Albanian National Team [General topic]

[CanaYouDoIt]

Funnily enough, the best Slavic team is Croatia, and their best player is a guy called Modric or is he just a "midget"

[Dallku]

South Americans, Spain, Italy, Portugal etc all dominate football with midgets.

Don't know where this height fetish comes from. What is it based on? The contrary has proven results. This is a short men's game. Only CBs and goalkeepers have to be relatively tall for obvious reasons.

[Princ]

Albania is a small country, who enters big matches as an underdog looking to pull off upsets. The most efficient way to do this is by fielding a defensive lineup that will be hard to break aerially, forcing the opponent to beat us the hard way (on the ground).

Dominating physically (as we did at Spain), rather than looking to hold the ball is our best bet. This is achieved using taller, and stronger players. We won possession at Poland with Bare, Abrashi in midfield, but ate 4 goals. Looked great in Barcelona, holding only 18% of it..

Why should we remove our physical advantage by fielding a bunch of midgets?

If this is a “short man’s game,” why have the most productive Albanian players of the century all been giants? Bogdani, Roshi, now Broja are all physical specimen..

[Dallku]

Albania is a small country, who enters big matches as an underdog looking to pull off upsets. The most efficient way to do this is by fielding a defensive lineup that will be hard to break aerially, forcing the opponent to beat us the hard way (on the ground).

Dominating physically (as we did at Spain), rather than looking to hold the ball is our best bet. This is achieved using taller, and stronger players. We won possession at Poland with Bare, Abrashi in midfield, but ate 4 goals..

Why should we remove our physical advantage by fielding a bunch of midgets?

If this is a “short man’s game,” why have the most productive Albanian players of the century all been giants? Bogdani, Roshi, now Broja are all physical specimen..

If this was true then the Baltic nations would be underdog machines since they have a size/strength advantage in every game but nope, they get punked by everyone.

The key ingredients for an upset are pace & dribbling. That's how you surprise teams when you sit deep and have to counter. That's why Roshi was Albania's most productive player for nearly a decade even though he was an inferior player by world standards.

[Princ]

The key ingredients for an upset are pace & dribbling. That's how you surprise teams when you sit deep and have to counter.

You cannot dribble on defence..

An upset for Albania is not only a win, but also a draw. Hard to pull one off when you have already conceded a bunch of goals to the superior team.

[CanaYouDoIt]

The key ingredients for an upset are pace & dribbling. That's how you surprise teams when you sit deep and have to counter.

You cannot dribble on defence..

An upset for Albania is not only a win, but also a draw. Hard to pull one off when you have already conceded a bunch of goals to the superior team.

Your view of football is archaic , ofc you dribble on defence . They have to be just as good as any other player on the ball. That’s how you control games.

In your mind a perfect team is a bunch of tall strong guys , this isn’t Sunday league …

[Dallku]

Also lets keep in mind that you don't play teams like Spain and France often.

Most of Albania's opponents are either even level or below. The two rivals for Nations League, Iceland and Israel will absolutely bunker against Albania. Those are the type of teams you need to beat to qualify.

[CanaYouDoIt]

Also lets keep in mind that you don't play teams like Spain and France often.

Most of Albania's opponents are either even level or below. The two rivals for Nations League, Iceland and Israel will absolutely bunker against Albania. Those are the type of teams you need to beat to qualify.

Iceland lost their best generation (naturally) and Israel isn't all that. Our talent is a level above, if we're not comfortably winning there's a huge problem with us (reja). I can already see it now, a boring 0-0 and he comes out saying its a good result.

[Princ]

Your view of football is archaic , ofc you dribble on defence . They have to be just as good as any other player on the ball. That’s how you control games.

In your mind a perfect team is a bunch of tall strong guys , this isn’t Sunday league …

Better to be doing the bullying, rather than getting bullied.

Hard to bully someone bigger than you..

[CanaYouDoIt]

Your view of football is archaic , ofc you dribble on defence . They have to be just as good as any other player on the ball. That’s how you control games.

In your mind a perfect team is a bunch of tall strong guys , this isn’t Sunday league …

Better to be doing the bullying, rather than getting bullied.

Hard to bully someone bigger than you..

Bigger doesn't mean stronger or the ability to bully better. Also this is football, not MMA. I know there's elements of "bullying" but this is a sport where the worlds best players are 5'7 or so , not 6'5 lumps.

Kante is the best destroyer in football, sorry he's not tall but he does his job.

You have no ground to stand on (again), so lets just leave this useless thinking behind.