Early in the morning, Dusseldorf central station was abuzz with red shirts. Hundreds of Albanian fans were waiting for the train to Dortmund, where their team debuts this Saturday (9:00 p.m.) in the Euro Cup against mother Italy. Some small groups of young people enjoy a breakfast of sausages and beer to regain strength after a night that seems to have been without limits. Both countries are separated by the Adriatic, the shortest distance by sea is 270 kilometers, the Albanian colony is one of the largest in Italy and also one of the best integrated.
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Gianluigi Donnarumma, Di Lorenzo, Dimarco, Alessandro Bastoni, Alessandro Buongiorno, Darmian, Jorginho, Cristante, Gianluca Scamacca, Federico Chiesa and Lorenzo Pellegrini
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Berisha, Hysaj, Mario Mitaj, Ylber Ramadani, Adrian Ismajli, Djimsiti, Jasir Asani, Kristjan Asllani, Armando Broja, Nedim Bajrami and Tauljant Sulejmanov
Goals
Referee Felix Zwayer
In the times of the Iron Curtain, Albanians consumed Italian television and the first generation to cross the Adriatic mastered the language thanks to programs that described Western Europe as a paradise. One of them, presented by Rafaella Carrá, consisted of the multidisciplinary star distributing large amounts of money to the viewer who guessed by telephone how many beans were in a jar. Lamerica, a dramatic film by Italian director Gianni Amelio, depicts the first wave of immigration from Albania to Italy after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. The title of the film alludes to the fact that the United States was for the Italians what Italy was for the Albanians who were searching for the idealized but unrealistic American dream on the other side of the Adriatic.
“My father arrived in Italy by boat and tells me how hard life was. My mother had me when I was 18 and they suffered a lot. What my parents did for me and my brother is priceless, I feel like I can’t repay them, but I try,” Kristjan Allani (Inter Milan), one of the nine Albanian players who play in the Italian Serie A, recently said. .
The massive presence of Albanians has broken the feeling that Italians have that they are playing at home when their team competes in Germany for the large colony that resides there. This is what happened when they became world champions in 2006 and this is what usually happens when their clubs visit the Germans in European competitions. The Dortmund authorities estimate that some 50,000 Albanians, many of them residing in the German country, will take the city and will be superior in number to the Italians. The parliamentary session was postponed because many deputies have traveled to the party. It won’t be the first time something similar happens. In 2014, in a friendly between Italy and Albania, the Genoa stadium was dyed red and black, the colors of the flag, by 15,000 Albanian fans.
“There are so many Albanians all over the world… It is a great responsibility for us to represent these wonderful people. The entire stadium will be dressed in red,” the Albanian coach, Brazilian Sylvinho, warned in the preview. Under his direction, Albania obtained its second qualification for the Euro Cup, the first was in 2016, but he has been concerned with trying to break the low profile with which modest teams attend major tournaments. Their players do not limit themselves to defending themselves with order, they also try to take advantage of their talent to attack.
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