Winter in Belgrade Means Club v Country Rears Its Ugly Head

By: Martha | November 19th, 2007

Dude, that is NOT good. When I turned on the (entirely legal, of course) stream for the Serbia-Kazakhstan match on Saturday, all I got was a black screen for about 15 minutes. No matter where I looked or who I asked, no one could see anything from Partizan Stadium, be it online or on TV, and despite the start time having passed, none of the gametrackers had budged. Just as panicked thoughts of crazed fan violence filled my head, the screen went up and I saw: Snow. Lots and lots of snow. Like, really a lot. And nothing else — no supporters, no players, no officials. Just an empty pitch, covered with snow. Needless to say, the match was postponed, pushed back 24 hours, by which time everyone was sure global warming would return to form and everything would be fine again.

The problem, though, is that it didn’t. The snow didn’t stop, Belgrade was buried, and it was impossible to play the match. As a result, it was rescheduled again — for Saturday, November 24, when all of the leagues in Europe will be back in action. Hellooooo club v country conflict!

Kazakhstan are out, so not having their first-choice players won’t matter much on Saturday, no matter what happens in the midweek matches. And, if Portugal manage not to lose to Finland on Wednesday, Serbia will be eliminated, too. If, however, Serbia beat Poland on Wednesday and the Finns pull a miracle (and, given how bad Portugal have looked lately, that’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility), there are going to be a whole lot of Serbs wanting to be released by their clubs. The biggest names among them are Manchester United’s Nemanja Vidic, who would potentially miss his club’s match with Bolton, and Inter Milan’s Dejan Stankovic who has just returned from injury and would not only miss Inter’s home match with Atalanta, but also might face club concerns about risking his fitness.