Politics in Play in Row over Location of New Kosovo Stadium

That Kosovo needs a new national sports stadium was obvious even before 300,000 fans were left to vie online for just 13,000 tickets to this month's Euro 2020 qualifier in Pristina with England.

But plans to build a new one have been taken hostage by politics.

For the second time, the location of the new 30,000-seat stadium looks set to be changed, this time by the parties poised to form Kosovo's next governing alliance - Vetevendosje and the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK.

Football enthusiasts, revelling in Kosovo's emergence on the international footballing stage since 2016, are fuming.

"Previous decisions on the location of the stadium have been taken on political grounds," said Genc Sermaxhaj, a youth coach with the Drita club in Gjilan/Gnjilane. 

"Someone wanted this stadium to be built as close as possible to their home."

Threat of protests

Plans for a new stadium date back to 2014, when Kosovo President Hashim Thaci, prime minister at the time, ordered a tender for the construction of a new stadium in Pristina, replacing the capital's 13,500-capacity Fadil Vokrri arena.

In December 2017, however, outgoing Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj ordered the project be relocated to the Drenas/Glogovac municipality some 30 kilometres west of the capital.

The design of a 30,000-seat stadium was unveiled in June.

Now, Vetevendosje and LDK, which are negotiating the terms of their ruling alliance after elections in early October, announced they had agreed that the stadium should in fact be built in Bernica, north of Pristina.

The current Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports in the outgoing government, however, said Bernica had already been looked at but was rejected due to property issues and higher...