Kosovo: Milestone match after years in limbo
Haiti were the opponente as Kosovo played their fist FIFA approved international JAMES MONTAGUE in Mitrovica, Kosovo - World Soccer Under black clouds and plumes of acrid yellow smoke, a group of young men in blue tracksuits are meeting each other on a football pitch for the first time. The players of the Kosovo national team run around the pitch of the decrepit stadium in Obilic – a poor, industrial town dominated by Kosovo’s two largest power stations which, according to the World Bank, represent the “worst single-point source of pollution in Europe” – as a crowd of a few hundred look on. In two days time the players are due to be involved in an important milestone in Kosovo’s recent history. After years of politics, fighting, failure, fraught negotiation and, finally, a tentative agreement, Kosovo are about to play their first FIFA-approved match: a friendly against Haiti. “I feel great because we struggled to have this opportunity to show the world we have tradition i...