The Czech Football Fed apologised to the Lithuanians
June 1, 2008 at 7:57 pm 3 comments
As the BNS informed the Czech-Moravia Football Federation officially apologized to the Lithuanian Football Federation and Lithuania’s Embassy in Prague for playing the national anthem of Lithuania’s neighbouring Baltic State Latvia during a friendly match between the Lithuanian and Czech national teams.
Czech news agency CTK announced that the Czech team’s Spokesman Vaclav Tichy resigned May 28 thus taking responsibility for the incident, with his assistant having been let go as well.
As the BNS writes instead of the Lithuanian national anthem, Tuesday’s aforementioned match with 15,000 fans sounded with the Latvian one, and the program’s flyers included the Latvian flag and the Latvian team’s picture, accordingly.
It would be interesting to find out if the Czech footballers new that they are playing not Latvians but Lithuanians, and when they realised that? Also I would love to ask if the Czechs were preparing to play with the Lithuanians or the Latvians, since both of those teams are rather different.
Furthermore, maybe the Europeans should stop making the jokes about G.W. Bush how could not make a distinction between Slovenia and Slovakia… Still, it could have been much worse if instead of the Latvian flag the flags from Laos or Lesotho would have appeared. Those countries also start with letter ‘L’.
Entry filed under: Baltic States, Central Europe, Latvia, Lithuania, Northern Europe. Tags: .
1.
bieksia | June 2, 2008 at 3:03 am
Oh no!
Even other small countries can’t seem to get it right! Long before my time but when the Germans sank the ‘LUSITANIA’ way back
in WWII ….I’ll bet alot of people were thinking that LITHUANIA was
at the bottom of the sea!
Until Lithuania does something daring like to successfully invade Moscow again, or to discover a cure for cancer…These incidents will undoubtedley be repeated.
At least for a short period of time the Olympic Basketball Team
managed to put Lithuania back on the map!
I’de be satisfied with just being recognized as being ‘Baltic’
and not ‘Balkan”
A far fetched dream would be to hail in an era where people no longer consider us to be a Polish or Russian sub-group.
It’s too much to ask for! Eurovision may be our next best chance!
2. EuroDose: June 1st ‘08 - Euro 2008 | June 2, 2008 at 3:19 am
[...] An official apology over LitLatGate (Lituanica) [...]
3.
Ele | June 23, 2008 at 10:07 am
I must admit I also sometimes mix Bucharest and Budapest, but not for a purpose! I don’t think the anthem was played wrong out of bad will.