Sunday will be a memorable day. The World Cup final will be thrilling and there will be a country winning the World Cup for the first time ever. But July 11th is also memorable for other reasons; it is the 15th anniversary of the events in Srebrenica when some 8,300 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were removed from UN protection by Bosnian Serbs and never seen again.
The coincidence of the date has not passed people by and there have been calls by some for the World Cup Final to include some mark of respect to those who were killed on that day. Ideas have included holding 8,300 seats empty to really highlight just how many people did die.
I have to confess to feeling uncomfortable with the idea. Now, I'm no genocide denier, the evidence is there, the bodies have been (and are still being) found in graves up and down the Drina Valley. Without doubt some of the Serb villages near Srebrenica also suffered extremely but it is not on the scale of the events of Srebrenica, which is why Srebrenica has been classified as a genocide but the Bosnian conflict as a whole has not.
But the World Cup is a global event, for everyone across the world to enjoy. I always feel that Srebrenica is a European tragedy, the scale of which is huge and unforgivable for Europe, but less uncommon in other areas of the world. Honouring the dead at Srebrenica somehow feels to me as placing European tragedy above others and that doesn't seem right. I think of September 11th, a date which will always be connected to the Twin Towers and has become an American date, yet in Chile September 11th commemorates different deaths and events altogether.
Furthermore, I hate sport and politics becoming entwined. It's naive, I know, but sport and events like the World Cup should be celebrations of how we can all get along quite well, even if just for a short amount of time. Should Serbia have reached the finals of the World Cup, remembering the events of Srebrenica would have been extremely political. Some would argue that this was the perfect opportunity to put pressure on Serbia to acknowledge their role in the events of Srebrenica (Serbia have never managed to do so, the closest they have got is an acknowledgement of all the victims of the Bosnian conflict, pointedly including Serb ones). They are right, it probably is. But I would like sport to remain separate from politics, to be a celebration, not an opportunity to impose a political agenda.
Obviously sport is a long way from being untainted. FIFA are frequently accused of incompetence at best and corruption at worst. It is big money and with the money comes less desirable motives. But for 90 minutes I like to think that life can become quite simple for a bit and just boil down to cheering for who you want to win.
So whilst I will be finding time on July 11th to think about Srebrenica and how the families of those killed still feel the raw pain and grief of 15 years ago as if it was just yesterday, I will also being cheering on Spain later in the day and trying to keep the two events quite separate.