Kosovo National Team

Vedat Muriqi has scored 32 goals in 68 caps for Kosovo. UEFA admitted Kosovo as its 55th member on 3 May 2016, and FIFA followed ten days later; the team's first sanctioned match came that June, a 2–0 win over the Faroe Islands in Frankfurt with goals from Albert Bunjaku and Elbasan Rashani.

What Kosovo has built since is modest in scope but not in shape: top spot in UEFA Nations League Group D in 2018–19, unbeaten through matches against Azerbaijan, the Faroe Islands and Malta, and a second promotion in 2024–25 after winning League C, which lifts the side into League B. Mërgim Vojvoda has made more appearances than anyone else in the shirt, and Edon Zhegrova has taken the name to Juventus, but it is Muriqi's scoring that has underwritten most of the promotions.

The fixture that draws the most attention is against Albania, played under the label of the "Brotherly derby" — a meeting between two sides that share a language and much of their support, complicated by the fact that several Kosovo players could just as easily have worn the Albanian shirt, and some of the Albanian public still reads that choice as a kind of betrayal.

The side plays out of the Fadil Vokrri Stadium in Pristina, a ground that holds under 14,000. A World Cup or a European Championship finals has never followed any of it — the promotions have come in the Nations League, not in the competitions that would put Kosovo on the biggest stage the sport has.