By Andrew Warshaw
February 25 – Kosovo’s campaign to be given improved status in world football has been added to the agenda at next month’s FIFA executive committee meeting, according to leading officials of the breakaway Balkan state.
Kosovan football authorities have been increasingly frustrated by FIFA’s apparent u-turn that is preventing them from playing international friendlies at senior level.
Permission was given in principle last May by football’s world governing body, only for it to be watered down to allow Kosovo instead to play friendly matches at “youth, amateur, women’s and club football” level following opposition from both from Serbia and UEFA.
Even that, however, has been jeopardised by FIFA’s insistence that all flags and national symbols – as well as the national anthem – be banned and that no games can be staged on Kosovar soil “without the prior authorization” of Serbia.
That prompted an angry protest and exchange of correspondence, and FIFA have now agreed to review Kosovo’s case once again.
“We have had the word of President Blatter that Kosovo will 100% be in the discussion of the meeting on March 22,” said Fadil Vokrri, president of the Kosovar Football Federation. “The modalities from the beginning were unacceptable for us.”
Vokrri was keen, however, not to rock the boat further.
” We now have to be careful. I have said before, I will say it again: Blatter is a great friend of Kosovo.”
Without any apparent climbdown by FIFA or UEFA, earlier this month Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci penned his own personal protest in a passionate and sensitive three-page appeal to Blatter, seen by InsideWorldFootball.
Pointing out that 22 EU member states now recognised his country, he wrote: “The independence of Kosovo is not only irreversible but a fact of life which is only contested by a decreasing number of countries.” The modalities imposed by FIFA, he added, “effectively call for the negation of our statehood.”
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