There will be no anthems booming out and no national flags fluttering when Kosovo take on Haiti in the mining town of Mitrovica on Wednesday night. But for the capacity crowd of 17,000 fans who snapped up tickets for the match in four hours, Kosovo’s first ever Fifa-sanctioned friendly will be a highly charged, intensely patriotic experience.

Fifteen years since Nato entered the battle-scarred region to fight against Serbian ethnic cleansing and more than six since Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence the country will play its first official international.

Among those watching from the stands will be the Kosovan FA’s general secretary, Eroll Salihu, who has campaigned intensively for six years for his country to be accepted into football’s fold. Alongside him will be the federation’s president, Fadil Vokrri, recognised as their greatest player and the only Kosovan to represent the former Yugoslavia.

Although Kosovo is recognised by 23 of the 28 countries in the EU, is a member of the World Bank and has been accepted by other international sports federations including rowing and judo, the road to recognition in football has been more tortuous.

Serbia still vehemently opposes any suggestion that Kosovo should be officially recognised by Fifa, backed by Russia. Uefa’s president, Michel Platini – who was also (unsuccessfully) battling a bid by Gibraltar to become the 54th member of the confederation – also opposed the idea.

Yet in January Fifa, whose president, Sepp Blatter, has been generally supportive of Kosovo’s position, announced it would allow the country to play non-competitive friendlies against other international sides.

There are various strings attached – no anthems, no national symbols, no flags, no matches against other former Yugoslav nations – but for those who have cajoled and lobbied for more than a decade, it was a significant victory.

Jérôme Champagne, the former senior Fifa executive who has recently acted as an adviser to the Kosovan FA, said the decision was a victory for justice. “It’s justice for Kosovan football. It’s about reconciliation. This match is about football over political decisions,” said Champagne, who was ousted from Fifa in 2009 and recently announced that he planned to stand as a presidential candidate next April.

The former French diplomat, who is in Mitrovica for the match, said it was important to recognise that the Kosovan football federation, founded in 1947, included members of Serbian descent and many other minorities. “Football should be an agent for reconciliation in the Balkans,” he said.

The ongoing tensions are reflected in the fact that Mitrovica, one of the few Kosovan cities that has a significant Serbian population, retains a Nato peacekeeping force of 5,000 and sees periodic outbreaks of violence.

Even the stadium, which could have sold out three times over and is situated on the south side of the river within sight of Serbian homes in the north, is named after a revered Kosovo Albanian guerrilla fighter.

If Wednesday’s match does mark the first step along the road to full recognition, a whole new set of eligibility issues will come into play. In recent years Kosovo has produced a long list of impressive players who have gone on to play for Switzerland, Albania and others after their parents left their homeland. An entirely new country being granted admission to Fifa is relatively uncharted territory and it remains unclear, though unlikely, whether they would be allowed to switch their allegiance.

Bayern Munich’s Xherdan Shaqiri, Napoli’s Valon Behrami and Borussia Mönchengladbach’s Granit Xhaka will all star for Switzerland in Brazil this summer and all three signed a petition calling for Kosovo to be admitted to Fifa in 2012. Kosovo’s coach, Albert Bunjaki,, who has organised just four matches in his five years in charge, said the players had not been approached for the Haiti friendly so as not to put them in a difficult position, despite assurances that playing for the fledgling nation at this stage would not impact on their eligibility.

Switzerland are due to play a friendly against Croatia in St Gallen on Wednesday night. In 2012 a Swiss tabloid screamed: “We fear the Kosovans” amid concerns their side would be decimated by defections.

Shaqiri cavorted on the Wembley turf with both the Swiss and Kosovan flags after winning the Champions League with Bayern in May and, when Switzerland and Albania played one another in 2012, he had the flags of all three countries stitched into his boots. Many of Albania’s players also hail from Kosovo, among them the captain, Lazio’s Lorik Cana.

Manchester United’s wunderkind Adnan Januzaj – at the centre of an international tug of love between Belgium, England, Albania and Kosovo – was asked to play but turned down the offer while he continues to consider his options.

“Kosovo will always keep its doors open for them,” said Bunjaki after a training session on Monday. “This is a journey, and we expect others to join us in the future.”

But another Manchester-based player will be playing. Bersant Celina, a 17-year-old Manchester City forward who was raised in Norway, said it was “fantastic” to be part of the Kosovan team. “It couldn’t be better than this. I hope to get some playing time so I can show how good I am.”If Kosovo are to become fully integrated into international football, inconsistencies between Fifa’s rules and those of Uefa will need to be reconciled. Fifa’s say only that a member nation must be “recognised by the international community” while Uefa’s require it to be a member of the United Nations, an unlikely prospect while Russia continues to support Serbia’s position.

Yet Platini, hitherto implacably opposed, is understood to have met with Vokrri in Albania recently. And those who have campaigned for so long to become part of the international footballing fraternity are convinced they are winning the argument.

“We want to send a signal to Uefa and Fifa that we have a right to be part of the football family,” Bunjaki recently told the New York Times. “This game will be when Kosovo start on their road to the World Cup after over 25 years of isolation.”