Romanian-All Romanian nationalist appeals last night at the Kosovo-Romanian match

The League of Nations match between Romania and Kosovo has been abandoned at an extra time late Friday, after Kosovo National football players launched the field in Bucharest, complaining of racist calls against them by Romanian fans.

U n EFA, the European football house, announced on its website that the match has been abandoned and that later it will provide more details about it.

Kosovo National Manager Bajram Shala said the decision to abandon the match was taken by the Kosovo football federation, coach Franco Foda and the team itself, after “racist calls against Kosovo.

“We, like the federation, coach and team, have decided not to participate in a match where UEFA's basic values are not respected. Not only did they respect the values, but there was racial discrimination, so we decided we could not allow this to happen for the second time at the same stadium and by the fans of the” matches, Shala said at a news conference in Bucharest.

Kosovo captain Amir Nmerman said he had called “Serbia, Serbia” and “Kosovo is Serbia”, from local fans, and that he had announced the match judge “at least three times” before the Kosovo team left the field.

The football team's beating and technical staff instructed footballers to leave the field two minutes before the match in Arena Bucharest ended, when the result was 0:0, until Romania's players stayed in the field.

After discussions for about an hour between the match judge and representatives of both nationals, Kosovo players refused to return to the field, even though they were told conditions had improved for continuing the interrupted match in the 92nd minute.

Danish Judge Morten Crogh returned to the field and urged the Romanian team to resume the game and suspended it later, according to UEFA regulation.

Now, UEFA is expected to open disciplinary procedure for this match, which could cost Kosovo its loss with the official result of refusing to return to the field.

This is the second time in Kosovo's last two visits to Bucharest within a year the match is stopped due to calls by local fans against Kosovo.

U n EFA fined the Romanian Football Federation 52 thousand euros, as well as sentenced it to a match without fans, following an investigation into several violations during the Euro-2024 qualifying match against Kosovo in September 2023.

That match between Romania and Kosovo in Bucharest had been interrupted for about an hour, after local fans had called and unveiled a banner “Kosovo is Serbia”, before it was resumed after the calming of the situation and the removal of the banner.

Romania and Kosovo were facing a fifth round match in the C League Group of League C.

Romania is the leader of the group with 12 points and needed only one draw with Kosovo to ensure promotion in the B League.

Meanwhile, Kosovo, which has a score of 9, was aiming to defeat Romania tonight and win the last match in the group against Lithuania in Pristina and to hope that Romania will stop at least with a draw from Cyprus to be able to win the group.

Romania is one of the five European Union countries, along with Spain, Cyprus, Greece and Slovakia, which do not recognise Kosovo's independence. / REL