England vs. Albania - World Cup Qualifiers Europe - November 12, 2021

[Simboli i Diellit]

Went to check Balaj’s statistics: he hasn’t scored a single goal in nearly 30 games for his clubs during 2021, while his last goal for us was in the friendly against Kosova in 2020.

[CanaYouDoIt]

Went to check Balaj’s statistics: he hasn’t scored a single goal in nearly 30 games for his clubs during 2021, while his last goal for us was in the friendly against Kosova in 2020.

I'm 100% sure all of us here could play 30 games of football and score ONE goal playing as a ST.

[Dallku]

Yeah there is no way Balaj is there for technical reasons. He's either a great locker room guy or there is a little corruption involved. For some reason he's just stuck in the NT.. has been for years.

It's probably the opposite for Balliu. Maybe he just doesn't vibe with the rest of the players.

[Klejdi1023]

This should be Balaj's last call up. He's gotta be dropped for good once these Nov games end, for Nations League we need a new beginning. Since all our strikers suck except Broja, I hope we switch to 4-3-3, that should ensure even Manaj doesn't get called up anymore.

[RedFootballs]

Say what you want about Vrioni but he's scoring a few goals in a professional league. More than can be said about certain players

[artan]

Say what you want about Vrioni but he's scoring a few goals in a professional league. More than can be said about certain players

He's scoring tap ins for a mid table Austrian club. He's not NT level but with that being said I'd rather have him than Balaj in the NT easily. Maybe there's a very small chance Vrioni surprises us while we know Balaj is a donkey.

[RedFootballs]

Say what you want about Vrioni but he's scoring a few goals in a professional league. More than can be said about certain players

He's scoring tap ins for a mid table Austrian club. He's not NT level but with that being said I'd rather have him than Balaj in the NT easily. Maybe there's a very small chance Vrioni surprises us while we know Balaj is a donkey.

Tbh we don't have room to nitpick at the types of goals our players score, barely any score anyway let alone tapins. Situation of our strikers :

Broja : Our only quality striker`, scored a couple goals so far but still has so much to prove

Balaj : Hasn't scored in over a year

Manaj : Warming Spezia's bench and his only season where he scored some goals is in Segunda B

Cika : Hasn't scored a goal for months

Vrioni : 3 in the last 3 games, 7 in 11 this season... At this point he's at least the 3rd best option.

[artan]

Balaj is grandfathered in and he's a domestic player. If he was a diaspora player from Switzerland he would have been dropped back in 2018. Make no mistake they have a preference for domestic players and I think nepotism plays a big part in it. Some of it is to give a favor to club presidents to prop up some of their guys like Hoxhallari, Doka or even Seferi for Refik Halili, propping up Trashi for Olsi Rama, etc. Don't forget guys like Bushi, Jupi, Salihi, etc, are well connected with this system and will favor the domestic players over diaspora players because this is how they came up. I also believe Albania has a "quota" in place where they are forced to start a few domestic players in the lineup and over the years normally the worst players have been these quota players (Villa, Lila, Bulku, Salihi, Balaj, Manaj, etc).

I think Albania may be the only nation that would start Trashi over Balliu and it begs the question if Trashi was a Switzerland diaspora player would he even be called up in the first place? I don't want to compare us to Macedonia but they have a lesser talent pool to choose from and are very aggressive in calling up players (even if these new players aren't particularly good). For the Senior NT they also don't seem to discriminate based on ethnicity and truly try to call up the best players. They even called up Valon Ethemi which I respect.

Meanwhile, Albania is still deploying the combo of Balaj, Manaj and Cikaleshi who are some of the worst goal scorers among strikers in the Balkans.

[artan]

Say what you want about Vrioni but he's scoring a few goals in a professional league. More than can be said about certain players

He's scoring tap ins for a mid table Austrian club. He's not NT level but with that being said I'd rather have him than Balaj in the NT easily. Maybe there's a very small chance Vrioni surprises us while we know Balaj is a donkey.

Tbh we don't have room to nitpick at the types of goals our players score, barely any score anyway let alone tapins. Situation of our strikers :

Broja : Our only quality striker`, scored a couple goals so far but still has so much to prove

Balaj : Hasn't scored in over a year

Manaj : Warming Spezia's bench and his only season where he scored some goals is in Segunda B

Cika : Hasn't scored a goal for months

Vrioni : 3 in the last 3 games, 7 in 11 this season... At this point he's at least the 3rd best option.

I do agree with you. I'd rather see Vrioni over Manaj and Balaj at this point but I'm not going to fool myself into thinking Vrioni is good because of deceiving goal statistics. Tap in goals in the fringes of Austria don't mean anything just how Cikaleshi scoring some open headers against Belarus don't mean anything or Manaj terrorizing Belarus doesn't count. I still have yet to see Vrioni score anything besides a tap in which makes me believe he's not any better but in his defense Vrioni still needs some time I guess.

[Dallku]

Austrian league is probably as good as a third division from a big country. Highly doubt the goals Vrioni scores there translate into higher levels, especially international where games are very cautious and chess like.

Yeah it's easy to say this player scored x or z amount of goals to make a case about his form but context matters. The most deceiving thing in football is goals scored at youth and bad leagues. We always had players who scored a bunch in these type of leagues. Remember Llullaku in Romania? Manaj scored in the Spanish 3rd division and now he looks like a fish out of water against professionals.

And Vrioni is an Italian speaker so you can bet that Reja's staff has scouted him. They probably see his level.