Should one support one’s own country at international sporting fixtures? If so, why?

Take the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where Bosnian Muslims (Bosniacs) and Bosnian Croats have been busy rioting again following the defeat of Croatia by Turkey in the Euro 2008 football match. The Bosniacs supported Turkey, the Croats Croatia.

Republika Srpska PM Dodik deftly stirred this pot, coming out for Croatia:

The issue on the match Turkey-Croatia and possible skirmishes in Mostar have nothing to do with football. But ok, great sport competitions become an occasion for the irreconcilable differences of Mostar to come up.

Meanwhile when Serbia plays Bosnia, Bosnian Serbs root for Serbia.

Serbs of course titter at all this and say that it just goes to show that loyalties can not be created by international fiat. Until they start spluttering with rage at the wickedness and ingratitude of Kosovo’s Albanians for not supporting their native republic of Serbia.

Back in the UK, theologians ponder whether it is sinful for Scots to support England’s sporting opponents. (Answer: it depends.)

And what of Lord Tebbit’s famous ‘cricket test’ as a way to measure loyalty? This Guardian headline asserts that it has been ‘hit for six’ because so many ‘black and Asian people’ (sic) now see themselves as British, but oddly the article does not mention which cricket team they support when England is playing India/Pakistan/West Indies.

Supporting any given English football team has long ceased to be a rational exercise. Once upon a time at least some of the players were locally born, so there could be a local fan base urging them on. Now so many of the players now come from overseas, so on one level there is no obvious loyalty issue at all other than to the club brand.

But in international fixtures an English or Scottish or British team do somehow represent ‘us’.

And if there is no ‘us’ as in the Bosnian case, where does that leave Bosnia? Can any country survive without some minimal mutual self-identification across its citizens as a whole?

The very names we use make a difference:

Of course our own very nomenclature reinforces one or other stereotype in such cases. Thus from the start of the Bosnia drama (as still now) we have talked about the ‘Bosnian Serbs’ and ‘Bosnian Croats’ – not the ‘Serbian/Croatian Bosnians’. Somehow the ultimate identity emphasis is put by us – as indeed by them – on their Serbness or Croatness, not their Bosnian-ness.

This of course suits those who say that there can never be a meaningful shared non-ethnic Bosnian identity anyway, hence the whole Bosnia and Herzegovina project as supported by the US/EU is doomed to fail.

But that failure can drag on for a long time in the form of surly stalemate, propped up expensively by EU taxpayers as the alternative is too ghastly to contemplate.

Also known as Belgium.