Author: Refki Alija
Place: Kosovo*
Date: 9 December 2011

Fadil Vokrri, president of the Football Federation of Kosovo, once a star of the national team of former Yugoslavia, is convinced that football in Kosovo will have a bright future in spite of the fact that Kosovo is still ineligible to participate in international matches. 

Author: Rudina Hoxha
Place: Albania
Date: 28 November 2011

The canyons of the Osum River in the UNESCO World Heritage List city of Berat, in southern Albania, are 26 km long and 450 metres above sea level. They are often compared to those found in Colorado, in the US. Nowadays, thanks to Albania Rafting Group, the Osum canyons, along with those found on other rives of the country, have been visited by tourists from all over the world and are growing in popularity.

Author: Béatrice André
Place: The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia**
Date: 29 August 2011

Dejan Zafirov has not let his disability get in the way of his passion for sport. This 33 year-old Macedonian, an above-knee leg amputee, completed a 4000-kilometer cycling trip through China in April 2011. He also works to further the positive relationship between disability and sport. Through his association, Gaia, he has raised funds and assembled a team of volunteers to create a summer sports camp for 11 young people with disabilities in Struga, on the shore of Lake Ohrid.

Author: Refki Alija
Place: Kosovo*
Date: 13 July 2011

Neither the freezing, choppy waters, nor the high altitude were enough to put off over 120 people from taking part in this year’s Bunarfest. Bunarfest, which by now has been running for seven years, is an annual competition held in the Sharr mountains. It involves using tractor, truck or bus tyres to navigate down the Bistrica river and travel four kilometres in the shortest possible time. The race begins at a former power plant (now a museum), and passes below the monastery of the Holy Archangels - the legacy of Emperor Dušan from the XIV century - all the way down to the Stone bridge in the town centre of Prizren.

Author: Vuk Perović
Place: Montenegro
Date: 21 June 2011

During qualifications for the European Football Championship which will be held next year in Poland and Ukraine, the national football team of Montenegro still have not lost a single game. The match against Bulgaria on 4 June in Podgorica ended in a 1-1 draw and kept Montenegro in the running for the greatest championship on the continent. They currently share first place in their qualifying group with England. The top two teams from each group qualify.  

Author: Refki Alija
Place: Kosovo*
Date: 20 May 2011

The basketball team Sigal Prishtina has been declared the ‘Sports Club of the Decade’ in Kosovo. They won this prestigious title after having won the championship seven times and the Kosovo cup nine times. This year they are well on their way to winning the Kosovo cup for the tenth time.

Author: Vuk Perović
Place: Montenegro
Date: 20 April 2011

In Montenegro, the dream of winning the Women's Champions League in handball is decades old. Unfortunately, this year the players of the Budućnost women's handball team were denied it when they thought they almost had it in their grasp. In the semi-finals of this prestigious competition, their dreams were shattered in the two matches they played against the Norwegian team Larvik on 09 and 17 April.

Author: Mirijana Vujović
Place: Croatia
Date: 17 February 2011

With 300,000 Croats skiing every season and over a million people following the sport from home, this small country of 4.4 million people can be officially declared ‘skiing mad’. Yet it wasn’t always so. Find out why skiing has experienced a boom in popularity in Croatia.

Author: Dejan Stanković
Place: Serbia
Date: 21 January 2011

The arrival of coach Robert Prosinečki at Red Star Belgrade (Crvena Zvezda) football club in December 2010 was accompanied by an unsurpassed amount of attention from both the Croatian and Serbian media.

Author: Draga Božinović
Place: Western Balkans
Date: 14 December 2010

After winning the “Salad Bowl”, the Serbian Davis Cup team shaved off their hair and became known as the famous "tennis baldheads". Yet, they were not the first ones to come up with this idea. During the 14th Winter Olympic Games in Sarajevo in 1984, the Slovenian Tone Vogrinec, representative of the Yugoslav team, lost a bet and with it his hair.

Author: Dejan Stanković
Place: Serbia
Date: 06 December 2010

“Serbia passes through Arc de Triomphe” – this was just one of the many exuberant headlines in Serbian press after the men’s national tennis team won their first Davis Cup title after narrowly beating France 3-2.  Novak Djoković, Viktor Troicki, Nenad Zimonjić and Janko Tipsarević, led by the Serbian team captain Bogdan Obradović and the tennis legend Niki Pilić triumphed in Belgrade on 5 December 2010.

Author: Dejan Stanković
Place: Serbia
Date: 20 November 2010

Serbia is proud of its basketball players who reached the semi-finals of the Men’s World Basketball Championship in Turkey in September. It is proud of its volleyball players who won the bronze in the Men’s Volleyball World Championship in Italy in October. There is a lot of enthusiastic praise for the players of FC Partizan for qualifying for the Champions League. And yet, over the last few months of this year, tennis has become the most popular sport in Serbia.

Author: Dejan Stanković
Place: Serbia
Date: 8 June 2010

Serbia’s national team – the “Eagles”; as the press likes to call it - will be making their way to the 2010 FIFA World Cup quietly, making no high flown statements which would fuel the usual euphoria or the high expectations of the country with a population of around seven and a half million people, and almost as many team selectors.

