“Sniper, lyre experts and limited ticket” Swiss media: Serbia Albania, football world's hottest match

This is one of the hottest matches that can be played in European football, as a result of the history of two peoples, but it is also a preliminary match in October 2014, where there had been clashes and many other things.

Thus, Swiss medium “NZZ” has made an article about this fiery confrontation.

“is probably the most explosive World Cup qualifying match: Albania and Serbia will face Saturday.

This match is also seen as a test for the atmosphere that could prevail in the European Championship after two years.

When the national representatives of Serbia and Albania meet in the framework of qualifications for the World Cup this Saturday, hundreds of police officers, including snipers, civil officers and fear experts, will secure the stadium.

The match will not take place in the Serbian capital, but in the small town of Leskovac, where the stadium has only 8,100 seats. The section for Albanian fans will be missing -- tickets are not put on free sale. Local organizers and U EFA wants to avoid repeating the October 2014 scandal.

At the time, Serbia and Albania were facing qualifications for the European Championship. Before the match, Serbian spectators threw stones at the Albanian national bus; protests and whistles covered their anthem.

“Kill Albanians! ” cheered on Serbian fans, while a fears bearing a flag flew over the field in the 42nd minute. He presented the “map Greater Albania”, as desired by Albanian nationalists. In the field, Serbian defender Stefan Mitrovic captured the flag, and Albanian players rushed towards him. There were fights in the field and out of it.

The match was interrupted, but the consequences were widely felt: in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, hundreds of fans celebrated the match with car processions and fireworks. The flags of the two countries were burned at border areas between Serbia and Kosovo. Even in the diaspora, in Vienna and Berlin, men of Serbian and Albanian descent clashed. A planned visit by Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama to Belgrade was even postponed.

Since then, the match between Serbia and Albania has been considered one of the hottest in history. Fans of both sides continued to crash in the football field, carrying a century-old conflict.

Burned flag and insulting slogans

At the heart of the conflict is Kosovo, where the majority of the population is ethnic Albanian. Kosovars felt disfellowshipped since the time of the former Yugoslavia. In the late 1990s, Serbian politician Slobodan Milosevic began fighting in Kosovo. Even today, Serbia refuses to recognise Kosovo, which is an independent state since 2008.

Serbian fans express their nationalism in various ways. Crvena Zvezda's Ultra-traphosis often travel towards Gracanica, a mainly Serb enclave in Kosovo. There, they wave the flag of “Greater Serbia” near an Orthodox monastery and pose with the statue of Milos Obilik, the Serbian knights said to have killed an Ottoman Sultan in the XIV century. Belgrade fans present themselves as defenders of Christian Europe against Islamic “invaders” referring to Albanians.

On the other hand, Albanian fans react in their own way. For many of them, there is only one nation: Albanian. In their perception, this nation includes the countries where Albanian minorities live: Serbia, Montenegro, Northern Macedonia and Greece. They often sing for KLA fighters in domestic championship matches. This paramilitary organisation had attacked Serbian targets since the mid-1990s.

And this spirit has reached even the biggest stage of football. After the 2024 European Championship phase match against Croatia in Hamburg, Albanian football player Mirlind Daku received a megaphone and shouted “Down Serbia” towards Albanian fans. Dude was suspended for two fights. Meanwhile, the Serbian Football Federation was fined in December 2024 after fans tried to burn an Albanian flag during the match with Switzerland.

A Test for the Environment at the European Championship

In this context, the two countries' federations consider a success in the fact that the first World Cup qualifying match for Albania and Serbia (0-0) went without incident. The Albanian Football Federation did not sell tickets to fan groups for the match in Tirana in early June. Instead, he raised the prices and distributed the tickets with lots of 200,000 applications.

Many ultra fans protested and attended the match in public broadcasts. A banner to the federation wrote: “Take our tickets and bring the police. But you can't kill the beating heart for Albania. ”

Is it possible for a quick drop in tensions? In February, UEFA announced that the U-21 European Championship of 2027 will take place in Serbia and Albania, with the opening match in Novi Sad (Serbia) and the final in Albania's capital, Tirana. It was mainly entrepreneur Armand Duka, at the same time president of the Albanian Football Federation, who pushed this idea of joint organisation forward. Duke is member of U Executive Committee EFA since 2019.

Sports officials and diplomats from both countries view the tournament as a sign of rapprochement, as well as a contribution to the economic initiative “Open Balkans”. But nationalist fan groups openly expressed their opposition. Members of a group of Albanian fans sprayed with red paint the federation's headquarters and displayed historical photos of Serbian military operations in Kosovo, conveying the message: “reject any co-operation with the killers. ”

If the 2027 European Championship could indeed be held in both countries, it would depend on political relations between Serbia and Albania. The World Cup return match for the World Cup this Saturday between the two nationals will be a key indicator for this”.