Article by Daniel Grigore – Published Monday, November 17, 2025, 7:37 p.m. / Updated Monday, November 17, 2025, 7:40 p.m.
Before Kosovo – Switzerlandon Tuesday in Pristina in the preliminaries of the World Championship, there was an exchange of lines between the captain of the guests, Granit Xhaka, and the defender Albian Hajdari, who chose to represent Kosovo after initially playing for the Cantonese national teams.
With one stage left in the preliminaries, we can say that Switzerland has secured qualification for next year's World Championship. The Swiss have a three-point lead over tomorrow's opposition, but a significantly better goal difference, so the representative from Kosovo needs a win with six goals to overtake Xhaka and his.
Even though such a scenario is pure terror, the pre-match atmosphere became tense after Xhaka commented the decisions of Albian Hajdari and Leon Avdullahu to represent, starting this year, the national team of Kosovoafter playing for Switzerland's junior national team.
Hajdari also has a match for Switzerland's first national team, a friendly against Luxembourg in March this year.
Exchange of words started by Granit Xhaka before Kosovo – Switzerland
“You don't want to lose players like that. From their point of view, it's about status. Would they be able to become starters in the Swiss national team in 3 or 4 years? I doubt it, considering what footballers don't play for us often, even though they are in more advanced stages of their careers. For example, Ardon Jashari has been with us for three years, but he has only played four times.
Is Leon over Ardoni? I don't really think so. But he is good, otherwise he would not have played match after match at Hoffenheim. Maybe he lacked a little patience with the Swiss national team, but in the end it is their decision to play for Kosovo, which is at a very good level now,” said Xhaka, as quoted by Koha.
Hajdari's answer came very quickly.
“It's Xhaka's opinion. Leon and I have chosen wholeheartedly to play for Kosovo. We made the decision some time ago and, as I said before, we decided with our close ones, we debated with them and in the end, what others say is just their opinion,” said the Hoffenheim stopper.
