British media: Albanian identity was suppressed by Serbian authorities, Kosovars resisted via football

Since the years of 80s and during the wars in Yugoslavia, Albanian-Kosovo identity had been suppressed by Serbian nationalist authorities. But ethnic Kosovars found a way to resist through football, writes British magazine “GQ”

Yugoslavia was a masquerade of various ethnic identities from its founding after World War I to violent division in the early '90s.

Among those who were held together under an artificial umbrella of a federation were Kosovars who spoke Albanian and who spoke for much of the Balkan conflict -- the majority of Serbs who suppressed Albanian identity.

Football, as one of the easiest and clearest ways to express identity, was banned for Albanians from the Serbian government in its ʹ90s: Soon only Serbs were officially allowed to play in Kosovo's fields.

This until a rival Kosovo league was founded by the Albanian opposition. In a part of his new book “Blood and Circles: A Football Journey Through Europe) (Grace and Circles: A football journey through the rebel European republics, Robert O'Connor, explains details of the cat and mouse nationalist game that had engulfed the new parallel league, whose players risked arrest or worst, playing soccer, writes “GQ”, transmit “Zeri.info”.

Bayram Aliu” Stadium in Skenderaj is cold, a dark spot to pass on Saturday.

Two concrete blocks lie on each side of the filthy brown field, one with a fine steel roof, the other exposed to the harsh wind.

Today it is an early spring spirit in the air, but there is something in the poverty of a stadium that seems to take a few degrees away. The cold feels like bone.

The stadium's Frost is a pleasure, comparing it with the trip to Skyeraj from Pristina.

Even here, as if on the path that he led us, the past demands that it be heard.

The man they call the father of modern Kosovo, the leader of KLA, Adem Jashar, was killed in a battle just a few miles from the “Bajram Aliu” stadium.

His picture is hanging from the president's office inside the cold bunker. Someone might even call it a meeting room that Drenica refers to as a club office.

The media tower in the stadium has been improvised in wooden gyms, all rotten and unstable. There's room for three television cameras.

The small crowd is easily divided into two groups, those sitting in seats on the hard roof of stone, and those who had brought cartons to support their back in the cold. Nobody seems happy here.

Typical crowds in Kosovo's Superleague gather until the match is playing, since in the second part nobody cares about checking tickets at open gates.

The path Kosovo made during the destruction from Yugoslavia in this century is marked by horrors.

Some names and phrases remain in my memory by news editions. Precassy is one of them where something big seems to have happened. The drama correspondent was Slobodan Miloseviqi, a Serb whose crimes were “ethnic cleansing of Albanians”, a term that still seems too vulgar.

As a perception outside my world was Kosovo and the suffering between Albanians and Milosevich between good and evil, in the binary framework a child uses to feel the moral things that became the center of the world.

Since the early 1980s, part of the social apartheid had divided Kosovo into half. Albanian culture was threatened by the Serbian government, access to education had been banned as was the use of Albanian, and the civil administration became only Serb. Year after year, the crisis became worse until civil war became inevitable.

Football changes in the same way as life.

In the troubled years of the eight years the game was used as a means to unify Albanian resistance, in the nineth years it was illegal among Albanians, with continued violent oppression for those who disobeyed. Football became extremely politicised and played transformed into an act of rebellion, a hostile demonstration of opposition to the existing situation, transmits “Zeri.fo”.

The evil officials were usually beaten and arrested”

Pristina lost its title after the first edition of the new league. In 1993 he went to KF Trepca from the mining community in Mitrovica. It was common for these two teams to fight for the title, since they had been the only Kosovo teams to have played in the first Yugoslav category.

“in the first two years after 1991 people just played soccer to survive”, says Bajram Shala, official from NFFC.

But, after one or two years, like any league and in any sport, true rivalry began between clubs and investors. Although clubs were in completely unacceptable conditions, they began to have rivalry. The pressure went to sponsors to invest more money to get better players. There was no such thing as international transfers, the situation was extremely bad. Conditions were impossible, but people still gave money to make the best teams. That's what makes people football.

The Independent League of Kosovo lasted until 1997, when it was suspended because of the outbreak of war. FC Pristina was the last champion, defending the title from the previous year. Drenica, playing in the heart of Albanian resistance and where the war would begin several months later, remained at the bottom and fell out of the category.

The whole trick was not to get caught, says Ismet Munishi.

“Once you were caught you were done”, he adds