FLASH
Shkruar nga Eduard Zaloshnja
My latest poll showed that over 80% of Albanians within Albania want a Red and Black National Team, instead of two Albanian representatives in international football. Perhaps not coincidentally, in a regional poll I co-led two years ago, almost 80% of Albanians within Albania wanted the political unification of Albania with Kosovo…
But let's focus on football.
Until 1990, only footballers who played in the Albanian championship played in the Red and Black National Team. For obvious reasons at the time…
After 1990, the Red and Black National Team featured footballers from all over Albania, who played in various European championships. Eventually, those footballers managed to lead the Red and Black National Team to the European Championship tournaments in 2016 and 2024.
The 2016 Red and Black National Team (which had previously experienced dramatic scenes in the Belgrade stadium) constituted the greatest success of national unification, at least on the football field. But a significant event (not on the football field, but on the geopolitical one) was later marked by the entry of the Kosovo National Team into official FIFA competitions.
While Kosovo is still not officially recognized by the UN as a sovereign state, it is recognized as such in FIFA football competitions. And this is an event of extraordinary geopolitical importance.
But do the football successes of the Kosovo National Team matter now, compared to the successes of the Red and Black National Team? For the vast majority of Red and Black fans (wherever they are), I believe not so much.
We, the Red and Black fans, wherever we are, would like to have Rahman, Muriqi, Arijanet Muriqi, Fisnik Asllani, Vojvoda, Zhergovë, Rashica, as well as every Albanian talent, wherever they were born and wherever they play football, in the Red and Black National Team.
The Red and Black National Team is currently the only symbol representing national unity, 113 years after the official division of Albanian lands at the Ambassadors' Conference in London...
Lini një Përgjigje