Kosova: Playing Football in Secret

Dear friends and respected colleagues,

First at all I would like to thank the organizers of this meeting, who have supported my trip here so I could speak about what had happened to the athletes of Kosova and its journalists in the past decade.  

My name is Driton Latifi, I am from the Kosova country you have known from the last years' NATO bombing. Your states are the ones that have helped me to survive fiscally, although I have to say that there are a lot of athletes that have died, are in prison in Serbia or are lost, and their relatives don't know anything about them.  

Maybe you can say that with my 22 years I should have looked after my talent somewhere else, maybe in football, but in the last years not only I but also  all other Kosovar athletes were not allowed to use the sporting facilities in Kosova.

When football went underground
Kosova is a small country with around 2.5 million inhabitants, but its more interesting that with 53 % of its population under 19 years old it can provide a great potential for sport. As a lot of other countries, we also have a very modest history of sport. You maybe don't know our athletes, but some of them did win gold medals in European, world championships and Olympic games as well.

These medals in the mid 80's gave us a hope that in future we can deposit more medals. But that did not use to be the case after 1989. Miloshevics' climb in position in Serbia years before that and his nationalism did not care anything about sports just as it did not care about any human beings in Ex-Yugoslavia.  

FC Prishtina in 1983 became a member of the First Yugoslav soccer League. This team for five years had the biggest audience and number of supporters.  

In 1989, after the game against Proleter Zrenjanin that ended in the draw (2:2) and left the Kosovar football players arguing with the referee -  in one moment in front of more than 30.000 spectators, the Serbian police got in the pitch and started to beat the Kosovar footballers. Captain of FC Prishtina and the local favourite, Gani Llapashtica got beaten the worst and his left leg was broken. Even that was not enough for them, they then started to chase the supporters, who were of course whistling to them because of what they were doing to their idols. Also a lot of supporters were arrested together with the players.

After this day the home ground of FC Prishtina was closed for the Kosovars, and the stadium was guarded by the police forces. Then all the stadiums in other cities and all the other sporting palaces were closed for Kosovars. Kosovar athletes with the force of Serbian police were not aloud to use the sporting facilities. 

After some days had passed the players of FC Prishtina got together the members of Executive Committee and told them that they want to get on with their work no matter what will be the price. The team got very quickly together, and they held a training session in the forgotten field outside of Prishtina some 10 kilometres away in village called Llukar. 

The Serbian police stopped their game in the stadium with force, but they never did stop the wish and their passion for playing football. After they secured the first equipments from the secret channels, the Kosovar football players organized the soccer League of Kosova, who was also playing the games in locations secret from the Serbian police.

Arrests, beatings, sentences and stopping the games by the Serbian police made Kosovar footballers became immune to that (You can find facts about this at Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International etc). A lot of games were stopped, and only a few of them were playing 90 minutes with joy of win. The schedule of games and its areas were kept secret until the last moment, so sometimes even we journalists missed the games.  

In its beginning soccer League had 4 groups, and the first two from the group were playing in the Play-off for the title. In such conditions, with no field, no equipment, no proper balls, and with the police after you, Kosovar footballers still had time to find the joy that this game is supposed to bring to anyone. 

On the other side you could hear stories like Serbian politicians calling someone who just wanted to play football terrorists. FC Prishtina has won the first league title organized in such conditions, but their regard was not the international competition like it is not still today.

200.000 athletes competed in secret
During this period, there were 23 sports federations in Kosova with more than 200.000 active athletes, who worked in that secret system away from the public eye and normal conditions. In 1996, there was no force that could stop Kosovar footballers of forming the First Kosova Unique league with 18 teams.

Ironically, Serbs were making monopoly on city stadiums and sport stadium facilities, although they were less than 10 % of Kosova population. They filled the teams only with Serbs, and the games were watched by their few friends. Meanwhile in secret areas you could find until 10.000 spectators watching a football game and they were sitting on a stone, in a  tree, or anywhere they could.  

In such conditions Kosova had more than 130 football clubs and more than 10.000 footballers, who were all sponsored by private donors or companies, who got very little out of it except the Serbian police at their doors. In this time ironically Serbian held FC Prishtina was lead by the war criminal, Zelko Raznjatovic Arkan.  

The dead football players
In the beginning of 1998, when the first shots were heard in Drenica area, football and all the sport activities were stopped because of security conditions.

During that year some Kosovar footballers lost their teamates. Driton Ahmeti, member of FC 2 Korriku from Dobroshec, was massacred in his home with some of his family members. Ahmet, was the first victim and not the last one. After the war his team retired the shirt number 7 that he used to wear.  

The talented player of FC Liria (Freedom), Perparim Thaqi was found dead one morning of Spring 1998 together with his two friends. Toda, the city stadium in Prizren bears his name: The Perparim Thaqi stadium.  

Captain of FC Ferronikeli, Rexhep Rexhepi from Drenica area have been executed by the serbian forces in front of his family. It is very sad, but this list just goes on and on, and the Kosovar FA dont have exact number of killed footballers.

From some statistics there is estimate number of more than 100 Kosovar athletes killed from the 1998 until the end of NATO bombing. In this number I have not included those who are in jail in Serbia or those that are lost and their families do not know anything about them.  

FC Prishtina is still the best club in Kosova. 

Sports journalism more dangerous than political journalism
Maybe colleagues, you can not imagine what I just told you. But, please could you imagine for example what would happen, if Catalons would see how the police would beat the players in the Nou Camp stadium. How would the supporters of Manchester United or Bavarian of Bayern Munich react?  

Anyway, after the return of the Kosovar athletes to their sporting facilities, they found that some of them had been destroyed by the bombings, and others by by the Serbian forces leaving Kosova.  

After the war, the UN administration has formed the Department of Sport, who in fact is doing the work of Ministry and is trying to help Kosovar sports. There is one Kosovar and one international member of UN that are in charge of the Sports Department. 

One of the interesting topics in this experience of Kosovar sport, was also the sports journalism. Me and my colleagues had the same destiny like the athletes. Writing about sport in the beginning was more dangerous than writing about politics. At that time the population of Kosova had no information about the local sport nor international sport. There was only one daily Newspaper and no electronic media, such as radio or TV stations, who started their life only after the war. 

You could only write about sport after the game was over and very little beforehand. Anyway, in the end what Kosova athletes and its media need is your help. It doesnt matter in what way it should be.

Please help in any way the sport in Kosova.

Thank you.