ALL VICTORIES CANNOT BE TAKEN AWAY

They say sports are politics, and big-time sports are big-time politics. Azerbaijan saw it for itself on 11 December on the example of the sad story with FC Qarabag, when the national champion of the 2013/14 season was forced out of the Europa League. It must be remembered that the Czech team of referees headed by Miroslav Zelinka disallowed a clear goal by the Agdam team in the last minute of the last group match with Inter Milan. The referee decided, to everyone's amazement, that the goal was scored from "offside" and almost immediately signalled the end of the match. The draw put Ukrainian Dnipro in second place as they beat French Saint-Etienne with a minimum score in a parallel match. Later, even rivals of Qarabag will recognize that the decision of the Czech referee was unfair, while the president of Azerbaijan will call this decision a crime.

In the last issue of R+, we wrote in detail about the game and the possible political motivation of referee's decisions. However, last week's meeting between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and the players and coaches of FC Qarabag and the statements voiced during the meeting clarified the attitude of the country's leadership to this issue: the incident was not an ordinary referee error and Zelinka's decision goes far beyond sports.

"In this game you fought very well. You deserved victory and achieved it. Before the eyes of the whole world, you scored a clear goal. But because of the lack of professionalism or prejudice of the referees, this goal was disallowed, and thus, a barrier was placed in front of you. This is a great injustice," said the head of state while receiving the Karabakh team and their mentor Qurban Qurbanov.

Aliyev equated the referee error to the general unfair attitude towards Azerbaijan by certain foreign circles that cannot digest the successful development of the country, are trying to cast a shadow on its successes and are consistently making efforts to taint, discredit and defame it.

According to the head of state, Qarabag players fell victim precisely to such an unfair attitude. According to Aliyev, the team was shamelessly robbed of its honest victory, and this cannot be regarded as anything other than a crime in the world of sports.

Narciso de Carreras Guiteras, who became president of the Catalan club Barcelona in 1968, once uttered: "Barca is more than a club." This phrase (Mas que un club) today adorns the stands of this, one of the strongest, football clubs in the world. At the same time, this saying is perfectly suited to the last champion of Azerbaijan. A club bearing the name of "Karabakh" is more than a club for a country that has been deprived for more than 20 years of its integral part - Karabakh for a visit to which representatives of the self-styled regime created in this Armenian-occupied land are trying indigenous people - Azerbaijanis - like criminals. For this reason, every game of Qarabag in the international arena gives its players a special motivation, while every victory is perceived in Azerbaijan as a small victory in the cause of bringing forward the liberation of this part of Azerbaijani territory from Armenian occupation. It is a pity that the games of the Agdam club in the fields of Europe were interrupted, and not through their own fault.

One may argue about what was behind the decision of the Czech referee to disallow the winning goal of Qarabag. In fact, many experts, and rightly so, connect this decision to the political events in Ukraine and Europe's desire to push the Ukrainian club into the next stage of the tournament at any price. Quite reasonable assumptions that players of the Ukrainian club scored their winning goal in the parallel match of Dnipro with Saint-Etienne from offside speak in support of this theory. And the Qarabag-Dnipro game in the fourth round, in which the Ukrainian team won with a score of 1: 2, left a lot of questions about the impartiality of refereeing by the Polish referee brigade.

This is not the first time that the West uses sports and cultural events to promote political interests. Suffice it to recall that the "orange revolution" in Kiev took place in December 2004 after the victory of the Ukrainian singer Ruslana at Eurovision-2004. It was Ruslana who became one of the symbols of the revolution that occurred later, following which Viktor Yushchenko was elected president.

UEFA also made its contribution to the support of Kiev at the time, making a decision in April 2007 to hold the European Football Championship of 2012 in Ukraine and Poland. Interestingly, the results of voting in Cardiff then caused a lot of questions. Italy made it into the final round with 11 votes then and second place went to the joint bid of Croatia and Hungary, while the Polish-Ukrainian tandem came only third. However, the final round of voting showed a very different picture - the Polish-Ukrainian bid won with an overwhelming advantage of 12 votes, while the Italians won only four votes and the Hungarians and Croats were left with nothing. The head of the Italian Football Federation, Giancarlo Abate, called the decision of UEFA political, and the then Italy coach Marcello Lippi linked this decision with the intention of UEFA to promote football in Eastern Europe. The same opinion was held by representatives of Hungary and Croatia.

Thus, there are sufficient grounds for suspecting UEFA of excessive love for Ukraine. And if Dnipro wins the Europa League this season, it won't be any sensation.

Here you can also think of other injustices that occurred during the previous matches of Qarabag. In particular, the European press often referred to the Azerbaijani club as Armenian. The question is about a different thing. Many overseas do not like to associate Karabakh with Azerbaijan, whether it is a territory or a football club. The ubiquitous double standards towards Azerbaijan apply to sports, culture and other areas that seem to have nothing in common with politics. A when it comes to Karabakh, these double standards are even more obvious.

What can be done in this situation? Under the most optimistic scenario, the appeal of Qarabag, which will be considered in early February, will end with disciplinary action against the referee, but will not change the final 0:0 in the UEFA minutes on the Qarabag-Inter match.

To all appearances, Azerbaijan, which is accustomed to a prejudiced attitude, will have to put up with the unfair decision of the referees even if it gets them punished. But putting up with a referee error, no matter what is behind it, does not mean putting up with the injustice the country has been facing for more than two decades.

Azerbaijan will continue to go its own way with its independent policy, consistently achieving this goal and proving that no one is able leave it "offside" on the main issues. Here we would like to recall another statement by the president of Azerbaijan at the same meeting with Qarabag players: "Our advantage is that there is no referee brigade governing our relations with other countries or international organizations. We have our say in this fight, and in most cases the victory is ours." So the main struggle for Karabakh is yet to come.

AT FIRST HAND

"Our advantage is that there is no referee brigade governing our relations with other countries or international organizations. We have our say in this struggle, and in most cases the victory is ours."

Ilham Aliyev, President of Azerbaijan