Fifa clears Kosovo to play friendlies

[Rron]

Fifa gave a huge boost to Kosovo's push for international recognition by clearing its 208 member countries on Tuesday to begin playing friendlies against teams from the Balkan province.

Fifa President Sepp Blatter said he hoped the decision would "accelerate" Kosovo's campaign for full membership of football's governing bodies.

Fifa and European authority Uefa had previously blocked Kosovo's ambitions because the province's sovereignty has not been recognised by the United Nations. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in February 2008.

"For me, it's a very important matter from the sports political point of view," Blatter said. He proposed the policy change to his executive committee at a meeting on Monday.

"We are not there to hinder to play football, we are there to open the doors to play football," Blatter said, adding that most of opposition to Kosovo's recognition within Fifa was from its European members, even though "22 out of 27 members of the European Union have ties with Kosovo."

Blatter said it's the game that matters, and added: "I think it's just a logical gesture and it's also solidarity in football - let them play."

Serbia's Football Association issued a strong protest to Fifa, and questioned whether the world body's statutes allowed members to play Kosovo.

Serbian officials said they will demand that the decision be retracted.

Uefa has eight votes on the 24-member Fifa ruling panel. It abstained from Monday's Kosovo vote.

"It's very political," Uefa President Michel Platini told The Associated Press. "It's still against the statutes of European football."

Blatter has accepted Platini's invitation to address the issue at an already scheduled meeting of Europe's 53 football nations on Wednesday.

Fifa secretary general Jerome Valcke emphasized the decision to allow Kosovo to play internationally has no political meaning.

"It's recognition that it's a country where you play football," Valcke told the AP. "It gives them credibility. They were concerned that their players were taken away by clubs in other countries."

Several Kosovo-born players have settled in Switzerland after their families fled wars that tore former Yugoslavia apart during the 1990s. Many have since played on their adopted country's national team.

Xherdan Shaqiri, who's 20, will join Champions League finalist Bayern Munich from FC Basle next month. Valon Behrami was one of Switzerland's star players at the 2010 World Cup.

Fifa's statutes allow for players with Kosovo connections to transfer national allegiance if the country gets full international recognition.

Kosovo has sought support with international sports federations in its official push for statehood.
http://www.supersport.com/football/fifa-internationals/news/120522/Fifa_clears_Kosovo_to_play_friendlies

[Grizzly]

Switzerland is going to lose half of their squad...
Same with Albania :eek:

[Crn Volk]

Can't wait for the match against Serbia

[iNird]

Football Wins Amid Political Row over Kosovo Status

Professional footballers from Kosovo are making a name for themselves in the top European leagues but until now they have been unable to play for the country of their birth in the major European and World football competitions.

That could change, but first a series of tricky diplomatic and legal obstacles will have to be circumvented. FIFA’s decision to sanction international friendly matches between a Kosovo national team and FIFA members could open the way for Kosovo to gain world and European football recognition over the long term. For the moment, though, UEFA is opposed to the move.

FIFA’s decision on 22 May to allow member associations to play friendly games with the national team of Kosovo has sent shockwaves across the Balkans. The decision was particularly surprising because UEFA members represented in FIFA had voted against it.

FIFA Secretary-General Jérôme Valcke sent a letter to the Football Association of Serbia (FSS) explaining that the decision was made” following repeated written requests from the Football Federation of Kosovo over the last two years”, and that “such authorization does not constitute a step towards FIFA membership, which depends on other considerations.”

FSS representatives have requested a meeting with FIFA officials, and this has been scheduled for May 31. At the meeting, the implications and implementation of the decision will be discussed.

Those who follow football closely attribute considerable significance FIFA’s move, while the timing of FIFA’s decision has been a subject of speculation.


Coming of age


A distinguished generation of players from Kosovo has already made an impression right across European soccer.

These players include Valon Behrami at Fiorentina and former Marseille captain Lorik Cana, both of whom formerly played in the English Premier league (for West Ham and Sunderland respectively), and veteran striker Shefki Kuqi, currently with Oldham, his 10th English club in 11 seasons (half of them in the Premiership).

And this season a new generation has come onto the scene, spearheaded by FC Basel duo Xherdan Shaqiri and Granit Xhaka.

The pair were born in the eastern Kosovo town of Gnjilane/Gjilan and soon moved to Switzerland with their families, following the pattern of Kosovo emigrants escaping either violent unrest or poverty at home. They have starred for their Swiss club (famously ousting Manchester United from this year’s Champions League) and for the Swiss national team, thus earning lucrative transfers to top German Bundesliga sides.

On Wednesday Shaqiri and Xhaka played their last game for Swiss League and Cup winners FC Basel, Shaqiri moving to Bayern Munich, Xhaka to Mönchengladbach.

