Kosovo Gets a Real Game, if It Can Assemble a Team
After six years of rejection, cajoling, schmoozing, direct action and, finally, acceptance, Eroll Salihu is at last organizing a game that counts.
The Kosovo national soccer team will play its first FIFA-sanctioned friendly match Wednesday, against Haiti, in Mitrovica, 24 miles north of the capital, Pristina. For Salihu, who has handled the day-to-day running of Kosovo’s soccer federation as its general secretary for the best part of a decade, this is virgin territory.
“It is very stressful,” he said Thursday as multiple phones rang in the background. “I have to arrange security; we have journalists coming from around the world, visas. ...”
The Kosovo national soccer team will play its first FIFA-sanctioned friendly match Wednesday, against Haiti, in Mitrovica, 24 miles north of the capital, Pristina. For Salihu, who has handled the day-to-day running of Kosovo’s soccer federation as its general secretary for the best part of a decade, this is virgin territory.
“It is very stressful,” he said Thursday as multiple phones rang in the background. “I have to arrange security; we have journalists coming from around the world, visas. ...”
Salihu trailed off as he listed his tasks before one of the biggest days in Kosovo’s recent history. “I have to print a program, too,” he said, bursting back to life. “A program!”
Although it unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and has been recognized by 23 of 28 European Union member states and 108 members of the United Nations, Kosovo remains officially unrecognized as a sovereign nation. Without United Nations membership, Kosovo is unable to join either UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, or FIFA, the sport’s international governing body. Players with Kosovar heritage have ended up playing for some of Europe’s top national teams, and in many cases thriving.
One beneficiary has been Switzerland, which breezed through qualification for this year’s World Cup in Brazil. Three of the Swiss team’s best players — Bayern Munich’s Xherdan Shaqiri, Napoli’s Valon Behrami and Borussia Monchengladbach’s Granit Xhaka — were born in Kosovo or raised by Kosovar parents. During the same qualification cycle, a majority of Albania’s starting lineup, including its captain, Lorik Cana, who plays in Italy for Lazio, hailed from Kosovo. Other Kosovar players represent countries that took them in or took their parents in as refugees, Norway, Finland and Sweden among them.
Since 2008, Salihu and the Football Federation of Kosovo have pushed, without success, for their own national team stocked with their own players. “We just wanted to play football,” Salihu said. “We have teams that have existed from 1922. We used to have 40,000 spectators. It’s important to be part of Europe.”
He added: “Something needed to happen. We could not stay inside this kettle any longer.”
That something was a piece of bureaucratic guerrilla action. Shortly before Switzerland’s home match against Albania in 2012, Salihu and the federation’s president, Fadil Vokrri — Kosovo’s greatest player and the only Kosovar to represent the Yugoslav national team — drew up a petition.
The petition called on FIFA to recognize Kosovo’s plight and allow it to play friendly matches against other FIFA members. Under the cover of darkness, Salihu and Vokrri visited the Albania and Switzerland team hotels. Shaqiri, Behrami, Xhaka and Cana all signed the petition.
Sepp Blatter, the FIFA president, supported the move. Despite opposition from Serbia, which sees Kosovo as an inviolable part of its territory, and Michel Platini, the UEFA president, it was agreed in January that Kosovo would be allowed to play FIFA members, albeit with no national symbols, flags or anthem. Matches against former Yugoslav republics were banned.
“This is the first step,” Salihu said. UEFA and FIFA, he added, know that official membership “is not a question of if, but when.”
Choosing the squad for Wednesday’s match, however, has been a diplomatic minefield. Salihu and the federation invited Manchester United’s Belgian-born prodigy Adnan Januzaj, whose heritage qualifies him to represent Kosovo but also Belgium, Serbia, Turkey and, perhaps in a few years, England. Despite the assurance that an appearance for Kosovo would not affect his chances of playing for another national team — because Kosovo is not recognized by FIFA, he could take part in the same way some of Spain’s top players regularly turn out for a Catalonia team — Januzaj’s father said no.
“We just wanted to meet him and explain how important it would be if he played, symbolically, for 10 minutes,” Salihu recalled with disappointment. “We can’t do anything. We have to wait for another match.”
Then there is the issue of players who have played for other countries. None of Switzerland’s Kosovar players, for example, will be in Mitrovica on Wednesday.
“We didn’t call them,” Salihu said. “We have to protect their careers.”
The Switzerland versus Albania game in 2012 — when Shaqiri played with the flags of Switzerland, Kosovo and Albania stitched on his soccer shoes — led some Swiss commentators to question the loyalty of its players. In January, Switzerland held a referendum over whether tougher restrictions should be placed on immigration. The measure was narrowly approved, though a picture soon went viralshowing the Swiss starting lineup with its immigrants removed. Only four players remained.
For that reason and others, Salihu and the Kosovo federation decided not to put players like Shaqiri and Behrami in a difficult position Wednesday, when Switzerland will continue its preparations for Brazil by hosting Croatia in St. Gallen. “Before the World Cup, it would not be nice for them to have to make the decision,” Salihu said of the Swiss players. “We have to respect Switzerland.”
The decision on who will play Wednesday ultimately lies with Coach Albert Bunjaki. He has been in charge of Kosovo’s national team for five years. In that time, he has prepared for only four matches, three of them against club teams.
“It is a historic moment for the new country,” said Bunjaki, who fled Kosovo as a young medical student in the early 1990s before earning his professional soccer coaching credentials in Sweden. “We have a lot of players around Europe who are part of different national teams, and this makes it more difficult,” he added.
While Switzerland’s Kosovar players were not called, several players who have represented other national teams will play Wednesday, Bunjaki said, including Albania’s first-choice goalkeeper, Samir Ujkani, who played in that match against the Swiss in 2012.
Striker Albert Bunjaku, who represented Switzerland at the 2010 World Cup, will also play. “Everyone is talking about the match,” said Bunjaki, the coach. “We want to send a signal to UEFA and FIFA that we have a right to be part of the football family. We haven’t played a game in two years, but I want everyone to remember: This game will be when Kosovo start on their road to the World Cup after over 25 years of isolation.”
Salihu and the Kosovo federation hope they will become full members of FIFA before qualifications begin for the next World Cup, in Russia in 2018. Only then, Salihu and Bunjaki contend, will Kosovo’s far-flung players be drawn home. Blatter has already said that is unlikely to happen.
Salihu’s immediate concern is Wednesday’s match and all its trappings. Mitrovica, too, presents its problems. Kosovo still has a small Serb minority, and Mitrovica is a divided city where ethnic violence periodically flares up. A candidate in a mayoral election in the city was recently assassinated.
“It is the only part of Kosovo where a significant Serb population remains,” said Dejan Djokic of the Centre for the Study of the Balkans at Goldsmiths, the University of London. “It doesn’t sound like the wisest decision to avoid violence.”
Salihu said the federation had no choice: “It is the only stadium that meets FIFA’s criteria for international matches.” The country’s main stadium, in Pristina, is being renovated.
Wednesday will be a full house. Tickets are only 5 euros ($6.85), and Salihu said he had received about 50,000 ticket requests, even though the stadium holds 18,000 people.
“It will be very emotional,” he said. “Everyone wants to say they were at this match.”
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