Flag of Greater Albania is like the flag of Nazi Germany. Imagine one over Wembley or Stade de France

Foto: Tanjug/AP

There was a drone, and then there was chaos.

Preporučujemo

The UEFA Euro 2016 Qualifications football match between the national teams of Serbia and Albania on Tuesday was abandoned after brother of Albanian Prime Minister organized the scandalous drone event and via remote control directed the flying object that carried the flag of so called Greater Albania.

After Serbian Stefan Mitrović, who plays for Bundesliga side Freiburg, brought down the drone and was immediately surrounded by Albanian players who took the flag away, everything went out of control. There was a home fan attacking Albanian players, Serbian players trying to stop the fight and protect the Albanians, and there was a referee who stopped the game.

To understand what's the big deal, why this flag is such massive provocation, why it is the same as if someone flew the flag of Nazi Germany over Wembley Stadium or Stade de France, why it breaks all UEFA rules of no politics on football matches and why Albanian FA needs to be severely punished for it, you'll have to understand what is Greater Albania.

The concept is century old, and it's goal is the creation of unified Albanian state that will incorporate every single area where Albanians live. This includes northwestern Greek provinces of Thesprotia and Preveza among others, entire western portion of Macedonia, Kosovo that declared independence in 2008, other parts of southern and western Serbia, and eastern Montenegro.

Only once in history was this accomplished, during the World War II with the works of Albanian Fascist Party and under the protection of Mussolini's Italy and, when Allies knocked Italy out of the war, under the protection of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.

The political project of Greater Albania is far from dead, since recent Gallup's survey showed that vast majority of ethnic Albanians in Balkans still support the idea. Sali Berisha, then Prime Minister of Albania, just two years ago publicly spoke about "Albanian lands", causing outrage among all of it's neighbors, and now the brother of current Albanian PM did the same.

Idea that one nation should live in one country is not of course exclusive to Albanians, since world went to war 75 years ago over Hitler's idea that all Germans should be united in Großdeutsches Reich, no matter the costs. Similar thing happened again in Yugoslavia during the nineties. The only difference is that concepts that caused World War II and Yugoslav wars are all dead, all except the concept of Greater Albania.

Obviously such ideas are unacceptable in XXI century, as European Union strongly suggested to Putin when he annexed Crimea earlier this year and mingled in Eastern Ukraine. And UEFA now needs to say exactly the same to Albanian FA.

(Telegraf.rs)