The Serbian national football team is arriving in Sofia to play a friendly against Bulgaria Wednesday, just over a month after the riots in the Italy-Serbia qualifier Euro 2012 October 12.

This is the first game of the Serbian national team since the shameful events in Genoa October, which caused the game to be halted six minutes after it started and resulted in a technical 3:0 loss for Serbia.

October 12, Serbian hooligans flooded the pitch, throwed incindiary devices and caused general havoc. The grounds given by fans and media included an internal Partisan - Crvena Zvezda feud, flared anew by what fans saw as poor performance of Partizan and Serbian national goalie Vladimir Stojkovi?, which led to a 1:3 loss in the prior qualifier against Estonia.

But more importantly, commentators and arrested hooligans themselves - including boss Ivan Bogdanov - have said that the violence expresses strong discontent on the part of sections of Serbian society regarding the direction Serbia is headed.

Just two days before the October 12 violence in Genoa, massive riots flared on the streets of Belgrade at the first Gay Pride in Serbia, when more than 1000 people attacked the several hundred gay rights paraders protected by 5000-strong police. Dozens of police officers were wounded in the clashes and more than 100 people detained.

Order at the Wednesday game in Sofia is nevertheless highly likely, as UEFA penalized Serbia not only with awarding it a 3:0 loss, but also with mandating that it next game be played with no audience, and that Serbian fans be banned from attending games abroad.

The stakes are high not only for the Serbian team, but also for Bulgaria, who wants to at least partially make up for a humiliating 1:6 loss in the latest friendly in 2008.

Interestingly, the Wednesday game will be refereed by a team from Romania.

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