In a match between Serbia and Thailand during Volleyball Nations League 2021 (VNL 2021), a player of Serbia, Sanja Durdjevic, the libero, was caught on TV doing slant eyes while her team was winning the Thai team.
Suddenly, her SNS were poured with angry comments from Thailand. She quickly apologized to Thai players excusing she meant to praise herself for good floor defense as the Asian team was famous for good floor defense.
USA Volleyball, whose team is also a participant of the VNL event, shared a letter as following
Volleyball Association of Thailand, on the following day, announced that the president of Serbian volleyball association, Soran Kajic, had officially apologized to Thai team on the behalf of the Sanja Djurdjevic, the association did not agree with racist action and would let the Federation of International Volleyball (FIVB) to judge her action.
FIVB then declared as following
In an interview, Jelena Blagojevic, another Serbian player (not in VNL roster) was questioned about the issue and she answered that the issue was blown up by the American team as that team feared of Serbian performance, the Serbian did not derogated and held nothing against the Asian, Serbian players were loved and loved Asian fans, all racist accusation and angry curses sent to Serbian team and players should be stopped. (Serbia is a strong contender for Olympian gold medal in women's volleyball.)
Actually, Thai volleyball team has 4 out of 17 players with small eyes and only 2 of them have kinda slant eyes.
