The Government's decision to boycott the June 5th match in Dublin between Ireland and Yugoslavia is only the latest example of how, when it comes to the Balkans, football and politics are hopelessly intertwined.
Using the sport as your political football has brought dividends for a whole generation of politicians across the post-communist Balkans. Yugoslavia has escaped the ban from world football arising from the war in Bosnia, but with visiting teams unhappy about dodging cruise missiles, it will see its home matches for the 2000 European championships played on neutral territory.
NATO's present bombing campaign came days before Yugoslavia was set to redefine the term "crunch game" with an international fixture against Croatia, less than five years after Croat and Yugoslav forces fought each other on the battlefield.
Football has been in the vanguard of the Yugoslav wars, beginning with vicious clashes between Croatian fans of Dynamo Zagreb and Belgrade teams just prior to the Croat war of independence in 1991.
The Serb master of ethnic cleansing, Arkan, now an indicted war criminal, cut his teeth as chairman of the fan club of Yugoslavia's premier team, Red Star Belgrade. From the club he recruited his private army, The Tigers, which "ethnically cleansed" their way through Bosnia and are now working their same dark magic in Kosovo.
Arkan has meanwhile taken over a second club, Obilic, reinforcing the link between politics and sport - Obilic was a Serb hero who in 1389 killed a Turkish sultan after a battle in - where else? - Kosovo.
The break-up of Yugoslavia has left many football commentators wondering what might have been achieved had the country remained united. Both Croatia and Yugoslavia did well in the last World Cup. Together, they might have stood a chance of winning it.
Elsewhere in the Balkans, Albania earlier this month saw a local derby with a difference when the main government team, Tirana FC, beat the country's second club, Skodra Vllazni, whose chairman, Azem Hajgari - also head of the opposition Democratic Party and a gun-runner - was shot dead last autumn.
The last time many of Vllazi's supporters were in the capital, they were with two tanks as the Democrats, belying their name, tried to mount a coup d'etat. At the May 9th clash, Tirana won 1-0 and three fans were hurt in more traditional (unarmed) hooliganism.
Another derby has meanwhile rocked Hungary, when Budapest rivals Ferencvaros and MTK met last March. The Sports Minister, an MTK supporter, Tamas Deutsch, has ordered Ferencvaros to hand over its stadium to his ministry from the agriculture ministry, whose minister, Jozsef Torgyan, just happens to be the Ferencvaros president.
Not to be outdone, Torgyan strode at half time across the pitch into the home side's stands, where a banner, obviously large, was unfurled which read: "Deutsch stay with your little team - Ferencvaros will never belong to the Ministry of Youth and Sports!"
But Deutsh has now crossed swords with FIFA, after sacking the head of Hungary's Football Association, accused of corruption, and replacing him with a Sports Ministry official.
FIFA says that breaks the rules which say all FAs must be independent, but for now Hungary is hanging on - like many post-communist countries, the government controls the levers of soccer.
Perhaps, as Bill Shankley, the late Liverpool manager, once observed, football really is more important - at least to some - than life and death.