Talk:Ilija Petković

Nationality

If he was born in a place that's now in Croatia and only ever played for SFR Yugoslavia, what makes him a Serbian footballer? What is his nationality officially? Why isn't there a reference to this in the article? - MTC 14:24, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Good question. I may be able to answer this as, like you, I live in the UK. The term "nationality" is rendered differently accross languages, cultures, and strands of society. If you check a reliable English dictionary, it presents two meanings: the first of which is 'affiliation to ones nation'; the second being 'relationship to state'. It is more often than not along the second of these descriptions that people from the UK recognise nationality (ie. statehood/legal status) whilst the first agrees more with the term "ethnicity". But then to add more confusion, ethnicity in the UK, the USA and some other countries give you choices of "white", "black", both of which you know could make you a member of a race from dozens of countries, whilst further down the list, you get "Chinese", "Indian" etc. which again are irrelevant because China and India are countries which themselves comprise hundreds of ethnicities/nationalities or whatever you wish to call them. You see, there is no universal approach to these terminologies and even if you try to scrape to the bottom: etymology, what do you find? Nation is from Latin (Natio - of common birth), and "Ethnic" is just the Greek literal translation (Eng. National = Gr.Ethnikos). So, Petković, subject of the article, is to the best of my knowledge, possibly a Croatian citizen (the article concentrates on his professional history and doesn't say where he resides now), but he publicly identifies as being Serbian, making him ethnicly Serbian. It is true that the country was Yugoslavia at the time of his birth, but Yugoslavia itself, unlike Italy, Albania, Sweden or Germany, wasn't a single-nation state, it was a multi-national state, where-by most people declared themselves by a local ethnicity, leaving Yugoslav to represent the legal status (ie. citizenship), just one thing, there was and still is a disperced minority of people accross the former republics who declare themselves Yugoslav (see Yugoslavs), and the only way to be fair and democratic on this site is to accept that people are what they themselves say they are. I hope this answered your question. Evlekis 14:49, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, that's a very interesting reply that answers a few general questions I had about Yugoslavians and nationalities. It also answers one or two of the 3 questions in my text above, but leaves the most important one, why isn't his official nationality explained in the article (or at least referenced externally)? - MTC 15:39, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I should also point out the original reason I asked was to work out which flag should be displayed for him here (it should be his official nationality, he certainly wasn't Serbo-Montenegrin during the World Cup, the country had already split into the 2 seperate nations by then. - MTC 15:47, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Aha! I see what you mean now. The answer to that is, that we don't have the information. For the purpose of providing a flag, this conforms more to legal status nationality, and that in turn would conform to an existing country (declared nations without states have flags too but this is not what you are after). Equally, in many sports, you have specific sporting nationalities, such as Tim Henman being british but David Beckham being English, Stephen Hendry being Scottish etc. This is also the case with the Faroe Islands which take part in football seperately from Denmark who claim sovereignty there. The article states that at 19, he left for Belgrade but he has had stints living abroad and we are not sure where he is today. If he managed the Serbia & Montenegro football team, he most likely would have worked from Belgrade and I can imagine he lives there. Nobody from the former Yugoslav Wikipedia communities have disputed his Serbian ethnicity (and there aren't many like that!) so if you wish MTC, feel free to place a Serbian flag beside his name. If and when someone knows differently, they will replace it for themselves but I doubt that will happen. I am 99% he is in Belgrade living with Serbian identification. Evlekis 19:14, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

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