Stadiumi Loro Boriçi

The first thing about Stadiumi Loro Boriçi is the way it sits in the city. From the hill, the blue seats look like a patch of sky cut out from the buildings, and behind them the mountains do not stop — they just get darker. The stand takes up more of the frame than the pitch, a single block of colour with a roof that looks like a wing held out on an arm.

It was Vojo Kushi Stadium when it opened on 1 May 1952. The name changed in 1990, when the Communist government fell and the city renamed the ground for Loro Boriçi, the player and coach who died in 1989. KF Vllaznia Shkodër has played there since the beginning and still calls it home. Between 2003 and 2019 the Albania national team used it for qualifiers, and for two seasons in the middle of that run the Kosovo national team played its 2018 World Cup qualifiers on the same grass while the pitches in Pristina and Mitrovica were being relaid.

The rebuild started in 2015 and finished in time for the reopening on 31 August 2016, when Albania beat Morocco 2–1 in a friendly. The Italian designers gave it a single covered stand. The attendance record — 16,000 — was set on 29 March 2003 against Russia in a Euro 2004 qualifier, when Albania won 3–1.

Here the crowd does not have to walk far to reach the exit doors; the buildings behind the stand are close enough that you can see the balconies. The surface is natural grass, kept green through the winter when the snow sits on the peaks and the pitch stays damp.