As the battle for the domestic title raged at the weekend, most Albanians were more interested in Europe's big leagues
By Jonathan Wilson
In the half-built apartment block that spoiled the view of the mountains beyond, around 30 fans perched. A couple more clung to the skeleton of the dilapidated scoreboard behind one of the goals. Perhaps three or four hundred on the low terrace huddled under the stadium's retaining wall, seeking protection from the squally showers that blew in from the Ionian Sea. The one stand was packed, all the seats taken and the aisles full, the roof making it by far the most desirable part of the ground to be in. If there were any away fans, they were well hidden.
In terms of Albanian football, this is pretty much as big as it gets: second-placed Flamurtari against fourth-placed KF Tirana, the most successful side in the nation's history, on the same day that the league leaders Skenderbeu faced third-placed Vllaznia. Flamurtari's fans like to style themselves as the most passionate in Albania - and the previous weekend their game at Lac had been held up by 50 minutes after a rock was thrown from the crowd and struck the opposing goalkeeper - but aside from a couple of banners depicting dragons there is little sign of any great fury burning within them; most seemed to be at least as concerned about securing their cone of sunflower seeds - thrown expertly from the front of the stand by a vendor in a check trilby - as they were about welcoming the sides on to the pitch. Only the Tirana defender Tefik Osmani, who was jeered throughout, generated any particular feeling.
The respective centre-forwards seemed to be enacting an odd footballing version of Stars in Their Eyes. For Flamurtari, Sebino Plaku came as Kenny Miller, all bristling scalp and buzzing short-legged energy; for Tirana, Pero Pejic was a superb Zlatan Ibrahimovic, tall, languid, long-haired, proud-nosed, talented and immensely frustrating. He didn't so much drift in and out of the game as float semi-corporeally on the edge of it, early menace dispersing in a series of bewildered shrugs and shots from absurd positions.
It was Plaku who struck first, after a matter of seconds. The ball was worked to the right, Daniel Xhafa sent in a cross that was just behind the centre-forward, but he had time and space to bring the ball down, turn and hook it into the corner. Technically adept it may have been, but the defending was awful.
A couple of minutes later, at the far end of the stand a shout went up, and it spread in an enormous Chinese whisper. Within seconds everybody was on their feet cheering: Vllaznia, apparently, had scored at Skenderbeu. The man behind me offered round a bag of kumbull - essentially unripe plums - in delight, but as phones were rapidly dug from pockets and confirmation sought, confusion set in. The fan to my right called up a live-scores site on his phone: it confirmed Vllaznia were 1-0 up. But an older fan with a transistor radio held to his ear wagged a finger. It was a false alarm - still 0-0.
Odise Roshi, young and gangling, won possession on the left, burst forward, seemed to have held possession for too long, but then cut the ball back to Xhafa, who struck in a low finish from the edge of the box: quarter of an hour gone, 2-0, and with Tirana's defending all over the place, it seemed merely a matter of how many Flamurtari would score. In Berat a day earlier the receptionist in the hotel, a Tomori fan, had spoken of the "good stuff" Flamurtari have been playing this season, and at that stage it was easy to see what he meant. Even in the worst of the wind and the rain, and on a less than perfect pitch, they'd played neat, progressive football. Xhafa, in particular, caught the eye, dropping off Plaku to link with the midfield.
Having gone 2-0 up, though, Flamurtari eased up. Pejic seemed to have scored with a superb header, only to be penalised for what must have been a very tight offside, and then did score after 22 minutes, finishing precisely from Sabien Lilaj's cut-back, the shot of a player of great technical gifts. Five minutes later the mood was lowered another notch as word filtered through that Skenderbeu had scored. They went on to win 3-0. Flamurtari never recaptured the rhythm of the early minutes, even as the storm subsided, and had Pejic not started trying to beat them on his own, they might have found themselves in trouble. As it was, after a patchy second half, their 2-1 win was comfortable enough.
That evening, wandering around town, I paused in the doorway of one of the many bookies-cum-bars to check the scores. Through the general fug of cigarette smoke, I could see that Real Madrid were 3-2 down to Zaragoza and that Chelsea were drawing 1-1 with Tottenham, but the screen showing Internazionale was too small to see clearly. As I peered in, a boy of about eight in a faded Barcelona shirt pushed past me to get out.
"Inter 1-1?" I asked, holding up a finger on each hand.
"Po," he said, shaking his head, which in Albania means yes.
A couple of giggling friends joined him. He turned round so I could see the "Messi 10" on the back of his shirt.
"Messi? Ronaldo?" he asked, his tone indicating he wanted me to choose between them.
"Messi," I said. "Of course."
He and one of his friends turned to the other and jeered. "Real," he said stubbornly.
The first boy turned back to me and raised a palm for me to slap.
The Madrid fan said something of which I made out "Italia" and "squadra".
"Milan? Inter?"
"Napoli," I said, having no preference.
He reached in his pocket, pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and showed it to me, his finger tracing under the words "Napoli v Genoa 2". With a degree of shock, I realised it was a betting slip - an accumulator on the result of six games. Perhaps the kid was looking after it for his father, waiting to collect potential winnings, but his air of expertise suggested it was his.
The next day, watching Arsenal beat Manchester United in a similar bar in Tirana, I realised the system was automated, a terminal on a counter, which presumably makes it harder to check underage gambling.
Gambling seems hugely popular in Albania. On every street in every town, it seemed, there were photographs of random games - Emile Heskey scoring past Craig Gordon, Frank Lampard holding off Diego Forlan, Rio Ferdinand brandishing the Premier League trophy - advertising betting shops. Three men sat at the table next to mine in Tirana, smoking furiously, drinking raki and picking at a pyramid of cheese cubes. Two older men sat behind them against the wall, smoking more calmly, until, if Bologna crossed the halfway line in their game at Milan, one would leap forward to pray in front of the television. There was a happy, communal - if unanimously male - feel to the afternoon, yet these bars highlight one of the major problems facing Albanian football.
I was reminded of something Zoran Avramovic, the former marketing manager of Crvena Zvezda, had said to me about a decade ago. "If you want to help Serbian football," he said, "you would stop them showing foreign football on television. A guy gets in from work on Friday night, he sits in his chair with a beer, and over the weekend he watches eight, nine, 10 games of great football from Germany, Spain, Italy, England... Go to the stadium to watch Crvena Zvezda, even when they play badly, beat some village 2-0? Why would he?"
Why would an Albanian watch a parody of Ibrahimovic when he can see the real thing? Why leave the smoky comforts of the bookie-bar for the cold and crumbling concrete of the stadium? Why risk flying rocks and hooligan-related hold-ups when you can watch three high-quality games simultaneously with a glass of raki in your hand?
There are those who would say a true fan would go anyway, and perhaps he would, but when football is limited to true fans, attending the game live becomes a minority pursuit. Look at attendances in England which, for all the flaws of the Premier League era, have more than doubled over the past quarter-century. If English football in the mid-80s had been competing with bookie-bars showing Serie A when it was the richest and best league in the world, those attendances might have been even lower.
Four points clear with two games to go, Skenderbeu should go on to win their first title since 1933. That the stranglehold of KF Tirana and Dinamo, the country's two most successful teams, has been broken, is probably a positive, but you look at crowds of 3,000-4,000 even for big games, and you wonder what future Albanian football has. It's a country that loves the game, just not necessarily the version of the game played in its own stadiums.
"The Guardian"
