{"id":411501,"date":"2025-09-09T22:02:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T22:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/411501\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T22:02:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T22:02:11","slug":"serbia-0-5-england-world-cup-qualifier-paused-by-referee-after-laser-pen-shone-at-ezri-konsa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/411501\/","title":{"rendered":"Serbia 0-5 England: World Cup qualifier paused by referee after laser pen shone at Ezri Konsa"},"content":{"rendered":"

England’s World Cup qualifier against Serbia in Belgrade was briefly paused by the referee after a laser pen was shone from the crowd in Ezri Konsa’s face.<\/b><\/p>\n

The incident occurred in the 38th minute of the match at the Stadion Rajko Mitic in Belgrade – which the Three Lions went on to win 5-0<\/a> – when Konsa threw his head back after seemingly being dazzled by a green light.<\/p>\n

A few moments earlier a beam had been directed towards fellow defender Reece James as he prepared to take a free-kick.<\/p>\n

French referee Clement Turpin stopped the game momentarily after Konsa reacted and spoke to the fourth official on the touchline.<\/p>\n

Shortly after the resumption, there was a message over the public address system which warned fans against the use of laser pens and other pyrotechnics.<\/p>\n

In a separate incident, riot police entered the stands midway through the second half after home fans began chanting anti-government songs, while there were also chants related to Kosovo throughout the match.<\/p>\n

At least 15% of Belgrade’s stadium was closed to home supporters as a Fifa punishment for racist chanting in a game against Andorra.<\/p>\n

A statement from the Serbian FA, external (FSS) said it has been fined more than \u00a3600,000 by Fifa and Uefa in the past five years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England’s World Cup qualifier against Serbia in Belgrade was briefly paused by the referee after a laser pen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-411501","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}