Extraordinary meeting of the FSS Board for Emergency Matters

Earlier today, the FSS Board for Emergency Matters held an extraordinary meeting in the premises of the Sports Centre of the Football Association of Serbia, presided by Tomislav Karadžić, president of our organization.

The meeting took place upon communication of the decision of members of the UEFA Control and Disciplinary Body. Let’s recall, the FA of Serbia has been officially informed of the decisions this morning, after the meeting of this body, which was held yesterday. This time the UEFA Control and Disciplinary Body was composed of president Thomas Partl from Austria, and two members Joel Wolf from Luxemburg and Hans Lorenz from Germany, and the decisions were made on the matter of match abandonment in the 41’ at the 0:0 result of the qualifier for the UEFA EURO 2016 France between Serbia and Albania, played on 14 October 2014 at the FK Partizan stadium in Belgrade:

1. The match Serbia – Albania is registered with 3:0 in favor of Serbia.

2. The Football Association of Serbia is deducted three (3) points for the current 15th UEFA European Championship qualifying round

3. The Football Association of Serbia is ordered to play their next two (2) UEFA competition matches as host association behind closed doors.

4. The Football Association of Serbia is fined with € 100.000.

5. The Football Association of Albania is fined with € 100.000

The grounds for the decisions will be submitted to the Football Association of Serbia within the next five days.

At today’s meeting of the Board for Emergency Matters all the aspects of the decision were deliberated on the basis of regulations and facts the FA of Serbia submitted in the written brief to the members of the UEFA Control and Disciplinary Committee. It was mutually agreed and decided that the FA of Serbia will use its right to an appeal against the decision to the UEFA Appeals Committee in the set deadline: announcement of an appeal three days upon receipt of the grounds of the decision, and submission of an appeal within the five days.

Some of the basic reasons for these decisions are as follows:

–       Contradiction in the decision-making process – the match is registered 3:0 in favor of Serbia, whilst the deduction of points was ordered against our national team only. At the same time the guilt of the opponents is proved, and we were deducted three points, which make 12,5% of the total points that a team in our group can win.

–       Lack of principles in comparison with the decisions of the same body – UEFA Control and Disciplinary Committee after the „Genoa case“. It was established then that the match organizer (Italian FA) was not guilty for incidents and all the sanctions (match was registered with 3:0 in favor of Italy, match before an emptied stadium and fine) were aimed at the opponent (FA of Serbia). Now by registering the match by 3:0 in favor of Serbia the guilt and responsibility of the opposing side was confirmed, and all the other decisions contravene it, and are to the detriment of the FA of Serbia.

–       It is about the precedent in the decision-making process before the UEFA bodies, from the moment the Yugoslav National Team was evicted from the final tournament of the European Championship 1992 in Sweden, because neither that, or this decision were based exclusively and primarily on the application of the competition regulations

–       We expected that all the UEFA bodies’ decisions would be fair and equally applied at any competition step. Namely, the question is, what would have happened if this was a play-off match, would the points be deducted then?

–       We get an impression that the new modes are constantly tried out in a case of the Football Association of Serbia and the Serbian football, especially in terms of the disciplinary – punitive measures , because so far we have not witnessed that within the European qualifications the match is registered by an ’official result’ in favor of a team, and the same team then taken the points away.

Within the conclusions from today’s meeting , members of the Board for Emergency Matters requested the emergency session of the Council for Prevention of Violence in Sport, to come up with new evidence of a banner of a political-fascist connotation which was a cause to the interruption of the match Serbia – Albania.