONS? On July 17, 2018, in his late-night show on American television, the South-African born entertainer Trevor Noah jokingly picked up a comment that had already been made on Twitter. To him, thanks to the visible presence of players of African origin in the French team, Africa had won the World Cup (Timsit, 2018). This relatively cheap joke, which deliberately ignored the complexity of the nexus of family origins, citizenship and personal loyalties, set off a rather serious controversy. The French Ambassador to the United States, Gérard Araud, known to be a rather unconventional and open-minded man, addressed Noah an official letter in which he reminded him that 21 of the 23 French players had been born in France, pointing out the difference between the American and French concepts of ethnicity: «Unlike the United States of America, France does not refer to their citizens based on their race, religion or origin. To us, there is no hyphenated identity, roots are an individual reality. By calling them an African team, it seems you are denying their Frenchness. This, even in jest, legitimizes the ideology which claims whiteness as the only definition of being French.» (Araud, 2018) Needless to say, Trevor Noah had an easy time ridiculing the Ambassador’s letter in his next show. And he enjoyed doing so with the applause of an audience that was all too willing to show its political correctness in supporting ethnic minorities against French neo-colonialist supremacy. Both Noah and his public were in sharp contrast to Barack Obama, himself a member of an ethnic minority, but staunch defender of integration through full citizenship without discrimination. Speaking at an event in South Africa to commemorate the 100th birthday of Nelson Mandela, he said: «The French Football Team just won the World Cup. Not all of these folks look like Gauls to me. But they’re French. They’re French» (France24, 2018: par. 3). «Why can’t they be both?» Noah asked, from his point of view (Timsit, 2018). While he was celebrating hyphenated difference, Obama was commending indifference to racial or religious characteristics, very much in the understanding of the French Republic. And rather in line with the French players with African migration background themselves. Not a single one of them seemed willing to be used as spokesperson or representative of an ethnic minority. 1 For more details on this issue, see Sonntag (2015). National Teams, Multiple Loyalties. A Discussion of three Football Case Studies http://dx.doi.org/10.1387/pceic.20832 7 In the night of the final, when a Tweet attributed each of the squad’s 23 names a national flag according to their presumed origins, left back Benjamin Mendy reproduced the same Tweet, but with a French tricolore in front of each name and the simple legend «fixed», accompanied by a smiling emoji. At the end of the year, the Paris New Year’s Eve party always uses the Arc de Triomphe as a giant projection screen for a spectacular light show. On December 31st, 2018, a tribute to the World Cup winners was of course inevitable. What the organisers did was simply project the 23 names together with the name of the city or village where they grew up. The glamorous capital taking a deep bow to places like Ménival, Lagny-sur-Marne, Jeumont, Bondy or Mâcon —it is difficult to imagine a more appropriate symbol of national cohesion. What this episode about the «Frenchness» of the «African» World Cup winners highlights is, on the one hand, a long-standing lack of understanding between French and Anglo-American notions of citizenship, identity and community. On the other hand, it also shows an evolution in the discourse on national belonging and ethnical origins, both internationally and within France. In order to understand this evolution, it is revealing to go back 20 years in time to analyse the World Cup victory of another French multi-ethnic football team. Episode 4. FLASHBACK, tWENty yEARS EARLIER: FRENCH ASSIMILAtION AND ItS LIMItS The French Team to win the World Cup at home in 1998 was hailed, both domestically and abroad, as a highly symbolic collective for France’s multicultural society. The three colours of the national flag —«bleu-blanc-rouge»— were transformed into the famous «black-blancbeur» slogan, in allusion to the ethnic mix of the team, which included several black players (both French-born in overseas territories and of genuine migrant origin), white players from very different regions in France, as well as Zinedine Zidane, the icon of the North African community (colloquially referred to as «beur»), whose parents had immigrated from Algeria. In the collective euphoria of the moment, the evident harmony within this remarkably homogeneous and sympathetic team was extrapolated —with media, politicians and major intellectuals in rare union— in an almost desperate manner as emblematic for the entire nation. The collective exhilaration responded to the national soul-searching on immigration that had been going on over a good part of the 1990s, especially following the emergence and consolidation of the extreme right-wing party Front National (today renamed Rassemblement National) and its aggressive anti-immigration rhetoric. Heated debates about successive incidents with veiled Muslim girls in public secondary education put growing pressure on the French model of strict secularism (laïcité), while a flurry of academic publications, which were widely discussed in mainstream media, attempted to take stock of the efficiency with which generations of migrants from very different origins had been integrated into French society (Noiriel, 1988; Schnapper, 1991; Todd, 1994; Tribalat, 1995, 1996; Weil, 19912). The creation of what has now become the «National Museum for the History of Immigration» in Paris was 2 For an excellent summary of the debate in mainstream media, see also Bernard (1995). Albrecht Sonntag, Borja García García 8 Papeles del CEIC, 2020/1, 1-17 also launched at the end of the 1990s. Needless to say, the Museum flags a section on migration’s contributions to French sporting successes. Alas, the harmony of the Summer of 1998 could not possibly last. On October 6, 2001, the first ever friendly match between France and Algeria —almost forty years after the latter’s independence— had to be called off after 76 minutes due to a pitch invasion by hundreds of youths of North African descent waving Algerian flags, emotionally overwhelmed by the event and the complexity of their own feelings. The very fact that they appeared lost between two loyalties perceived as conflicting, rather than aggressively protesting against discrimination