[ALBSA-Info] That was then - March 8, 1989

[Agron Alibali]

The Times (London) 


March 26, 2001, Monday 

Sport 

I was there... 

Compiled Gary Jacob 

March 8, 1989 VENUE: Qemal Stafa stadium, Tirana
OCCASION: Albania 0 England 2. Horror stories precede
the trip to Albania, which was the poorest country in
Europe at that time. John Barnes and Bryan Robson
score to take England to the top of group two in the
World Cup qualifying campaign for Italia 90. 

BOBBY ROBSON (England manager): We just had to go in,
play the match, and get out. I went to watch Sweden
win 2-1 in Albania the year before. They were the
luckiest team to win. 

ANDY LYONS (editorial staff at When Saturday Comes):
The Albanian authorities had granted 125 visas for
English supporters. We organised a trip for 47
supporters to publicise the magazine. We wore
T-shirts, which on the back said in Albanian:
"Friendly English football fans salute Albanian
comrades on the occasion of the first meeting between
their two sides." 

BRIAN SCOTT (England travel manager): Bobby Robson and
I visited Tirana beforehand to look at the hotels and
stadium. Of the two main hotels in Tirana, the Tirana
International was supposedly the best one. I don't
want to be rude, but it was of a pretty poor standard.
It has since been upgraded an enormous amount. 

BOBBY ROBSON: Compared to the Western world, it was
black and white. An awful place to go to and an
ordinary hotel. The people in the main square in
Tirana just walked round and round and there was
nothing for them to do. No television. I felt sorry
for the people who lived there. They had no life, no
luxury. It was a poor country and they had no money.
The guys were still walking around in long flared
trousers, which were certainly out of fashion. There
was nothing for the people to do. So what do you do?
Turn to football. A bit of waste ground and you can
play with a ball. It's the best foundation of all. 

ROGER NARBETT (England team chef): I was the first
team chef and it was my first game. Bobby and Brian
had realised that we were going to have to take our
food. I went out shopping in Birmingham and got
everything that one associates with their own kitchen.
More than 300 litres of bottled water, salt and
pepper, bread, jam, milk, fruit juice, cornflakes,
pasta, meat and fruit. We left nothing to chance. 

CHRIS WADDLE (England winger): Albania is just about
the worst place I have visited in my life. It almost
made my previous trips to Eastern Europe seem
luxurious. I had long hair in those days and I was
advised to get it cut short just to be allowed in the
country. 

LYONS: Passport control at the Albanian border
searched through our luggage to check for anything
that would present the Yugoslav perspective on
politics, such as maps of the country borders. The
people in Tirana, who dressed in 1970s clothes, were
quite friendly and intrigued to see Westerners there. 

ATTILA THE STOCKBROKER (aka John Baine, socialist
performance poet and poet in residence at Brighton &
Hove Albion Football Club): We knew the Albanians were
interested in English football, so I took over lots of
Brighton & Hove Albion programmes and was absolutely
mobbed by hundreds of young Albanian kids who wanted a
copy of a Brighton versus Crewe Alexandra 1984
programme! We also went to the Dynamo Tirana stadium
and played a match on the pitch and visited a tractor
factory. 

SCOTT: The car registration numbers only had three
digits because there were not more than 1,000 cars.
That has changed a lot now. There were no taxis and
people walked or used horse and cart. 

NARBETT: I worked with the hotel chefs to prepare the
food. There was a language barrier but cooking is a
universal language. The staff at the hotel looked on
in wonder as I opened huge tins of baked beans. They
tasted the bread and butter. There was no salamander
or a grill, so I had to use the oven to make the toast
for 50 people. The other difficulty I had was that my
wife had given birth to our son the night we left for
Albania. It was a little daunting to sit on the table
with Bobby Robson and Don Howe. But once I got into my
work, I forgot I was cooking for Gary Lineker and Paul
Gascoigne. The rice pudding went down well. 

ATTILA: I had a tongue-in-cheek interest in Albania
from when I listened to Radio Tirana as a kid. There
was this awful Albanian instrumental band in the hotel
doing cover versions of Beatles songs. We borrowed
their instruments and performed an illegal punk rock
concert in the basement of the hotel to most of our
English group and some bemused Albanians, most of whom
were probably the secret police. We played Blitzkrieg
Bop by The Ramones. 

ROBSON: The game was an afternoon kick-off as they had
no lights. Around midday, the team doctor said: "I
have bad news for you. Bryan Robson has been up all
night with gastroenteritis. He has had no breakfast,
is as weak as water and is not feeling great." I said:
"What? Oh God, doctor. Let's talk to him." It was a
World Cup qualifier. Robson was our most influential
character then. So we told him to have some lunch -
cornflakes and milk - and we then asked him how he
felt. He said: "Not much better, but I will have a
go." He went out and was magnificent. On his 50th
international as captain, he headed the second goal
from a free kick. As England will find out, it isn't
necessarily a hostile atmosphere, but it isn't
friendly and they aren't a bad team. 

ATTILA: I remember the incredible way in which the
crowd scattered when they saw a member of the secret
police, who were hardly secret, as they wore
knee-length leather raincoats. 

ROBSON: We left behind at the hotel anything that we
did not need - the chocolate, fruit, cornflakes. The
chambermaids and waitresses cried; they thought we
were such wonderful people. 

THAT WAS THEN 


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