In years to come these players are likely to be followed by more soccer stars from Kosovo who – unable to play in international competitions as part of a Kosovo team – will accept invitations to play for other countries instead.

Over the past 15 years at least 18 ethnic Albanian players from Kosovo have played for Albania, with Cana being the Albanian national team’s current skipper. Others have played for Finland, Norway, Croatia and Montenegro, while Emir Bajrami is part of the Sweden team for Euro 2012.

The main beneficiary of the Kosovo soccer Diaspora has been Switzerland, where most of the Kosovo emigrants live, with four being called up for the Swiss national squad in the past 12 months (interestingly, they have been joined by two Macedonia-born ethnic Albanians, Blerim Xhemaili and Admir Mehmedi). An even higher proportion can be found in youth squads.

Since the break-up of Yugoslavia not a single Kosovo-born ethnic Albanian has played for Serbia. On the other hand, ethnic Serbs and Gorani from Kosovo have as a rule chosen to play for Serbia. Goran Djorovic was a regular during the 90s, with Milos Krasic of Italian giants Juventus and Miralem Sulejmani of Ajax in the current squad.


A longstanding football tradition


Kosovo has a longstanding football tradition. Local players gained broader prominence in the 1970s, when the Prekazi brothers (Luan and Xhevat, the latter going on to become a huge star in Turkey) moved to Partizan. Clubs from Kosovo were on the verge of breaking into the top flight several times before Trepca (Kosovska Mitrovica) made it in 1977.

Trepca stayed up for just one season, but Pristina proved to be more consistent, spending most of the 80s in the then quite formidable First Division. They produced a number of fine players, both ethnic Albanians and Serbs, who later played successfully for top Yugoslav clubs and won places in the national team.

Perhaps the most prominent of these players was Fadil Vokrri, a hero among Partizan supporters, who played 12 games and scored six goals for Yugoslavia.

Vokrri has been at the helm of the Kosovo Football Federation, FFK, for four years now, and has fought hard on two fronts.

At home, he has sought to improve playing conditions on and off the field, and has had some success, not least as a result of his personal charisma. Internationally his main task was to put Kosovo on the world map, to gain UEFA and FIFA recognition for the FFK and to see Kosovo clubs and the national team enter European competitions.

He was quickly able to find influential friends, most notably in Turkey, who were willing to promote the FFK cause. With Tuesday’s FIFA decision, it seems the project has taken a huge step forward.


Where do we go from here?


The decision to put Vokrri in charge was an excellent choice from the FFK point of view, albeit an obvious one.

Unlike prominent Kosovo politicians who have been compromised by their conduct during and just after the war, Vokrri remains a relatively well-liked figure in Serbia.

With his open personality and his familiarity with Belgrade, where he lived for three years, he has always been happy to speak to the Serbian media, and has regularly proposed dialogue and cooperative initiatives to the FSS, though these approaches have generally been ignored.

Whatever the effect of the next round of negotiations between the FSS, FIFA and UEFA, it seems inevitable that some level of communication between Belgrade and Pristina will be established, not least because the whole issue is about much more than just politics.

Giving all those talented Kosovo players across Europe an opportunity to play for the land of their birth is a matter of fairness. Even more importantly, those who have remained in Kosovo must not be forgotten, because football is an integral part of Kosovo’s sporting life, as FIFA President Sepp Blatter pointed out on Wednesday.

The way FIFA handled the situation may have been clumsy, but then FIFA hasn’t been known for acting wisely of late. The Blatter era has been marred by numerous blunders and affairs even though the Swiss has somehow managed to turn larger problems into personal triumphs.


Legal obstacles


What FIFA basically offered Kosovo on Tuesday was not full membership, but an opportunity to play friendly unofficial games with FIFA members.

This is a similar arrangement to the one under which some Spanish regions, such as the Basque Country, Catalonia and Andalusia, have played for a number of years. These teams are made up of players who can still play for current FIFA members, in the abovementioned cases most often for Spain.

The Serbian national team even played a friendly match against the Basque Country in late 2006, prompting accusations of hypocrisy over the Serbian position denying the Kosovo federation the right to organise similar games.

It is not yet clear whether Tuesday’s decision means that, for example, Shaqiri will be able to play both for Switzerland in official competitions and for Kosovo in friendly matches, or whether all the players will have to choose one national squad and play only for that squad.

It is understood that once Kosovo is a full FIFA member, any eligible players will have a window of opportunity in which to switch allegiances from their current teams to Kosovo.

However, even if Blatter’s proposal stands, the road to full membership will be a long one. On the surface, the FIFA Statute itself is not an obstacle, since Article 10.1 simply states that any country recognized as independent by the international community can become a FIFA member.