Author: Risto Karajkov
Place: Croatia
Date: 10 April 2010

With his many boxing trophies, Mohawk-stripe haircut and occasional inclination for philosophising, Željko Mavrović is no ordinary farmer. Yet he is likely Croatia’s most famous one. In early 2010, he received a commendation for his work by Bill Gates, as the Croatian press reported fondly. 

Author: Rudina Hoxha
Place: Albania
Date: 10 March 2010

Josip Kuze, from Croatia, is the new coach of the Albanian national team. He took on this task in September 2009. “After a six-month experience in Albania, I am very happy,” Kuze told "Southeast Europe: People and Culture“.

Author: Aleksandar Sazdovski
Place: the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia**
Date: 23 March 2010

The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia has an impressive mountainous terrain with excellent conditions for rock climbing. Lidija Mimova, president of the Sport Climbing Club "Extreme" from Skopje, is an enthusiast who is propagating rock climbing in her country and in the region.

Author: Aleksandar Sazdovski
Place: the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia**
Date: 23 March 2010

VeloFest is a festival dedicated to the promotion of the use of the bicycle. Starting on 7th April 2010, a number of towns and villages in Macedonia will host this unique event for 24 days. The festivities will celebrate the bicycle as part of a way of living, a means of transport, of recreation, and even inspiration for works of art or just adventure and fun.

Author: Vera Milosavljević
Place: Serbia
Date: 25 November 2009

Just a few months shy of the January 2010 European Handball Championship in Austria, Sead Hasanefendić - the former coach of Germany's long-time champion Gummersbach - took the reigns of the Serbian national team.

Author: Vuk Perović
Place: Montenegro
Date: 30 October 2009

Although the World Football Championship will probably be the biggest sports event in 2010, sports fans in Montenegro are far more eager about the upcoming European Water Polo Championship. The success Montenegro’s national team and water polo clubs have achieved in recent years has ranked this sport as the country’s absolute favourite.

Place: Kosovo*
Author: Gezim Baxhaku
Date: 28 August 2009
Sports, particularly football, is proving to be an effective instrument of bringing together members of the international peace keeping troops in Kosovo (KFOR) and the local youth, irrespective of their ethnic background.

Author: Bülent ÇAMCI
Place: Turkey
Date: 28 August 2009

Legend has it that Turks are the world’s greatest wrestlers... Ya?l? Güre? (oil wrestling) is a Turkish national sport that dates back to the 14th century. According to the Guinness World Records, Kirkpinar Oil Wresting Festival is the world's oldest continuously sanctioned sporting competition. The year 2009 saw already the 648th edition of the Festival.

Author: Dejan Stanković
Place: Serbia
Date: 16 July 2009

This July Belgrade hosted the 25th World University Games and once again proved its potential for tourism and ability to make its guests feel at home. The 2009 Summer Universiade was the biggest sports event ever to take place in the Serbian capital. Belgrade welcomed 8,600 athletes from 128 countries and 215 foreign journalists.

Author: Neven Andjelic
Place: Bosnia and Herzegovina
Date: 23 June 2009

Bosnia and Herzegovina has recently gotten two kings. This is not a contradictio in adjecto but reality following the fact that Wolfsburg Football Club was crowned the German champion. Two of their three best players are Bosnians Zvjezdan Misimović and Edin Džeko, who have officially become ‘Kaisers’ of German football.

Author: Neale Lytollis
Place: Bosnia and Herzegovina
Date: 24 June 2009

From 20-24 May 2009 the second European Streetfootball Festival took place in Fo?a, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The tournament was organised by the Berlin-based NGO "streetfootballworld" and its network member Football Friends together with the European Commission's Directorate General for Enlargement. It involved 24 teams of girls and boys, aged 14 to 18, coming from over fifteen European countries.
 

Author:  Aleksandra Trifković
Place: Bosnia and Herzegovina
Date: 22 May 2009

For all those who think that extreme sports are a modern invention practiced by people bored of urban life, the town of Mostar, in the south of Bosnia and Herzegovina, can only say one big “No”...

Author:  Srdjan Stevanovic
Place: Serbia
Date: 24 March 2009

Serbian tennis players Jelena Janković, Novak Djoković and Ana Ivanović have been among the world’s top ten for the last three years in a row. It is also worth mentioning Nenad Zimonjić who is one of the best doubles players, as well as Janko Tipsarević and Viktor Troicki who are both currently in the top 50. These players are still young and success is expected from them over the next few years. In addition, there is another generation of young Serbian stars - such as Bojana Jovanovski and Filip Krajinović - who also have all the chances of joining the tennis elite. They are ambitious, hardworking and successful given their age. Tennis experts and the media are calling them ‘the biggest hopes of Serbian tennis’ and ‘new tennis prodigies’.

Author:  Marko Vesović
Place: Montenegro
Date: 03 March, 2009

The history of organised sport in Montenegro dates back to the 19th century. Back then, tennis, football and golf were the most popular sports, but skating, skiing, cycling and horse racing had also their supporters. By the beginning of the 20th century, the first sport clubs had already been founded. In 1908 Montenegro received an official invitation from the British King Edward VIII to participate at the Olympic Games in London. Unfortunately, it was not a member of the International Olympic Committee, so it was ineligible to participate.

Author:  Lara Stolnik
Place: Croatia
Date: 27 January, 2009

With a hundred years of skiing tradition, Zagreb is the only capital in the world hosting an Alpine Ski World Cup, including the renowned Ladies and Men’s Slalom.