Serbia and Montenegro head for penalty shoot-out

Relations between Serbia and its former partner Montenegro look set to hit a new low following the latter's recent controversial application for divorce from the sun-kissed Balkan paradise partnership.

Following just three years of passionate marriage, 55.5 per cent of Montenegrans voted last month for a permanent split from Serbia, provoking a tearful but resigned Serb prez Boris Tadic to declare that the new state would always have "a reliable partner and friend".

In this, however, he may have been premature. Complex negotiations as to the practicalities of the separation have stalled amid bitter recriminations about which nation is ultimately responsible for the Serbia-Montenegro team's humiliating exit from the world cup, we can exclusively reveal.

Indeed, talks aimed at resolving which country would have the 6-0 drubbing at the hands of mighty Argentina added to its international footballing record soon broke down last week after the Serbian footballing authority announced it would assume the burden only of "one of the shameful half dozen" and that to accept any blame for the defeat against Ivory Coast would cast "a fifty year shadow of shame" over Serbian football.

While both sides were intially able to concede that to go down 1-0 to the Dutch would probably not require the ethnic cleansing of villages on either side of the border, Serb intransigence on the Argentinian affair immediately provoked the Montenegran delegation to storm from the negotiating table flanked by black-beret-clad sporting militiamen angrily fingering the triggers of their former Yugoslav AK-47s.

The reaction on the streets of Montenegro's capital Podgorica was swift and predicatable. A huge crowd flooded the city centre bearing banners calling on the UN and FIFA's Sepp Blatter to rule in their favour. One angry protestor told The Rockall Times' Balkan flashpoint correspondent: "Montenegro is a mere one fifth of the size of Serbia. We will therefore concede one of the goals against Argentina, roughly two-thirds of one of Ivory Coast's strikes and simply offer condolences to our former allies for the Dutch defeat. Our goal difference is therefore one and two-thirds, as opposed to Serbia's six and a third."

UK football pundit Alan Hansen was reported to have flown into Belgrade last night to broker a compromise deal which would see the opposing teams take three apiece from the Argentinians while lodging a formal complaint regarding the shocking standard of refereeing in the Ivory Coast match — a process known in FIFA circles as "doing a Marco van Basten".

Hansen was, however, soon forced to admit defeat as he was escorted back to the airport by a nationalist death squad angered by his description of Serbia and Montenegro's defensive strategy as "shocking, just shocking".

Previously

• Slobodan Milosevic to buy Burton Albion
• Asylum seekers ethnically cleanse detention centre
• The Rockall Times' at-a-glance guide to the new Europe