As We Prepare For Paris, Another European Club Gives Inconsistent UEFA The Finger.

Today as our bhoys and ghirls get ready to party in Paris tonight (if only wishing made it so) games across the continent are already kicking off.

One of them is between Qarabag and Chelsea.

The club we knocked out of the Champions League in the last campaign has made it into the Groups this time around and they’ve been rewarded with glamour games.

This one is a big deal to them, a massive club coming to visit their home. Except it’s not really their home at all, as they have flagged in a stunning display which reads, “Far Away From Home But Back Where You Belong.”

The Baku National Stadium, where the game is taking place, is not the home of the Azerbaijani champions. Their real home is in Agdam, a town in the southwest of the country which has been abandoned since 1993.

In that year, during the Nagorno-Karabakh War which raged between Armenian separatists, backed by their government, and the Republic of Azerbaijan itself, the city was taken. During the fighting, the Imarat Stadium, the home of the club, was destroyed.

What makes this an even heavier situation is that this sore still festers to this day; in 2010, the NKR, who had captured the town, and who still administer it – Armenia uses it as a buffer zone, and stations troops in it – renamed it Akna.

You can easily understand how that scab could continue to bleed.

Qarabag quite literally represent that fallen city; it is a poignant message to the rest of the world about what happened in that little corner of theirs. And, of course, UEFA will consider it a political statement and open disciplinary sanctions against them for it.

Which of course is wholly ludicrous, but it’s another example of how inconsistent and ridiculous its rules on these issues are.

I would never have known any of this had that banner not been displayed. Their fans have cleverly used a game against tier 1 opposition to bring attention to the crime that was committed against their city – even the UN agrees that it was an appalling event, involving hostage taking, the displacement of people and the murder of civilians; Resolution 853 was passed in the aftermath of it – and the continuing violation of their territory today.

Sport used to welcome such displays. Now they are outlawed, because somewhere somebody might be offended by them. I understand, in part, why UEFA’s bizarre regulations exist; they were a measure to combat far right extremist groups from hijacking sports events to spread their messages of hate.

But they no longer serve a positive purpose.

Well done to the Qarabag fans for their stunning display.

I hope that UEFA does not react too harshly to it.

Message received and understood.