This weekend of November 11 commemorates the armistice of the First World War. This through a symbol in France – the cornflower – that Rennais Nemanja Matic refused to display.
On November 11, 1918, the Great War ended. Since the 1930s in France, the symbol of the cornflower has been officially adopted to honor the memory of the victims of the First World War and to raise funds for charitable works.
As a commemoration, the Professional Football League invites Ligue 1 teams to pin the blueberry on their jerseys that weekend. And all players willingly answer the call. All ? Except Nemanja Matic, the only player in the L1 match between Rennes and Lyon to have refused to wear the symbol this Sunday.
A grudge against NATO
A child from Vrelo, Serbia, the 35-year-old midfielder experienced the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) strikes on Serbia during the Yugoslav Wars at the end of the 1990s. A trauma that he had confessed while he was playing in England, in the ranks of Chelsea or Manchester United, and that he already refused to wear the poppy (equivalent to the cornflower on November 11 in Great Britain). No link, however, between NATO, created in 1949, and the armistice of the Great War.