or whatever perceived tort, was very lucidly analysed by an external observer like Herman Lebovics: «These young people felt an urgent need to establish a certain cultural identity in France, among the French. In French, unlike American English, compound ethnic labels like Algerian-French have no accepted meaning» (Lebovics, 2004: 142). Events like this match —there has never been a second friendly between the two nations so far— highlight the limits of the long-standing French tradition of assimilation. Assimilation is a radical concept, based on the universalism of the French Revolution: the newly arrived Other is fully accepted, without any reserves or discrimination, but his cultural difference is categorically rejected, and it is expected he/she completely and very rapidly adopts the values and socio-cultural norms of the host nation (Bistolfi, 1994). Cultural traditions and especially religious habits from the culture of origin are of course perfectly tolerated, but must remain strictly limited to the private sphere and cannot possibly be the basis of a «minority community». It is worth noting that the term «communautarisme», translated from the Anglo-American philosophy of «communitarianism», has a very negative connotation and is deemed incompatible with Republican principles (Taguieff, 2005). In December 2012, one of the authors of this paper conducted an interview with Raymond Kopa, then aged 81, the first superstar of French football, who had been a member of the Real Madrid Team of the 1950s and was awarded the «Ballon d’Or» for the best European player of the year in 1958. In his younger years, Kopa’s family name was famously shortened from the original Kopaszewski, the name of his Polish grandfather, who had migrated to France in 1919 seeking work in the coalmines of the North. Note that «Raymond», the first name of this third-generation migrant, was already as French as could be. During the interview, Kopa agreed that football had been a formidable means of social mobility for him, but showed no understanding whatsoever for the researcher’s insistent questions about the function of role model he must have had for the Polish community in Northern France. The very notion of «community» seemed to escape him entirely: «I was French, what else would you want me to be?» he shrugged the idea off. In other words, Raymond Kopa was an individual who had completely interiorised the principle of assimilation. Today, even in France, this «one-way street» of integration is no longer the prevalent doctrine. Cultural origins of migrants are met with a higher degree of respect, even in the public space, especially with regards to demonstrations in favour of minorities. High-level politicians have begun to use the term «community» in reference to specific minorities (while, somewhat incoherently, still rejecting «le communautarisme»). None of them would openly advocate full assimilation, a concept that is now connotated to neo-colonialist attitudes. However, the close observation of how the national football team is perceived by public opinion and the behaviour of the players, most of whom (unlike Mesut Özil in Germany) seem fully aware of their role of «ambassadors against their will», reveal a discrepancy between National Teams, Multiple Loyalties. A Discussion of three Football Case Studies http://dx.doi.org/10.1387/pceic.20832 9 the evolution of politically correct discourse and widely spread attitudes. While «integration» as a reciprocal adaptation process between host culture and migrant that ideally produces an «enrichment» of both has become the official doctrine, it may be argued that there remains a deep-seated longing for «assimilation» among large parts of French society. In other words, the «good» individual with migrant background is the one who repeatedly points out how French he/she is. But real and complete assimilation to one’s adoptive culture is difficult, and football competitions provide numerous examples of it. We turn now to examine a clear case of how football is a perfect field to demonstrate dual, and even contradictory, identities and loyalties. Episode 5. SWItzERLAND, SuMMER 2018: uNFORGEttABLE LOyALtIES On June 22, 2018, Switzerland’s late victory (2-1) over Serbia in a World Cup group stage match in Kaliningrad sparked a political controversy. An early goal by Alexander Mitrovic for the Serbians was cancelled out by Granit Xhaka seven minutes into the second half, and a ninetieth minute strike by Xherdan Shaqiri (Lowe, 2018a). Both players of Kosovar origin and Albanian descent celebrated their goals with a hand gesture representing a doubleheaded eagle, a recreation of the Albanian flag’s black emblem. The dramatic last-minute winner, with Shaqiri taking his shirt off and doing the double-eagle gesture along the side of the pitch, followed a game on which local Russian fans joined Serbian supporters in chants of «Serbia-Russia, Serbia-Russia» (Lowe, 2018a). Kosovo’s struggle for independence against the backdrop of the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s and highly sensitive Albano-Serbian ethnic conflicts have transpired into sport, especially football, in recent years. The Kosovo Football Association was recognised by UEFA and FIFA in 2016 (UEFA, 2016), eight years after the country’s self-proclaimed independence and almost immediately after its application for FIFA membership. Since then, the Kosovo National Team has been playing in international competitions, but it cannot call upon some of the most renowned professional footballers of Kosovar origin, for they fled the country with their families at a young age to escape the struggles of the war. Such is the case of Granit Xhaka and Xherdan Shaqiri. Prior to their first matches for the Swiss National Team in 2010 and 2011 respectively, Xhaka and Shaqiri had already played for the Junior National Teams, starting with the U-17 as of 2007. By the time of the 2018 World Cup in Russia, they were well-established international stars of the English Premier League. Their gestures in the match against Serbia were quickly denounced by the Serbian FA to FIFA as being political (Lowe, 2018b). The players avoided making any explicit political references, but let their feelings transpire after the match. «It was for my people, who always supported me. For those who did not neglect me, in my homeland, where my parents’ roots are. These were purely emotions», said Xhaka, whose father was in jail for campaigning in favour of Kosovan independence and whose brother Taulant plays for Albania (Lowe, 2018b: par. 7). 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