Fans of the Serbian handball team Partizan dragged politics into their game against Vardar in Belgrade.

In the first half of the game, the Grobari (gravediggers) fan group of Partizan brought a Greek flag to provoke the Macedonian team. In the second half, they went even further – the Grobari put a large sign, in rhyme, prodding Vardar’s Komiti fans: “You are a group with a Serbian name (Serbs also use the word Komiti for guerrilla fighters), but you honor a Bulgarian soldier (reference to Goce Delcev, and a claim that the Macedonian VMRO hero was a Bulgarian). It must be hard to live with such an identity crisis in your head”.

The comment refers to the decades long historic disputes that Macedonian neighbors, both Greece, now Bulgaria, but also Serbia and Albania/Kosovo have started with Macedonia, denying the Macedonian national identity and claiming our history.