A New Sun of Unity Rises over Macedonia at Euro2020

Why the appearance of North Macedonia at Euro2020 achieved more for the country off the pitch than on it.

“What nationality are you?”

Growing up in Melbourne’s ethnically diverse and working-class western suburbs in the early 90s, this question was a conversation starter.

It gave you an immediate sense of the other person’s tastes and culture, what you might have in common, and whether or not you should like them.

The western suburbs were a hotbed of nationalism, particularly the Greek, Turkish, Serbian, Croatian, and Macedonian variety. These minority groups, for the most part, had descended upon Australia en masse after the fall of the White Australia policy in 1973 and after socialism and numerous wars had plagued their respective homelands.

In the primary schoolyard, as a 10-year-old Australian-Macedonian, I would often find myself in verbal altercations with Australian-Greek classmates. We jostled over territorial, historical and cultural rights to all things Macedonian, based on nothing more empirical than simply regurgitating what our parents had told us.

“Macedonia is Greek” they would declare.