[ALBSA-Info] Shqiperi - Angli

[Agron Alibali]

The Independent (London) 


March 27, 2001, Tuesday 

First Edition; SPORT; Pg. 24 

FOOTBALL: ALBANIA CAST OFF ISOLATION'SIRON CAGE; 
 ENGLAND'S WORLD CUP QUALIFYING OPPONENTS HAVE
BENEFITED GREATLY FROM THEIR NATION'S NEW-FOUND
FREEDOMS. 

John Sinnott 


OVER THE past decade Albania's football team, like the
country's fledgling democracy, has begun to come in
from the cold. That was clear on Saturday when Albania
were decidedly unlucky not to come away with at least
a draw in their World Cup qualifying game against
Germany in Leverkusen. The 2-1 defeat included plenty
of warning signs for England as Sven Goran Eriksson's
team prepare to face Albania in Tirana tomorrow. 

The impressive performance against Germany had been
preceded by an even more encouraging result: the 2-0
win over Greece last October in another World Cup
qualifier, Albania's first victory over their
neighbours in a competitive match. It was a win which
created such a feel-good factor in the country that
the Albanian Prime Minister, Ilir Meta, Europe's
youngest premier, gave the players $ 10,000 (pounds
7,000) each. 

How times have changed. In the second half of the 20th
century Albania, under the dictators Enver Hoxha and,
to a lesser extent, his successor Ramiz Alia, had
pursued a brand of communism so hard-line that it
might have even made Joseph Stalin blanch. It was a
model of communism that embraced every walk of life.
Between 1954 and 1963 Albania played just two
international football games; against China and East
Germany, who were deemed to be of a politically
acceptable hue. Since Alia's fall, Europe's poorest
country has not had it much easier. Externally
bedevilled by the problems associated with its
international borders, internally it has been dogged
by crime and corruption. 

Those difficulties have spilled over into the sporting
arena. The most recent example of which came last
summer when the club president of Tomorri Berat,
Ardian Cobo, and a referee, Luan Zylfo ,were shot in
the back of the head as they shared a coffee. At the
time Berat were challenging SK Tirana for the Albanian
title, though Gjergji Thaka, the deputy general
secretary of the Albanian football federation, said
the killing was unrelated to football, implying Cobo's
death was linked to matters of a more criminal nature.


Even Albania's coach, Medin Zhega, has not been able
to escape allegations of corruption. Last week the
defender Clirim Bashi, who plays for the German Second
Division side Alemannia Aachen, alleged that he had
been left out of Zhega's squad because he had been
unwilling to pay $ 5,000. Zhega said the allegations
were untrue, although he had also controversially left
out the Serie A forward Erion Bogdani, of Reggina. 

Zhega, who played for Vllaznia Shkoder and Dinamo
Tirana as well as the international team, took charge
of the Albania side just over a year ago. He replaced
Astrit Hafizi, who had been sacked after leading his
country to their best performance, finishing
second-last in their Euro 2000 qualifying group.
Albania have never qualified for the final stages of a
major competition. 

Mico Papadhopulli, the Albanian football federation
president, explained his decision to sack Hafizi by
saying that he had expected his country to finish at
least fourth in the six-team group rather than fifth. 

The Albanian captain, Rudi Vata, who misses tomorrow's
game after receiving a second yellow card in the
qualifying tournament, during the Germany game,
remained diplomatically non-committal when asked to
compare the relative merits of Zhega and Hafizi. 

"I believe that the players play and the coach gets
the credit, or gets punished if things go wrong," he
said. "Our work makes him big. I know Zhega because he
was my coach when I was an Under-21 player. He's quite
straightforward and he tells you the score, though
he's not the best coach in the world. Under Hafizi we
worked well, we played some good games and we were
very unlucky. He deserves a lot of credit because he
made this team." 

According to Vata, in the aftermath of the fall of
communism, the Albania team struggled to focus on the
job in hand. "Some players didn't treat the national
team properly," he said. "The demands weren't high and
players came to the squad to take a few days off. When
we played, nobody had any determination. Nobody cared
whether we won or drew. Maybe some of the players had
the feeling that they had been mistreated by the
communists." 

A relative thaw in Albania's political landscape
during the 1990s allowed the country's best
footballers to leave. As a result there has been a
great improvement in the international team's
performances and Vata says that, with most of the
squad now playing abroad, the national team no longer
suffers from an inferiority complex. 

"Playing overseas helps because it shows that nobody
is better than you if you work hard at the game,"
Vata, once of Celtic, said. "You see you have two legs
like everybody else. You see that nobody can hit the
ball better than you can and that nobody can run
faster than you. Before we felt inferior to the West.
That's not the case any more. Now we play with
everything we have. The team has been together for
many years, so we know each other's game very well. We
can run, we can pass it around, we can score goals, we
just have to be a bit more disciplined." 

However, Albania's improvement has not been matched by
progress at club level as the country's economic and
political problems have taken their toll. 

In the 1980s a study on European attendances threw up
the curious statistic that, as a percentage of the
population as a whole, more people went to football
matches in Albania than anywhere else. Now the average
attendance is down to fewer than 2,000. 

A lack of money and facilities has also hindered
progress in European club competitions. Flamurtari
have had the most success; in 1988 they reached the
Uefa Cup third round, knocking out Partizan Belgrade
and beating Barcelona in the home leg. 

Last November Sepp Blatter, the president of Fifa, the
world game's governing authority, made a two-day visit
to the Balkan state. He promised financial aid to both
improve the country's stadiums and to set up an
academy in Tirana. 

