Nearly two weeks after NATO began its bombardment of Yugoslavia, there is no getting away from the Kosovo crisis, even for football fans. Take Easter Saturday for example, when more than 65,000 spectators turned up at the Olympic Stadium in Rome for Lazio's home tie with AC Milan.
With just seven Serie A games left to play, the Italian title contest has reached the white-hot, nerve-testing, do-or-die time for the main contenders. All championship considerations, however, were temporarily overshadowed when the two sides took the field. TV crews and photographers buzzed around Lazio's charismatic Yugoslav defender Sinisa Mihajlovic as he displayed a T-shirt worn under his Lazio shirt reading, "Peace, No War".
Mihajlovic is a remarkable footballer and is, of course, a Serb. He is already all too familiar with the horrors of war. He was born in Vukovar, a city that suffered serious damage during the Bosnian war. Furthermore, his father Bogdan is a Serb and his mother Viktorija a Croat.
He has already experienced the trauma of returning to Vukovar to find the family home reduced to rubble. He even claims that as he rummaged through the remains of his family home he found a poster of the old Yugoslav national team with himself in it. An X mark had supposedly been drawn across his face, while a bullet hole mark had been made over his heart.
Like many of the talented Serbs scattered around Western Europe's most prestigious soccer clubs, he is worried about the fate of family, relatives and friends back in Yugoslavia.
Speaking after the game (a 0-0 draw that left Lazio six points clear at the top and all the closer to winning the title), Mihajlovic was keen to rectify earlier impressions that led to his protests being perceived as exclusively proSerbian.
"My message certainly isn't intended to be one-sided. I am moved by two equal sentiments - pain for those dying in Belgrade and pain for those dying in Kosovo. However, one thing I want to say is that some of the things written and said about Kosovo are not true. People there are running away not just from the Serbs, but also from NATO's bombs . . .
"I am not saying that Milosevic has not done wrong. All I am saying is that he is not the only one to have done wrong. Everybody should back off a bit - Milosevic, the UCK (Kosovo liberation fighters) and NATO."
Mihajlovic was, of course, not alone in his peaceful protest last Saturday. Two Serb compatriots, Nenad Sakic and Bratislav Zvikovic, who both play for Sampdoria, wore T-shirts with the inscription "Mir Ne Rat" (Peace not War) before Sampdoria's game away to Vicenza. Other players from Juventus, AS Roma, Perugia and Salernitana displayed similar sentiments on Tshirts.
While some of the Yugoslav players understandably admit to finding it hard to keep their minds on soccer, at least one member of an older generation of Serbs is reacting somewhat more philosophically. Vujadin Boskov (68), current coach to Serie A side Perugia, was born in Novi Sad, one of the Yugoslav cities targeted by NATO bombs, while he still has one sister living in Novi Sad and another in Belgrade.
Your correspondent caught up with Boskov at Perugia training last Thursday. As always, he was hospitable and loquacious. While making small chat, he said he was worried for his family, adding that he was sorry for all the Kosovo refugees. Then, eyeing my TV crew, he said:
"Now let's talk football. I'll talk about anything to do with football, I'll talk about anything except the war. I'm a football coach, not a politician."
Come last Saturday, however, even Boskov was wearing a black armband as a sign of mourning as he took his place on the bench for Perugia's 0-0 home draw with Bologna. It is not easy to forget the Balkans war.
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