Albania’s belief in De Biasi pays off
Print Edition
ALBANIA never doubted its coach, and that faith finally paid off.
The tiny Balkan nation made history by beating Romania 1-0 at the European Championship on Sunday for its first ever win in an international competition.
It did so by giving one more committed, all-in team effort that manager Giovanni De Biasi, 60, was convinced would eventually prove to be a winning formula. “Tonight we won with heart,” he said after the match. “We played with our head, with mental strength. This is a very generous team. They try to give as much as they can.”
Now coach and players must wait until the group phase finishes tomorrow to see if three points are enough to qualify for the round of 16 as one of the top four third-place sides.
Even if Albania fails to advance, Sunday’s victory was a momentous feat for a nation that has no footballing tradition and spent nearly half of the last century in international isolation.
While the large contingent of Albanians in the Stade de Lyon relished the victory, celebrations erupted back home. In Tirana and in neighboring Kosovo, where half the squad has its origins, fans took to the streets waving red-and-black national flags.
Albania Prime Minister Edi Rama joined in by writing “Goooooooooool....,” on his Twitter page after Armando Sadiku scored the winner, and the football federation said yesterday that its players will be given diplomatic passports and financial rewards in recognition of their achievement.
Rarely is a team strengthened when it fails to score a single goal in back-to-back losses. But instead of wavering, De Biasi’s bunch found inspiration after resisting with 10 men in a 0-1 loss to Switzerland and holding France scoreless until the 90th minute before falling 0-2.
De Biasi made those potentially demoralizing defeats into the foundation of Albania’s biggest sporting moment.
“Today we managed to get what we didn’t get in the first two games,” he said.
The first gutsy decision he made was to not put Lorik Cana, with a record 92 caps, back into his starting lineup after he was suspended against France.
Instead, De Biasi stuck with his replacement, 22-year-old Arlind Ajeti. Ajeti came through with a commanding display in defense. “It was a very difficult choice for me. I didn’t want to change much of the team that played against France. I asked Loric to sacrifice,” he said.
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