The current Albanian squad is made up of players who
perform in, among others, the Italian, German, French,
Belgium and Turkish leagues. That is remarkable
progress when considering that 10 years ago Vata
sought political asylum as a means of furthering his
career. Vata's organisational ability in defence and
ability to score from set pieces will be much missed
tomorrow. 

The Albania captain, who won the Scottish Cup when at
Parkhead, now plays for the Bundesliga club Energie
Cottbus, whose coach is, ironically, Eduard Geyer, the
last man to train the East German national team. 

In 1997 Vata scored in Albania's famous 4-3 defeat by
Germany in Hanover in another World Cup qualifier. He
also claimed the winner in the historic 3-2 win over
Moldova in 1995 in a European Championship qualifying
match. That was the first time Albania had won a
competitive away game for almost half a century. 

The Albanians look more comfortable in attack than
they do in defence. The midfielder Bledar Kola, of AEK
Athens, who scored against Germany on Saturday, links
well with the two strikers, the tall Igli Tare,
currently on loan with Brescia, and Alban Bushi of the
Turkish club Istanbulspor, who Vata believes is his
country's most dangerous player. 

Albania, as well as their captain, will be without the
talented midfielder Edvin Murati, who plays for Lille
in France. Murati also picked up a second yellow card
during Saturday's qualifier. 

===
 FOOTBALL: ERIKSSON SEEKS STEEL FROM SENIORITY 

BYLINE: Glenn Moore In Tirana 

BODY: 


ENGLAND'S FOOTBALLERS arrived in Albania last night,
walking through the foot -and-mouth disinfectant mats
at the fir-tree lined airport on the way, very much
aware that their opponents tomorrow are likely to be a
vast improvement on the team which Bobby Robson's side
beat on England's last visit here in 1989. 

Twelve years ago this month, Robson's England won 2-0
in Tirana on the way to Italia 90. They followed up
with a 5-0 victory at Wembley seven weeks later and
Sven Goran Eriksson would be delighted with a similar
set of results. However, the Albanian side which lost
at home to goals from Bryan Robson and John Barnes did
not have a single player employed outside its own,
then closed, borders. The current one has players
based all over Europe including Italy, Germany,
France, Greece and Turkey. 

The difference is evident from Albania's contrasting
results in the two eras. While the 1989 team endured a
12-year run with one victory, the current side have
become relatively familiar with the experience. Last
year they even won its first trophy since 1946,
Malta's Rothmans tournament, while in the qualifying
campaign for Euro 2000 they defeated Georgia and
gained draws in Norway and Latvia. 

So far in this qualifying campaign for the 2002 World
Cup they have defeated Greece 2-0, lost by a single
goal in Finland, and, on Saturday, were within two
minutes of holding Germany to a draw in Leverkusen.
"They could easily have drawn against Finland and
Germany, said Tord Grip, Eriksson's assistant,
yesterday. He added: "You have to have a bit of
respect for every country now. Look at Malta's recent
draw with the Czech Republic. In one game anything can
happen." 

Unbeaten at home since June 1999, Albania will thus
host England with more confidence than might be
anticipated. Not that England, after coming from
behind to win for the first time since 1996, will be
short of belief. 

"We arrive in Albania in the right spirit," said
Eriksson. "To have four points rather than one is very
important." 

Sol Campbell added of Saturday's match with Finland:
"Sometimes you panic when you go one down, but we
didn't. We were all mad at each other for a moment
when they scored but we just kept plugging away, got
our two goals and got the win we needed desperately.
We need to build on that against Albania because we
need to keep on winning to stay in the hunt. The whole
nation is looking at us to qualify for the World Cup .
I don't want to have a summer off. I'd rather be with
England." 

Campbell stressed that England would have to override
such concerns as hotel accommodation, food and the
quality of the pitches, but none should be a worry to
the senior team. Their hotel, if not exactly George V
or the Dorchester, is perfectly adequate and the team
have brought their own food and caterer. The pitch in
the Qemal Stafa stadium is better than some in the
Premiership. 

The one change Eriksson has to make for the senior
side is finding a replacement for Steven Gerrard. Grip
yesterday suggested Michael Carrick as a candidate but
intimated that Nicky Butt remained the more likely
choice. 

Another possible change is at centre-forward, but
since Grip said Eriksson would be sitting down to have
a long one-to-one chat with Andy Cole, the Manchester
United striker seems likely to retain his place. 

Grip added: "It's important for a player to feel
confident and to feel secure. The staff can always
help any player. Cole's first goal will come sooner or
later. I think he will be OK." 

While Cole searches for form, Eriksson will be looking
for his senior players to lead the way, just as they
did on Saturday. "Maybe being captain is bringing the
best from David Beckham," said the coach. "He is only
25 but already captain of England and very proud to be
so. He really wants to perform as captain. 

"I don't think he is worried that it is not a
long-term appointment . That is because I don't like
to say this' is that' for a year. I cannot say, for
example, that Gary Neville will be right-back for the
next five games. But there is no reason to change
Beckham as the captain." 

The team's oldest, and most-capped, member, played an
equally important role. David Seaman is expected to
win his 60th cap tomorrow and Eriksson said of the
37-year- old: "I always said age is not important for
me. He made some very important saves. It was a
difficult decision for me to decide between four good
goalkeepers - I always find goalkeepers are hardest to
assess - but I think I made the right decision. I
think Seaman has played very well for Arsenal recently
and he has experience to spare." 

Campbell, who will face Seaman in Saturday's north
London derby, added: "David is a fantastic keeper. He
wants to keep playing internationally for as long as
he can. He's good enough to be playing for England in
the next World Cup finals." Given that Seaman has,
reportedly, said that when he is finished with England
he will also be finished with Arsenal, this was a rare
case of a Tottenham captain's words being music to
Arsenal fans' ears. 


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