While the World Cup was consuming sporting hours, other sport continued. This included Wimbledon tennis, the Men's Singles title being won, not for the first time, by Novak Djokovic. He's Serbian, and was rather more successful than the nation's football team who were eliminated at the opening Group Stage.
Here's the Serbian World Cup squad - all 23 of them.
Goalkeepers:
Vladimir Stojkovic
Predrag Rajkovic
Marko Dmitrovic
Defenders:
Aleksandar Kolarov
Branislav Ivanovic
Dusko Tosic
Antonio Rukavina
Milos Veljkovic
Milan Rodic
Uros Spajic
Nikola Milenkovic
Midfielders:
Nemanja Matic
Luka Milivojevic
Sergej Milinkovic-Savic
Marko Grujic
Adem Ljajic
Dusan Tadic
Filip Kostic
Andrija Zivkovic
Nemanja Radonjic
Strikers:
Aleksandar Mitrovic
Aleksandar Prijovic
Luka Jovic
The link with the Wimbledon champion is, I think, obvious. But if you're struggling a clue is that when the first Yugoslavian team entered the World Cup before the Second World War it was made up only of Serbians and the others nicknamed it the 'Itchers'.
Yes, it is a rare thing to be a Serbian man and not to end in an 'ic'. This lack of originality is easily sneered at, but unwisely so by someone like me, called Roberts. The 's' stands for son of and so does the Serbian ic.
If the World Cup is full of diversity, the Serbians are perhaps around to remind us that in some ways we are all the same, wherever we are from and however successful we are.
No comments:
Post a Comment