The first snowflakes of that winter fell and, in the end, they had covered all the destroyed and burned houses. The truce was in place, but that strange smell of gunpowder remained. The tormented and divided nation just waited for closure and on 21 November, in Dayton, Ohio, the leaders agreed to end the bloody war.

But wars do not end just like that. It took months – in some places years – before any semblance of normal life was restored. It was quite strange; after years of darkness, hunger and thirst one started to admire simple things like switching the light on, water flowing from the tap and the taste of bread.

Or playing football. The snow fell in November 1995 as Bosnia and Herzegovina prepared to play their first ever official international match on the last day of the month, nine days after the Dayton agreement. The country was still divided, and so was the football. The Football Association formed the league, but it was not able to include clubs from parts of the country where the majority were Bosnian Serbs or Croats. The Bosnian FA – NSBiH – applied to Fifa, but was recognised as a guest member rather than a proper one; even the Dayton Agreement itself was not confirmed until December.

In the next few months, however, the first small steps towards football history were taken. Fifa soon allowed Bosnia and Herzegovina to play friendlies and although they struggled to find opponents to begin with, Albania agreed to host them for an historic game in Tirana.

Fuad Muzurovic, Bosnia's first coach, gathered his team in Zagreb – the faster trip through Serbia and Montenegro was completely out of the question – but only eight players came. The match was not in the Fifa calendar and the clubs did not want to release the players.

"I remember," says Muzurovic, "that I gathered my assistants and we decided that, if we couldn't find more players, we should play. We just wanted to have a national team, no matter the squad, no matter the performance, no matter the result." Some of the players had already retired but, with a couple of late additions, they were able to amass 11 players. Muhamed Konjic, who later played for Derby County and Coventry City, captained the squad. They played in the shirts that they bought in one of Zagreb's sports shops hours before the flight. Bosnia and Herzegovina lost 2-0.

"It was a different time with different ambitions," says Muzurovic. "We had only one mission and that was to create a federation and a national team and to be recognised by Fifa and Uefa. We just wanted to play football."

Eighteen years later and the only thing that has not changed in Sarajevo is the weather. The city that hosted the XIV Winter Olympics in 1984 and is remembered for the longest siege in modern history is once again covered with snowflakes. The ruins are now replaced by shopping malls and the must-have items are no longer electricity, food or water but new smartphones and shiny gadgets.

That is not to say that the country is not still struggling with post-war transition. Disunity has been the country's biggest problem for the last 15 years, with political representatives of three ethnicities using nationalistic rhetoric just to maintain control. Unemployment stands at an extraordinary 44.5% – the biggest in Europe – and the average monthly salary is £351.69. Life in Bosnia is tough and it does not look as if anything will be able to change that. Not in the near future at least.

Even when Vedad Ibisevic scored his goal against Lithuania to confirm Bosnia and Herzegovina's qualification for the World Cup it was obvious that this was not a panacea to the country's problems. It is just not possible to think that football can change the lives of people, whatever the circumstances. But what football can do is to make people, at least momentarily, forget about the problems in their lives and draw out the emotions.

And that moment certainly did. More than 50,000 people welcomed the players for a parade through the streets of Sarajevo on the very same night. The new generation of the national team, the most successful in the history of the country, greeted the people from the balcony in the city centre and the crowd instinctively answered with the simple chant – "Vi ste ponos drzave" – you are the country's pride.

The poorest country in Europe, with a population of less than four million, with a terrible domestic league and destroyed infrastructure had secured a place at the World Cup. After missing out on two major tournaments in play-offs the Dragons dominated their qualifying group, winning every match bar one. The manager Safet Susic, who has been voted the country's (and PSG's) best player ever, has created a team with a very strong spine. They play in the best leagues in Europe: Asmir Begovic is at Stoke City, the captain and defensive linchpin Emir Spahic at Bayer Leverkusen, the brilliant Miralem Pjanic plays for Roma and Ibisevic for Stuttgart and Edin Dzeko for Manchester City. Susic's philosophy is simple – "score more than your opponent, no matter how much it will cost" – and while that makes the team look tactically naive at times, Bosnia and Herzegovina are extremely entertaining to watch. They are an easy team to love.

And that is why, just 18 years after Mo Konjic and his team-mates in Tirana had to buy their shirts from a sports shop to play the country's first international, their successors have put that same shirt on the Christmas wish list for thousands of football fans around the world.

When Bosnia and Herzegovina enters the World Cup draw on Friday, the nation and the team will, as the rest of 31 countries, have their hopes, wishes and goals. They will calculate, plot the perfect scenarios, dream about winning the big matches and surprising the whole world. But there is one thing that singles Bosnia and Herzegovina out from the rest: the emotion that was released the moment Ibisevic's ball passed the goalline and that echoed through the streets of Sarajevo and every other city where Bosnians celebrated that night. After beating all the odds, overcoming all the troubles and finally putting this country on the football map, whatever happens in Brazil, this team is and always will be the pride of the nation.

Sasa Ibrulj is a Bosnian football writer