Covic: “If the banner had been a neutral color, we would have kept it with Zalgiris, burned Serbian flags”

The Red Star administration’s order for the team’s players not to hold the Ukrainian flag with the message “Stop The War” for the Russian invasion of Ukraine made noise. However, the Serbs continue to support their decision, with team leader Nebojsa Covic making his arguments in an interview.

The strongman of the “Red-Whites” referred to the issue, gave the background to the case and emphasized that the Serbs had stressed from the beginning that they were ready to hold a banner with the same message, but on one condition: The banner should be neutral in color and not the colors of the flag of Ukraine.

“We told the EuroLeague five days before the Zalgiris game because we knew the position of the Lithuanians that we couldn’t take part in it.” Covic initially said, adding: “We said we could hold a banner if it was a neutral color because it sends out a gentle message. But in this anti-Russian hysteria, she is being abused by the media. “Without the colors of Ukraine we would have kept the banner.”

Covic then referred to the talks with Zalgiris and lamented that the Lithuanians were burning Serbian flags: “We held a similar banner in Belgrade. Three days before the game against Zalgiris we informed the team and asked for a neutral banner. They disagreed. “If you don’t want to hold a banner where you’re obviously taking the side of a page, then you don’t have to hold it,” we were told.

After that, Zalgiris fans began harassing the fans, players and team staff with slogans pro-Serbia. Four children from Sweden had Serbian flags and they took them and threw them away. “There is information that they burned Serbian flags.”

Finally, the president of the Red Star spoke of provocations, also referring to the NATO flags lying on the field: “There were no NATO flags in the first half, but they appeared in the second. They wanted to challenge us. The game ended the way it ended, we lost and the match reporter wrote what happened.

I don’t know what will happen, politics has entered the sport. Nobody can force us to hold a banner. What if we forced a group to hold a banner that said ‘Kosovo is Serbia’? We have the right to speak our mind. We will not politicize the situation. What if we held the banner? We have to listen to our own thoughts, our own people and our fans. I am not ashamed of our decision. This is my position.”