[Friendly 26/03/16] Austria - Albania

With memories of the golden years (80's) of the albanian football still fresh on her mind, Albania is now attempting to recreate its strong football legacy. As young players start making their names abroad, the future is looking bright for Albanian football!

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Erik
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Are you guys joking me? Romania is NOWHERE near Austria's level. 70% of Austrias team plays in the Bundesliga and here we are trying to say Romania's goat herders from the Romanian league are on par.
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AlMadman
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Aurora Bulkualis wrote: I'm just being realistic. Today, bar Kace, Xhaka, and 'Lleshi most players were either average or bad. They carried the team.
heh, tash po me ngacmon si duket

It wasn't for the pace of Lenjani to beat the defender and his finish, which may I say was beautifully struck. If we were to rely on Lleshi we could have played another 90 min and we wouldn't even come close to hit the target.

I get it, he's the "sweetheart", just like the ball boy Manaj.

Also, you guys should get off Hysajs back. The dude at one point was forced to play CB.
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Plako
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Aurora Bulkualis wrote:Austria is probably on par with Romania which is the weakest team in the group (apart from us).
Are you serious dude? You are the most reactionary poster here. Austria has one of the strongest teams going into the Euros. I think they're this Euro's dark horse.
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Plako
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I'm glad Mavraj made this defensive blunder this game as opposed vs. the Swiss in the opening game.


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Shemy
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Aurora Bulkualis wrote:
Albanian Damien wrote: No way, Austria is ranked top 10 in FIFA. Granted those rankings aren't perfect (lol at Belgium #1). They are absolutely on the level of Swizterland/France, not Romania.
Austria is ranked 10th, Switzerland 12th, Romania 16th, France 24th.

Take Alaba away, Austria = Romania.
Well they have him so wtf is your point, they are a very good team, they went 10 games in qualifying without a defeat and only one draw they are doing something right
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Aurora Bulkualis
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It's hilarious how much Austria is overrated here. Apart from Alaba, who do they have? 90% of their team is full of no namers. Arnautovic is one of their best players. Look at Switzerland for example. Rodriguez (who is almost as good as Alaba), Xhaka, Shaqiri, Lichtsteiner, etc...

If we struggled this much here, imagine in Euros. We played pretty well in the second half, but let's face it, Austria took their foot off the gas pedal. When they were playing seriously we were outclassed.
artan wrote:I think playing Hysaj at LB would be a bad mistake. It seems the worst performances he had in his club career was when he was playing on the left side. He's not left footed and it seems like a waste playing on the left.

Another option we can look into at LB for the future is Leart Paqarda who plays in the second bundesliga.
We're acting like Hysaj is Ronaldo and can't be switched from his position. He is not some great offensive player, so it shouldn't matter that much. He's a smart player, and can get used to it.

If Aliji's career doesn't take off, and we ignore Hadergjonaj because we don't want Hysaj to play LB is crazy, especially if the best option is a Bundesliga II player. Young Boys is not an average Swiss team, they are close to Basel in terms of quality. Starting for them is no joke. We need to think of the future, and not just look for a quick fix.
"Cheap things you can buy in bulk, but Bulku is priceless" Ervin Xhevahir Bulku
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Aurora Bulkualis wrote:
Simboli i Diellit wrote:Tune in into Swiss U21 vs England U21 . Hadergjonaj and the rw Kamberi are looking quite good.
It's a farce that DB didn't call up Hadergjonaj. We could have played Hysaj LB and him RB. Instead we have to settle for 33 year old Agolli that doesn't understand what an offside trap is. Hadergjonaj can actually take on people 1 v. 1.
ZenMaster wrote:People who say that we should bench Mavraj, they should fucking watch waterpolo because they have no fucking clue about football.
That mistake cost us the game and it's inexcusable for high school soccer let alone professional football. It really doesn't matter if you play decently for an entire game, when your mistakes cost the game.
I have seen blunders from the likes of Thiago Silva,Bonucci so i am not worried at all for that mistake, in end of the day it is just a friendly. I read a argument that we got qualified without Mavraj on field but let me remind you that only match that we won points during this qualifier campaign without Mavraj was against Armenia in Yerevan. Let me also remind that in last WC qualifiers we didn't manage to get a single point without Mavraj on field so that says a lot how important Mergim is for our NT.
Kuqaloshi maoist
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Berti
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I will allow the Mavraj bashing during Easter time but come Monday it has to stop. We missed him immensely during his injury and I am delighted at his resurrection (no pun intended)
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Rodon
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Ok these are my impressions on the match of yesterday.

