In 2008, at a football camp just outside Basel, 16-year-old Xherdan Shaqiri made a deal: hold the No 10 shirt for me — when I’m ready, I will wear it.
It would be another eight years before there even existed any such shirt, in the yellow and blue of Uefa’s youngest member, Kosovo. By then, Shaqiri had already made a global name for himself in the red of Switzerland, scoring a stunning overhead kick for his adopted nation in a Euro 2016 last-16 game against Poland in Saint-Etienne.
It would not be right to call Kosovo’s loss a tragedy — the country has suffered too much in the way of genuine human misery. But Switzerland’s gain was undoubtedly a crushing blow to the tiny Balkan state’s sporting ambitions, ambitions which are nevertheless slowly being fulfilled in his absence.
Shaqiri does not want the world to forget his roots. In 2018, after he scored a last-minute winner against Serbia at the World Cup in Russia, he taunted the opposition with his celebration, creating the double-headed eagle with his hands, the symbol of Kosovo’s ethnic cousin Albania. Serbia, which rejects Kosovo’s right to independent statehood, as a nation was incensed. The team got their own back last week when they displayed a flag featuring Kosovo’s borders coloured in the red, white and blue of Serbia before the game against Brazil.
Tonight, the proxy battle between the two countries will play out at a World Cup again when Serbia face Switzerland in a rematch of that 2018 game in Kaliningrad. A place in the last-16 in Qatar will be the prize for the winner. Despite the stakes, the match still represents great hurt for those who remember the devastating 1998-99 war over Kosovo’s independence.
Edmond Rugova, an Albanian, played for Kosovo’s top club, FC Prishtina, in the former Yugoslavia’s top flight when footballers from the region were revered for their skill throughout the federation during the 1980s. He is also the coach to whom Shaqiri made his pledge to return for the No 10 shirt in 2008. Having lived through a period of ethnic apartheid in Kosovo 40 years ago, he despairs of the Serbia team’s flag stunt in Lusail.
“It’s 23 years [since the war] and people in Serbia are still thinking like this,” Rugova says. “People in our country are trying to move on. I think even Shaqiri doesn’t want to respond to that kind of thing anymore.
“It’s in the past. But people [in Serbia] just will not let it go. It’s not just in football. You see Dua Lipa comes out with something to do with being Albanian, and these people have something to say. Any athletes that go to Serbia are closely monitored or are not allowed to travel. There’s always been animosity from them. On our side, it’s a different atmosphere. People are just trying to put their lives back together and move on.”
The war in Kosovo triggered a wave of refugees fleeing the country for safety in Europe. Over time, the humanitarian crisis has healed and in its place vibrant diaspora communities have thrived, nowhere more so than in Switzerland, which opened its doors and where about 250,000 Albanians and Kosovar-Albanians now live.
In 2008, Rugova was given the task by the nascent Football Federation of Kosovo (FFK) — then still unrecognised by Uefa and Fifa — of scouring the world for eligible young footballers who could one day form the nucleus of a team. The search led him to Basel, where he met the young Shaqiri, whose parents had moved there from the Kosovan town of Gjilan — then still a part of Serbia — when he was an infant.
“I put in my report to the FFK that if Argentina has Lionel Messi, then Kosovo has one too. His name is Shaqiri.
“He was this tiny little guy, only 16, but with incredible technical ability. He said to me, ‘Coach, if you can save a No 10 shirt for me, I’ll come to Kosovo.’ I said well we need to make sure we have a team first.
“I honestly knew then how good he would become. The only mistake I made is that he turned out even better. He is a generational talent. I’ve spent a lifetime in football, in Kosovo, Yugoslavia, the US. So I knew what I was seeing. I’m very proud of that kid.
“He was in the system in Switzerland, but we in Kosovo had no knowledge of him. I had sent an open letter to all youth players in Switzerland and all over the world. I made the call public in the media, I called in favours from my football network, through friends of friends. I believe it reached Britain even, because there was [Adnan] Januzaj who was in the system at Manchester United at the time.
“The Xhaka brothers [Granit of Arsenal and Taulant, who plays for Albania] made themselves known to me, but they were slightly too young at the time. But Shaqiri was there. No one in Kosovo knew anything about him, I knew nothing about him.”
Serbia’s flag stunt in Qatar was a tasteless act designed to intimidate and provoke, but it shouldn’t obscure the fact that many Serbs also suffered during and after the war in Kosovo. Their number in the country has plummeted drastically in the years since Yugoslavia was dissolved, and despite the politicking and the taunting, Kosovo remains a sensitive issue for ordinary Serbs, who see the territory as a special place in their nation’s own history. Shaqiri’s celebration in Kaliningrad ought to be judged in its proper context, and condemned.
But for Switzerland and Kosovo the football relationship between them is tightly interwoven. At times, they have worked against each other. When Uefa members voted on the FFK’s membership in 2016, the Swiss federation opposed, fearful that a recognised Kosovo would lure away some of its stars. Eroll Salihu was general secretary of the FFK at the time, and after the vote — 28-24 in Kosovo’s favour — refused to shake the hands of the Swiss delegation.
“Which is more important?” Salihu says. “The status of two or three players? Or the rights of a whole nation? We are talking about the very principles of sport. We gave assurances we would not try to harm their national team. But they wouldn’t back us.
“Xhaka and Shaqiri come here to Kosovo every six months, their roots are here and they are proud. They are a part of our society. They are huge leaders in world sport. Look at what Xhaka is doing for Arsenal. It is a huge source of pride for Kosovo to see them at the World Cup.”
Kosovo is yet to see its team appear at a World Cup. But tonight it will support Shaqiri and Xhaka as passionately as if they were wearing yellow and blue.
