Albanians abroad

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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Plako
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Aurora Bulkualis wrote: Thu Oct 25, 2018 8:39 pmThinking about it, I'd say the agents are partially responsible for domestic players not succeeding. They always push these players into leagues they can't yet handle like Belgium, Russia, Germany, Italy. How many players have been burned for trying to reach too much at a time? Albania is BARELY a pro league, and they send them against opposition that's equivalent to Top Tier bottom/mid table teams.

Even for Balaj and Roshi, they should have stayed in Croatia. That was their peak. Better than Albanian league, but not THAT much better. They're just not good enough to play consistently in Russian league. Same goes for Gavazaj. Guri/Abazaj were decent talents too, but they haven't handled anywhere that level of competition. Like I said this summer, those two were bound to fail. You can't go from village teams to Belgium.
I totally agree with you. But given the short span of a player's career you can't really fault them for chasing the money.
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Plako
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Princ wrote: Wed Oct 24, 2018 8:59 pmWe scooped up grezda when he was a no name second rate prospect and it was after kosovo took all the “high rate” prospects rashica avdijaj zeneli and more. Let’s not be naive, these half established kosovar players have albania as a 3rd choice behind their diaspora country and kosovo, and that’s if they have us on the list at all.. most of the time they just play around with us like zhegrova januzaj avdijaj me shok...I think we should start focusing more on Macedonian young players they seem much more willing to come play for us
I think that ship has sailed too. As more and more Albanians are establishing as first team players in Macedonia (last I count they had 5 starters) they won't join us either. I think we should look to Italy but most of the players coming from there have been a bust.
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Genti
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Its a real shame when I watch Kosova highlights and see the yellow and blue and barely any Albanian flags in the stadium, like were the fans banned from bringing in our flag? Honestly we could have been a really good team, probably the best in EE besides Croatia if we merged federations.
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Aurora Bulkualis
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Do you guys think Switzerland has an endless amount of Kosovars or something? Most of them moved there during the war, but after '99, those numbers decreased. This is the last generation of players. We should be thankful that Switzerland and Germany's leftovers like Mavraj, Xhaka, Abrashi, Lenjani, Kukeli peaked around the same time Balaj and Sadiku decided to put on their scoring hats, and Cana hadn't yet retired. It was a perfect storm of these things coinciding all at once.

The only reliable diaspora we could get from now are Italian players, but those have been subpar to say the least. Even Kosova itself will run out
of diaspora to snatch from.
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Plako
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Aurora Bulkualis wrote: Sat Oct 27, 2018 11:22 pm Do you guys think Switzerland has an endless amount of Kosovars or something? Most of them moved there during the war, but after '99, those numbers decreased. This is the last generation of players. We should be thankful that Switzerland and Germany's leftovers like Mavraj, Xhaka, Abrashi, Lenjani, Kukeli peaked around the same time Balaj and Sadiku decided to put on their scoring hats, and Cana hadn't yet retired. It was a perfect storm of these things coinciding all at once.

The only reliable diaspora we could get from now are Italian players, but those have been subpar to say the least. Even Kosova itself will run out
of diaspora to snatch from.
While the wave of Albanians fleeing Kosovo to Switzerland has stopped, there are still around 250,000 Kosovar Albanians living there. I think the diaspora will provide players for at least another 2 decades.
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Plako
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Genti wrote: Sat Oct 27, 2018 10:04 pm Its a real shame when I watch Kosova highlights and see the yellow and blue and barely any Albanian flags in the stadium, like were the fans banned from bringing in our flag? Honestly we could have been a really good team, probably the best in EE besides Croatia if we merged federations.
A joint all Albanian team would probably be in Bosnia's level. Serbia would still be ahead of us in terms of talent.
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artan
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Aurora Bulkualis wrote: Sat Oct 27, 2018 11:22 pm Do you guys think Switzerland has an endless amount of Kosovars or something? Most of them moved there during the war, but after '99, those numbers decreased. This is the last generation of players. We should be thankful that Switzerland and Germany's leftovers like Mavraj, Xhaka, Abrashi, Lenjani, Kukeli peaked around the same time Balaj and Sadiku decided to put on their scoring hats, and Cana hadn't yet retired. It was a perfect storm of these things coinciding all at once.

The only reliable diaspora we could get from now are Italian players, but those have been subpar to say the least. Even Kosova itself will run out
of diaspora to snatch from.
Switzerland will continue to have numerous diaspora players. You can make the argument the next generation is coming through with Nedim Bajrami (from Maqedoni and not Kosova), Domgjoni, Toma, Ajeti, etc.. The generation after Shaqiri and Xhaka was a bit of a flop with Hadergjonaj being the only notable player (the guy that went to Everton flopped hard). The Swiss clubs have numerous Albanians in their youth ranks. You can make the case they aren't Xhaka or Shaqiri level talents but then again those two can be considered "generational" talents for Switzerland. Regardless, even the average diaspora players they produce that aren't good enough for their NT are better than the players that we have.

But the point I've been trying to make is that we aren't even attempting to get these guys anymore unlike 5 years ago where Di Biasi was like a kid in a candy store calling up players left and right. Something has happened in the FSHF in the past two years that has deterred them from picking up the more talented diaspora players. What happened IDK but something is weird. When the FSHF are calling guys like Egli Kaja up something isn't sounding right.

As for Italian diaspora they haven't produced one decent player for us in the history of our NT. Maybe this Vrioni guy can be the first but I'm not even sure he's even Albanian lol. I guess if you consider Hysaj, Strakosha and Memushaj a product of Italy than those three guys (Definitely Strakosha is an Italian product).
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According to his instagram Dean Lico scored a goal for Leganes' B team.
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Genti wrote: Sat Oct 27, 2018 10:04 pm Honestly we could have been a really good team, probably the best in EE besides Croatia if we merged federations.
That's silly. It would just be a collective of mediocre players to choose from. Basically what we are now but with more mediocre players to choose from. Basically you add the Shalas and Kryezius to your talent pool which in all honesty is pretty bad.

I don't know if you guys realize but Shaqiri and Xhaka are literally like once or twice a generation type of players by Albanian/Kosovar standards and if they are not world class at all. While Croatia produces players of that caliber pretty much every year I don't think we'll be seeing a Shaqiri or Xhaka type of talent playing for Kosovo or Albania any time soon.. maybe in decades.

When it comes to talents we'll always be mediocre but in this sport even mediocre talents can have some sort of success.
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