The team has 2 obvious and severe lacunae, but let's start with a premise first:

To be in this competition, where we will fight against strong teams (2-3 of them remarcably stronger), to have some chance to win (because for what else would we hope to partecipate? Our objective should be winning) we need a good collective, where in fact a relatively high quality collective is more important than few individual talents but rest of the team amateurish.
When one have this collective, then it has a chance to win so it is able to achieve victory, with a bit of luck, against all odds like greeks and danishmen did some years ago. But to have a good collective one cannot escape from the fact that ALL the 10 players of the team (except the goalkeeper) have to meet at least some minimum standard of talent. This is a given. When Greece won the European, they didn't have any remarcable pure talent, but all of their players played in medium/high important teams, united with the fact that they had coldblood and cockiness to win, this was a successful cocktail to get the final victory.

Albania, to my pleasure, gained a lot of confidence and a bit of cockyness in the past years of squad revolution. This is due the fact that we improved in quality other than mentality. We have a lot of players that meet the aformentioned criteria, but still unfortunately some of the starting players are complete amateurs.
And here we arrive at the first lacunae of this team: 1) Agolli and Lila shouldn't be ANYWHERE near the NT, let alone be the starters. These 2 guys don't even have basic football technique.
This is extremely harmful for the equilibrium of a team, because even if you have other 8 good players, you will be pulled down by the amateurish mistakes and broken nerves of dabblers that will harm all the squad' game.
Agolli 90% of the time, regardless of being pressed or not, shitted his pants to the idea of confronting the Austrian guy that had to press him, therefore 95% of the time he just passed back. He didn't even put the effort to at least TRY for God's sake, he was purely and simple terrified of doing anything.
The very thought that a player such as Agolli may even be in a European league is offensive to goo football taste and above all to Albanians that hope to win a competition. We have an alternative, that is LENJANI, a more than decent fullback that unfortunately plays every match as a winger when he have very few attacking skills.
Lila more or the less is the same, but he was even more useless up there as a winger.
In that way, we would free the winger places to people more suitable to create offensive threats like Roshi and Rama.
Hell, even Shala would have been tactically a better option than Lenjani and Lila.
We can't every time gift 2 positions when we play.

This leads inevitably to the second point: 2) Forget to make a good impression or to win in this competion. When someone plays with 4 FBs (I can't even believe I continue to see this every f*cking formation) renouncing from the beginning to attack, than it is more than right that he is punished and lose a game such as that of yesterday (and nobodys come here telling me that we couldn't beat a top team like Austria, because even with all those defects, we made a good game and woe could play our chances against any adversaries).
De Biasi has grave responsabilities in this.
Ideally I would see him gone even before the European begin, but I know there are no chance for this to happen. Thanks for all the work, but seeing a relatively good team like Albania renouncing to attack against team like Serbia, Hungary, Romania etc.etc. even before the game begins it's like a stabbing in the heart.

I have nothing to say about the others, Kace, Cana, Xhaka, Mavraj, Cikalleshi, Roshi, Hysaj are all players with good technique and confidence (especially Kace and Xhaka, we have objectively a great midfield) that can make the difference. Ok, Hysaj was shit yesterday and Mavraj made an amateurish mistake, but sometimes happen even to the best players, and it's better that the rare times it happens it does so in meaningless matches rather than in the Europeans.


Said all of that, I sadly don't hold any hope in those Europeans, and even if for some miracle we advance to the best 16, we for sure won't see any good spectacle from our side.
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artan
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Good post Baloz and I somewhat agree with Agolli. I'm normally defending him and rave about his offensive ability but it's clear now that he struggles offensively against the top teams. Against better squads he gets nervous as he doesn't have the time on the ball like he does against a team like Armenia and either panics or loses possession. It's starting to get frustrating.

First half was a bit weird as we weren't pressing and we were sitting back defensively. Maybe because it's a friendly but pressing is what got us here.

But I'm actually kind of glad we lose. This team plays better when there's no expectations. Lose all the friendlies until the competition begins and then we surprise some teams in the Euros. That's how it normally works for us.
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