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Serbia have called on “supporters to send out an image to the world that will make us all proud” as they prepare to host England in Tuesday’s World Cup qualifier.

At least 15% of Belgrade’s Rajko Mitic Stadium will be closed to home fans as a Fifa punishment for racist chanting in a game against Andorra.

A statement from the Serbian FA (FSS) said it has been fined more than £600,000 by Fifa and Uefa in the past five years.

The punishments were for “various prohibited items, insults, and discrimination in the stands”, it said.

Branko Radujko, the general secretary of the FSS, warned Serbia fans in the match programme before the England game that any transgressions could get them in more trouble.

“We are still under special monitoring of Uefa,” he wrote. “Every inappropriate reaction, insult or incident could cost us dearly on our path to the USA, Mexico and Canada, including the possibility of having to play a decisive match with Albania behind closed doors.

“That is the reason I sincerely and seriously call on you: let us cheer from the heart but let it be fair. We can be loud but dignified. Let our support be a source of strength, not a risk for the national team.”

England captain Harry Kane said: “We had a meeting and discussed the Uefa protocols that are in place. We don’t like to discuss it too much. Our focus is on the game. Anything can happen but we are not thinking about that.

“We are prepared to do what Uefa protocols allow us to do. I thought we handled it well in Bulgaria [in 2019]. We are prepared, had a discussion and if it [racist abuse] does happen we will be prepared to do what is necessary.”

Uefa’s three-point protocol asks referees to…

Most of Serbia’s recent punishments have been to do with Kosovo.

After the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Kosovo sought independence.

Serbia responded with a brutal crackdown against ethnic Albanians that ended in 1999 after a Nato bombing campaign against Serbia.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in February 2008 – but Serbia does not recognise this.

Serbia fans, usually led by ultras groups, sing “Kosovo is the heart of Serbia”, or one stand yells “Kosovo” and the other “Serbia”.

There are also derogatory chants against Albanians, Croats and Bosnian Muslims.

Serbia have had numerous punishments from both Fifa and Uefa in recent years. Here is a selection of those from the past three years

England Under-21 players have suffered racist abuse by Serbia fans on two high-profile occasions.

In 2007, the FSS was fined £16,000 at the European Championship in the Netherlands after their supporters racially abused England’s Nedum Onuoha.

And in 2012, England defender Danny Rose was sent off for kicking the ball away in reaction to racist chants from the crowd in Krusevac during a Euros qualifier.

Rose said he was subjected to monkey chants throughout and had stones thrown at him.

Andros Townsend also played in that game and spoke about the issue on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Monday Night Club.

“Back in 2013 there wasn’t any of that,” he said in relation to Uefa’s three-point protocols for racism.

“We were in shock. We were not expecting it. There were no protocols in place. It ended up in a 22-man melee with the coaching staff and fans climbing over the fence. It was an ugly scene. The game has moved on a lot since then.

The Serbian FA’s statement added: “The national team is our pride, we have no other, and it certainly deserves the support fitting for these important matches.

“We would like to emphasize the importance and necessity of proper behaviour that contributes to creating a positive stadium atmosphere.

“Therefore, let us be united in our love for football, support our national team in the right way, and show respect for the opponent and the national anthem of their country.

“Let the match with England be a celebration of sport and respect among rivals and nations.”

Radujko added: “Football was born in England, but Belgrade must be the place where the game gets a new emotion on 9 September.

“This is our chance to be united to remind ourselves why we love football and how much it means when the whole nation breathes as one. This is the match for points, but also for pride.”

“The long throw-in is back,” England boss Thomas Tuchel has declared.

For some, it never went away.

Between 2008 and 2012, Stoke City’s Rory Delap regularly hurled the ball into the penalty area from the sidelines, filling defences with dread.

“You cannot say it is football any more. It is more rugby on the goalkeepers than football,” then Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said at the time.

Delap and Stoke posed such danger during that spell that Hull goalkeeper Boaz Myhill once kicked the ball out for a corner to avoid a throw-in.

Now utilising the long throw as an attacking resource is becoming more prominent in English football.

According to Opta, on the opening weekend of the new Premier League season 11 out of 20 teams sent a long throw into the opposition’s penalty area on at least one occasion – up from just four in the same period last season.

“Throw-ins are underestimated – by coaches, players, commentators, fans – as something you should just do and see what happens,” said Thomas Gronnemark, who was appointed Liverpool’s first throw-in coach in 2018 and worked with the club until 2023.

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp had not even heard of a throw-in coach when the Dane, who holds the world record for the longest throw-in at 51.33m, joined the club’s backroom staff.

But the Reds’ possession stats from throw-ins improved from 45.4% to 68.4% under Gronnemark’s tutorship, moving from 18th to first in the league on that metric.

Premier League clubs are trying to harness the power of the long throw, with throws at of least 20 metres which end in the opposition box increasing from 0.9 per game in 2020-21 to 1.5 in 2024-25.

Meanwhile, long throws that led to goals increased from 0.03% in 2020-21 to 0.38% in 2024-25.

Gronnemark now works with Brentford – so it is no surprise the Bees have excelled in that area. Last season they scored five goals from throw-ins, generating 48 chances with an xG of 7.2.

And now their former manager Thomas Frank – following his summer move to north London – is employing similar tactics with Tottenham.

Tuchel’s assistant Anthony Barry focused his university dissertation on throw-ins in the Premier League.

Barry watched more than 60 hours of footage from the 2018-19 Premier League season and analysed every one of the 16,380 throw-ins.

One of his conclusions was that throwing the ball “laterally or backwards can increase throw-in success rates in comparison to throwing the ball forwards”, and the “higher-ranked teams utilised this strategy more often”.

Tuchel has highlighted the time constraints in his preparations for the World Cup and Gronnemark believes working on throw-ins is a smart approach.

“I told you – the long throw-in is back. But we do not have a lot of time,” said the England head coach.

“But once we arrive at the World Cup all these things matter, so we will also talk about long throw-ins, we will talk about long kicks from the goalkeeper and not only playing short.”

Gronnemark said: “It’s really sensible. If I’m helping national teams it will normally be when they are in the camp before the big tournaments. If Tuchel said ‘we want to improve the long throwing’, that would be really easy for me to improve.