Albanian soccer
 

Can somebody educate me about the Albanian National Team? Players? Where are their club teams?

How about the soccer league(s) in Albania?

Well Albania is considered a Minnow country they have always have made some nice wins and ties.

Here is link that might help:

http://www.uefa.com/uefa/Jubilee/Ass...n=2/index.html

Thanks for the link.

Have you followed Albania soccer recently?

Yes I have! I am a Albanian so I follow the soccer there very closely what would you like to know.

The house next door to me was bought by an Albanian family (Pula) about a year ago. We have become good friends and I want to learn more about their league and Nat'l Team so that we can talk about it during the upcoming World Cup Qualifiers.

intro to the world of Albanian Football.
 

Here's a brief intro to Albanian soccer.
The country's first division (Kategoria e Pare in Albanian) is comprised of 10 teams. The FSHF (Albanian Football Association) decided to split the first division, comprised of 14 teams in 02-03, into two divisions A1 and A2 last year, each consisting of 10 teams, in order to become more competitive and make more money.
Traditionally the first division is owned by the trio from the capital, FK Partizani, SK Dinamo, and SK Tirana. SK Tirana or "Tirona" as it is called by its fans is the oldest team, founded in 1920. For more info see http://home.wanadoo.nl/sktirana/hyrje.htm
FK Partizani and SK Dinamo were founded soon after the WWII. The teams were founded by the Defense and Interior Minstries respectively. For more see http://partizani.net/.
Notable mention deserve KF Vllaznia from the northern city of Shkoder and KF Flamurtari from the Southern city of Vlore whose claim to fame is eliminating Partizan Belgrade in the Uefa Cup in the 80's only to be eliminated by Barcelona after tying both games (0-0 in Barcelona and 1-1 in Albania).
As for the National Team the closest we've ever come to qualifying for a WC has been in the qualifying group for the 86 WC. We defeated Belgium 2-0 at home only to be beaten in a crucial game against Poland at home 1-0.
Our eternal opponent in group games has been Germany which has beaten us numeorus times by the close score of 2-1, including an infamous game in Leverkusen in 2001 (for which i travelled to Germany) where the referee allowed a clearly offside goal in the 89th minute. This past qualifying crusade for the Euro 04' we were not beaten at home and gave some superb performances most notably beating Russia 3-1 and came close to tying Ireland away only to concede an own goal in the 92' minute (i feel like crying again). A recent development has been the away supporters of Albania due to our large immigrant population.
In our qualifying games in Germany, Switzerland, and Greece half of the stadium was filled with Albanian supporters which prompted Greek officials to move the following game in an island 8 hours away fro Athens. Many of the supporters are Kosovar Albanians who have been immigrating in the West since the 60's.
At the moment our best striker is Igli Tare who's been playing in Serie A for the past 4 years (Brescia and Bologna). Ervin Skela the playmaker and Geri Cipi defender are also two of our main players who currently play in the Bundesliga. After the liberation of Kosova many Kosovar Albanians have opted to join Albania. The best Kosovar player, Lorik Cana, plays currently for PSG in France.
Feel free to ask. Although this is my first post on BS i'm an avid reader of over 4 years.

P.S i'm also 1/4 Pula so give my regards to your neighbors.

chaz, i forgot to add the link to the FA site
http://www.fshf.org/English/Faqja_Kryesore.htm

Well, may I say that you have made a fantastic first post!

Thank you for a very well layed out explanation.

Pol, unë do kallëzoj ata ti thënë tung.

You have written an excellent sentence grammatically, a feat that many Albanians fail to achieve online (including myself)lol. Not only that but the fact that you managed to write the letter "e" with two dots on top is fascinating.

A few more helpful links:
This is the most helpful site statistically
http://foreignaffairs.tripod.com/arm...nian_cups.html
for very recent news
http://www.albaniasoccer.com/
this one is a guide to the fan scene mainly in Kosova. though it's not in English i'd check their picture gallery which is very rich
http://tifozat.com/modules.php?name=coppermine
and this one is one of my favorites but their English version is yet to come
http://futbolli.com/

Thank you - I am trying to learn by using technology, and conversation with my friends. [Nana - Grandmother Pula - does not speak any english.] I was uncertain about ti or ty or ju, but ti seemed most appropriate. Certainly you have noticed we suffer the same grammatical and spelling errors in english here on these boards! As far as the letters - that's just a matter of cut and paste from the letter symbols available in MS Word.