FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
The prestigious Spanish "AS" has dedicated an article to the evolution of the Albanian national team and football in our country in general.
The article begins with the description of the situation in 2013, when no one thought that Albania could qualify for an international competition, and ends with the qualification for "Euro 2024".
The full article of the "AS" newspaper:
I want to focus on that case in 2013, because the contrast with today is absolutely gigantic. At the time, no one in the country thought their team could compete in a major event.
The national team was looked down upon and football fans focused more on watching foreign championships. The national stadium, then called Qemal Stafa, was in a dilapidated state. It would be remodeled and for several years the team had to go to play in Elbasan, a provincial city, with a field with a capacity for 13 thousand spectators.
The reality now is very different. Albania will play in its second European Championship, having qualified for the final stage of two of the last three editions. The Air Albania Stadium in Tirana is today one of the most modern on the continent and has even hosted a European final, the final of the League Conference that Roma defeated Feyenoord.
There are many issues to improve in terms of infrastructure across the country and some issues have been extremely damaging to the image of national football, such as Skanderbeg Korçar's ten-year ban from playing in European competitions due to a case notorious match-fixing.
Albania is still far from the elite, but the current panorama was unimaginable two decades ago. Finding themselves now in a group with Spain, Italy and Croatia, apart from the fact that it is only logical that they finish with zero points, gives the country a footballing prestige that even the most optimistic could not have thought would be achieved.
There have been many protagonists in this transformation. Sylvinho has indisputable merit in this second classification, which has been much cheaper than the first, in which the importance of the drone episode that flew over Belgrade in a historic and extremely controversial match against Serbia cannot be underestimated. But it is right to remember today the coach of that first time, the Italian Gianni De Biasi. He changed the mood of Albanian football and convinced the whole nation that the impossible was not so impossible.
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