Romania defeated Kosovo 2-0 in a EURO 2024 qualifier on Tuesday, but the match was suspended in the 18th minute after \u201cdiscriminatory behavior from some supporters,\u201d according to UEFA\u2019s website. <\/p>\n
A section of Romanian fans held up a banner that read \u2018Kosovo is Serbia,\u2019 while some members of the home end chanted \u201cSerbia, Serbia,\u201d according to Reuters. <\/p>\n
The game was temporarily paused, with the referee taking the players off the field. <\/p>\n
It also said it \u201cfirmly condemns provocative messages of a political, ideological, religious or insulting nature\u201d and confirmed law enforcement had identified those involved. <\/p>\n
\u201cA legal investigation will be conducted according to the facts committed,\u201d it added. <\/p>\n
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, following the 1998-99 war in which Kosovar Albanians attempted to break from what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, made up of today\u2019s Serbia and Montenegro. NATO intervened in the war to protect Kosovo\u2019s Albanian majority. <\/p>\n
Serbia views Kosovo as a breakaway state and does not recognize its independence. Kosovo\u2019s Serbs view themselves as part of Serbia, and see Belgrade as their capital, rather than Pristina. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Romania does not recognize Kosovo, which has caused tension between the two. <\/p>\n
The game was eventually restarted, with Kosovo being reduced to 10 men just before the half-time interval when Vedat Muriqi was sent off after receiving a second yellow card for a foul. <\/p>\n
Although it took much of the second half for the hosts to break the deadlock, Romania finally exploited its numerical advantage and moved ahead in the 83rd minute through Nicolae Stanciu, before Valentin Mih\u0103il\u0103 doubled the lead in added time. <\/p>\n
Romania moves into second place on 12 points in Group I, while Kosovo dropped to fifth position and remain winless on four points. <\/p>\n\n
Romania defeated Kosovo 2-0 in a EURO 2024 qualifier on Tuesday, but the match was suspended in the 18th minute after \u201cdiscriminatory behavior from some supporters,\u201d according to UEFA\u2019s website. A section of Romanian fans held up a banner that read \u2018Kosovo is Serbia,\u2019 while some members of the home end chanted \u201cSerbia, Serbia,\u201d according <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8425,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8424","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}