When you have travelled in Milot Rashica’s shoes you are not daunted by signing up to Norwich City’s Premier League adventure.

The 24-year-old Kosovan-born wide player is a product of his upbringing in a war-scarred part of Europe.

This is no academy-produced talent that City have signed from Werder Bremen, with skills polished on pristine pitches and cosseted from the real world.

“What you've got in all of these Kosovo players is a real drive and a real hunger,” said Guardian journalist and Kosovan football expert Nick Ames, who listened to Rashica recount his harsh life story prior to his country's original Euro2020 play-off tie against North Macedonia that was later postponed due to the pandemic.

“It largely does come from where they've come from, because in the late 1990s, there was a very, very brutal war against, largely Serbia, and it was very bloody.

The Pink Un: Milot Rashica impressed at Werder Bremen to clinch a Premier League move to Norwich CityMilot Rashica impressed at Werder Bremen to clinch a Premier League move to Norwich City (Image: DPA/PA Images)

"Lots of people died, lots of people had to leave the country. So you've now got a new generation of footballers, and a lot of them were refugees who moved to Germany, or Scandinavia, or Switzerland, especially, and then grew up in those countries, but now play for Kosovo.

"Most people lost something, or had some kind of traumatic experience. I think this generation of players is very motivated by that. And you can see, whenever they put the shirt on, they are fighting for something more than football. They tear into games, it's remarkable to watch sometimes.

“Rashica is very much one of those players. He was born in a town called Vushtrri, It's probably about 45 minutes outside the capital, Pristina. I think the war got going when he was about two years old so him and his family moved to (neighbouring) Albania and they spent, I think he said three or four months there, because there was too much fighting going on.

"They came back and everything had gone. The family home was burnt down.

"They had to start their lives again, which is very common for the people in Kosovo around that time.”

That quest for some form of normality included the first inkling of his football talent.

“He joined the local football school in his town. I think his uncle had played football. His dad was a dentist, but also very interested in football. It kind of went from there for him really,” said Ames. “He made his professional debut, or senior debut, for Vushtrria when he was about 16.

"I think the remarkable thing is that he's in the Premier League now and he's come from the Kosovan league originally, which didn't happen, because the standard of football that he's he started out in, especially facilities-wise, was just nothing. I can't emphasise it enough. By European standards, it was utterly negligible.

"He's not got that academy education, which I think you might see a bit in how he plays - not because he can't do the tactical or technical stuff, but because he's spontaneous, and he's got that bit of something else that you can't really teach. He pushed on from there.

"He was spotted on trial by a Vitesse scout around 2014. Vitesse really liked him and after about a year or so he had become an absolute star attacker for them.

“It's been a remarkable journey considering that he started out in a local team of a small town in Kosovo with nothing, following the war.”

His newly-acquired Premier League status for Norwich City will only increase his star appeal back home. Rashica is part of an exciting crop of fresh talent who just missed out on Euros2020, after mixing it with England in the qualifiers.

“He's priceless to them,” said Ames. “They've got a few. Vedat Muriqi, who's been at Lazio. They've got Arbër Zeneli, who is maybe the winger on the other side of the pitch, who plays in France. He'd probably be playing in the Premier League now if he hadn't had a bad knee injury a year or so ago. But Rashica is the one.

“I remember I covered their first ever World Cup qualifier in 2016 in Finland, because this was the next step of their remarkable story. They'd done their first game, the first official game against Haiti and now they were fully fledged members of UEFA and FIFA so they could play World Cup qualifiers.

"This was his debut for Kosovo and the excitement everyone had, they were buzzing because he was the guy they'd been trying to nail down. He had been in the Albanian youth system when there was no Kosovo national team. It was quite a wrangle for his services but Kosovo wanted him to be their go to guy. And they got him.

"He made his debut and they drew 1-1 and he was absolutely electric. Out of all the talents they've got, and they've got some very good attacking players, he is the one who they've wanted for so long and is the one who I think they're most excited about.

"And he's still only 24 years old. You'd think he has four or five years at the top level.”