The 90 countries that recognize Kosovo’s independence can clearly be considered as the international community. However, Article 10.2 states that an Association can become a member of FIFA only after spending two years with provisional status within its Confederation, in the case of Kosovo within UEFA.

Article 5:1 of the UEFA Statute states that “Membership of UEFA is open to national football associations situated in the continent of Europe, based in a country which is recognized by the United Nations as an independent state”.

This is in line with statutes of various international organizations, including the International Olympic Committee. These provisions imply that until Kosovo is a UN member, it won’t be eligible to gain full membership in UEFA and, consequently, in FIFA.

For the time being it is difficult to envisage Kosovo getting a UN seat, with Russia and China seemingly determined to block this, and more than half of current UN members, including five EU states, still not recognizing Kosovo more than four years after its declaration of independence.

The key problem for Kosovo diplomacy has always been that its own position appears to set precedents for other countries. As a striking example of this, within 24 hours of FIFA’s decision on Kosovo, representatives of Republika Srpska’s Football Association demanded that Article 79 of the FIFA Statute (banning members from playing with non-FIFA associations) be lifted for the RS FA too.

Yet, a solution may lie in the fact that both statutes allow an internationally unrecognized FA to take part in any game if it has the permission of the Football Association that has official jurisdiction over the territory on which the fixture is played.

In terms of current international relations in football, the Serbian Football Association officially still has jurisdiction over Kosovo. Therefore, the FSS could give permission to the FFK to play under the Kosovo banner.

However, beyond this it gets complicated since the UN, which has been necessary in more or less every bilateral arrangement between Belgrade and Priština, has no jurisdiction over football matters.

For the FFK, a possible solution with immediate results would be to recognize the FSS as its parent association for the time being, until Kosovo itself fulfils preconditions to gain acceptance in FIFA and UEFA. The question is whether this scenario is realistic, given current bilateral relations.


On the ground


Kosovo is currently one of 80 football nations or micro-nations across the world that has no affiliation with FIFA. More than half of these come from Europe, most of them regions of Spain, France and the United Kingdom. Only six sovereign nations are not FIFA members.

There have been various attempts to organize semi-official and unofficial games between Kosovo and foreign teams, or between Kosovo clubs and foreign clubs, but when the FFK gains UEFA and FIFA recognition none of these would count in their offical football statistics and history.

Six other international sports federations have incorporated Kosovo associations as full members, beginning with ITTU’s (table tennis) acceptance of the Table Tennis Federation of Kosovo (FPK) in 2003, and with handball attracting the most attention.

Six years ago, even before Kosovo declared independence, Kosovo handball teams within the Handball Federation of Kosovo were allowed to play in European competitions by European Handball Federation (EHF), albeit not the national team.

In 2007 Vllaznimi of Djakovica/Gjakova was drawn against Serbia’s Kikinda, but the Government of Serbia forbade the club to play against teams from “non-existent countries”. Kikinda was expelled from the competition, receiving a heavy fine and a two-year ban from Europe.

Vllaznimi was later drawn against another Serbian club, Naisa. To add insult to Kikinda’s injury, the team from Nis was allowed to play on neutral ground in Hungary. Naisa thrashed Vlaznimi by a 50-goal margin over two matches.

Meanwhile, in parts of Kosovo still inhabited by ethnic Serbs most clubs take part in Serbian competitions, although there have been some attempts at integration, particularly in basketball.

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/football-wins-amid-political-row-over-kosovo-status

[Nurzat]

kosovo is not a nation... they should be incorporated to albania... montenegro is not a nation either... i don't get it

[dralos]

kosovo is not a nation... they should be incorporated to albania... montenegro is not a nation either... i don't get it
i would like to be incorporated into albania,but it isnt allowed by the big powers:(

[Crn Volk]

kosovo is not a nation... they should be incorporated to albania... montenegro is not a nation either... i don't get it

Indeed, Kosovo is a Serbian province :coffee:

[Methmatician]

kosovo is not a nation... they should be incorporated to albania... montenegro is not a nation either... i don't get it

Neither Kosovo nor Montenegro want to join any nation.

[dralos]

Neither Kosovo nor Montenegro want to join any nation.
back up amigo,kosova should be under albania:D

[Drawing-slim]

With all those talented players kosovo would be a power house beyond balkans.

[The.Mask]

This is so unfair so far not to let Kosovo playing friendly games and especially for an independant state !

From what i know FIFA and UEFA let Spanish provinces like Basque County and Catalonia or French Corsica and Brittany to play friendly games from what i know all these regions are not recognized by none of EU states while Kosovo is already recognized by main countries of the world so why FIFA doesn't let Kosovo to play friendlies ?

Montenegro was accepted just 1 year after their independance.
FIFA is disrespectful, at least European Handball Federation accepted Kosovo...