Day -771. WorldCup2018.
When does a country become a country? Is it when UEFA say so? Today
Kosovo was accepted as a member of UEFA. Still not a member of the
United Nations, Kosovo can now apply to become a member of Fifa and
therefore play in the qualifying for the 2018 World Cup. So not a
country in the UN's eyes but a country when it comes to football.
The
citizenship issues of who qualifies to play for a country that is not
really a country are going to be very interesting.
Some players who were born in Kosovo played for other countries already
because their state of birth wasn't a country. Fifa doesn't allow
players to play for more than one country if they represented a country at
senior level. So Xherdan Shaqiri and Valon Behrami (Switzerland), Shefki
Kuqi (Finland) and Lorik Cana (Albania) are Kosovans who will not be
playing for their "country" of birth. Nor can Adnan Januzaj of
Manchester United , who Kosovo tried to recruit. His parents are
Kosovo-Albanian but he has played for Belgium. I see an interesting case
for an enterprising citizenship lawyer.
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