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Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Croatia charged for World Cup fans' taunts of Canada goalie

by

820 days ago
20221129

DO­HA, Qatar (AP) — FI­FA opened a dis­ci­pli­nary case against Croa­t­ia on Tues­day be­cause of its fans’ taunts aimed at the Cana­da goal­keep­er who has Ser­bian fam­i­ly ties dur­ing the teams’ World Cup game.

FI­FA said the charge against the Croa­t­ian soc­cer fed­er­a­tion was “due to the be­hav­ior of its fans” and cit­ed rules re­lat­ing to dis­crim­i­na­tion and se­cu­ri­ty at games.

Cana­da goal­keep­er Mi­lan Bor­jan was born in an eth­nic Serb re­gion of Croa­t­ia that was part of the con­flict that split the for­mer Yu­goslavia in the 1990s.

Bor­jan’s fam­i­ly left their home­town in 1995 when it was tak­en by Croa­t­ian forces amid sto­ries that eth­nic Serbs fled on trac­tors.

Dur­ing Cana­da’s 4-1 loss on Sun­day, one ban­ner dis­played by Croa­t­ia fans used a flag of trac­tor man­u­fac­tur­er John Deere and changed the mar­ket­ing slo­gan to tar­get Bor­jan.

Bor­jan moved as a child with his fam­i­ly to Cana­da and chose to rep­re­sent that coun­try at soc­cer, though he plays for sto­ried Ser­bian club Red Star Bel­grade.

FI­FA gave no timetable for a ver­dict in the case which would typ­i­cal­ly be judged with a fine for the fed­er­a­tion.

In the first dis­ci­pli­nary ver­dict of the World Cup on Tues­day, FI­FA im­posed a 10,000 Swiss francs ($10,500) fine on the Ger­man soc­cer fed­er­a­tion for not bring­ing play­ers to the news con­fer­ence that is manda­to­ry one day be­fore a game.

Coach Han­si Flick ap­peared alone Sat­ur­day in breach of tour­na­ment rules to meet in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia in Do­ha ahead of the team play­ing Spain.


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