Taulant plays for Basel and is an Albanian international, whereas Granit has just signed for Arsenal and is "Swiss"! Their father originally lived in Albanian Kosovo when it was part of Yugoslavia in 1989 and fled to Switzerland having been a political prisoner for nearly four years in the late 1980s. There are over 20,000 Kosovans in Switzerland. Five other members of the Albanians side were born in Switzerland and four others grew up there.
The Albanian FA was founded in 1946 when they played their first official international against Yugoslavia. Since then progress has been slow but this is the first official football tournament for the Albanians who managed to beat Portugal in their qualification group, away 0-1. Other countries they had to overcome in qualifying were Armenia, Serbia and Denmark, no mean feat. They have also recently beaten France in a friendly.
In their Euro 16 group they also have to face France (17th) again and Romania (22nd). Needless to say there will be more Swiss supporters in the crowd at Lens than Albanians, but a decent percentage of Albanians will have travelled from nearby European countries where they have now settled since the troubles.
The other "low" ranked qualifier is Iceland, 34th. The Icelandic national side first played an official game in 1930, against the Faroe Islands and have qualified for Euro16 coming second to the Czech Republic, and above Turkey, Latvia, Kazakhstan and amazingly beating the Netherlands twice, 2-0 and 1-0.
The Netherlands ranked 14th in FIFA were probably the most surprising omission from the tournament. Other notables having a rest this summer are Bosnia 21st, Denmark 38th, Greece 40th and Scotland 43rd.
No comments:
Post a Comment