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At Wembley tonight, England’s footballers take on Montenegro in a Euro 2012 qualifier.
Improbably enough, it is the visitors who head the group with three wins out of three - pretty remarkable given that the country declared independence just four years ago and, at some 5,000 square miles, is a touch smaller than Northern Ireland and a touch bigger than Death Valley National Park.
As star player Mirko Vucinic and his team-mates pursue their dream tonight at one of world sport’s most famous venues, spare a thought for the sportsmen and women of Kosovo, another (Jamaica-sized) fragment of the former Yugoslavia, most of whom are still waiting to represent their state in international competition, even though its independence is recognised by some 70 other countries.
Like I suspect most followers of elite sport, it had never actually occurred to me that this place, so prominent in newspaper headlines 11 years ago, was still effectively excluded from vast swathes of international competition.
That it has occurred to me now is thanks to a lengthy email I received last week from a very senior member of Kosovo’s sports establishment.
This is the situation as explained to me in that email:
The Kosovan Olympic Committee is not yet recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
For that to happen, my interlocutor says, as a first condition, at least five Kosovan national sports associations must have been accepted as members of their respective international sports federations (IFs).
To date, he says, Kosovo has two fully-recognised federations - table tennis and weightlifting.
Next up may be archery since, he says, the Kosovan Archery Federation is “provisionally recognised” and should become a full member at the next assembly.
Kosovan athletes from four other sports - handball, wrestling, skiing and judo - are, he says, allowed to take part in some international events, though these national associations are not, as yet, recognised by the relevant IFs.
Once recognised by five Olympic sports, the next hurdle to IOC membership, he says - and this has been confirmed to me by a senior IOC figure – is for Kosovo’s independence to be recognised by the international community, in effect the United Nations.
Despite a recent opinion by the International Court of Justice that Kosovo’s declaration of independence was not in violation of international law, and despite its recognition by scores of countries, this seems to be taking an inordinately long time.
In the meantime, Kosovo’s elite athletes must wait – and, as a result, argues my correspondent, are “the only athletes in Europe and maybe the world who are totally isolated”.
One point I did see fit to quiz him on, given the region’s recent history, is whether Kosovan Serbs would be welcome in the nation’s international teams.
He assures me that they would.
Provided that this undertaking was genuinely reflected in selection policy, I can see no good reason why the present situation, which seems grossly unfair to Kosovan athletes, should be allowed to endure - even if full UN recognition remains a delicate issue.
The dream of everyone in Kosovo, I am told, is to see their athletes competing at the Olympic Games in London in 2012.
That may be exaggerating, ever so slightly, for rhetorical effect.
But why should potentially world-class athletes be deprived of the chance to pit their skills against the global elite purely because of the accident of where they were born?
How long, I wonder, before Kosovo’s football team takes on England at Wembley?
David Owen is a specialist sports journalist who worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 World Cup. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938