Shortly after his appointment as Albania’s new manager in January last year, Sylvinho realised he had a problem. The former Arsenal and Barcelona defender had big plans for a new tactical approach, featuring exciting wingers on the flanks, but he simply did not have the players for it. On the right wing, especially, his options were almost non-existent.
It was Albania’s analysts, led by Alarico Rossi, who came forward with a solution. Since 2017, they had been quietly working on a tool that could transform the fortunes of the national team and unleash the considerable footballing potential of their nation. Now, with Sylvinho in need, it was time to make the most of that tool.
Albania’s secret weapon, Sylvinho soon learned, was a database. A painstakingly compiled list of players, built over years and with thousands of hours of labour, which contained the details of footballers all over the world who might one day be able to represent Albania.
Where Albania’s players were born
At which point, you might be tempted to ask: what’s the big deal? Doesn’t every national team have a system for tracking their footballers? Well, yes, but few national teams operate in circumstances as extraordinary and challenging as those facing modern Albania. Other nations may have their own databases, but those databases are nothing like this.
Consider this: the population of Albania is around three million, roughly the same as Wales. But the Albanian federation believes there are up to nine million Albanians living elsewhere in the world, as part of the country’s enormous diaspora. The challenge for Rossi was to find a way to tap into that diaspora, to identify Albania’s emigrated talent and then bring it home.
Six years after the beginning of this project, the database threw up the name of the exact sort of winger that Sylvinho was craving. His name was Jasir Asani, and he plays for Gwangju FC in South Korea. Born in North Macedonia to Albanian parents, Asani had not played for either national team and was therefore eligible for a call-up.
His subsequent selection was a triumph – since he was first picked, he has been one of Albania’s most important players. “The database that we have is invaluable,” said Sylvinho, who is assisted by former Manchester City defender Pablo Zabaleta. “[Without it] we probably would not have found Asani.”
Within Sylvinho’s squad for this summer’s Euros, Asani is far from alone in being born outside of Albania. Chelsea’s Armando Broja, born in Slough to Albanian parents, is another example. Of Albania’s 26 players, only eight were born in the country they will represent this summer.
Identifying and tracking the players with Albanian heritage has proven to be one of the great tests of the national setup, and also one of their great recent successes. It has required manually searching through endless lists of footballers in leagues across the world, hunting for evidence of an Albanian surname. For players with Albanian mothers, who do not carry the Albanian surname, it is even more challenging.
Then there are issues of passports and visas, and indeed of competition. Dual or triple nationality-eligible players are often in demand by other nations, and Albania have occasionally had to move quickly and decisively in order to convince these footballers to join their national squad rather than another.
Rossi, an Italian, has effectively monitored the entire world of football in order to reach this point. Albania’s squad in Germany is built of players from leagues in 12 different countries, and they have tracked players from almost 30 leagues over the past two seasons. These include South Korea, India, the United States, the UAE and first and second divisions all over Europe.
Their first opponents, Italy, have by contrast picked a 26 in which only three leagues are represented. The task of monitoring players is evidently monumentally more difficult for Albania, who have limited financial resources. Indeed, Rossi and the analysts have created and perfected their own algorithm, without the help of big data companies or artificial intelligence.
Albania are truly the most international of international teams, which poses unusual questions of their coaching staff. Not all players speak the same language, for example. They have not grown up in the same footballing culture.
On paper, there would therefore be plenty of reasons to believe this approach would not work. But they have shown that multiculturalism, with Albanian pride at its heart, is a powerful weapon: Albania finished top of their qualification group to reach their second ever Euros, and have lost only three of Sylvinho’s 13 matches in charge.
The challenge facing them now is perhaps even more daunting than the task of tracking down unknown Albania-eligible footballers across the planet. After Saturday’s meeting with Italy, they face Croatia and Spain in the group stages. The fixtures could hardly be more difficult but Albania, fuelled by their game-changing database and their multicultural mix, are ready for what comes next.