By Ben Andoni
Shortly before the kickoff of the World Cup qualifier between Albania and Serbia, the TV directors tried their best to capture the made-up screen princesses (utterly irrelevant to the dead end of today’s Albanian society), local personalities, and VIPs, all occupying the prime seats at the Air Albania Stadium.
The only thing they’ll remember is that they scored a ticket—tickets that should’ve gone to real sports lovers, analysts, and professionals who had no choice but to watch the match on television. Without diving into the Football Federation’s murky ticket allocation policies, what strikes me most is how a supposedly privileged group always manages to get tickets to every cultural and sporting event, despite having contributed nothing meaningful to the social discourse in Albania.
These ticket handouts are a litmus test for how people are valued in our society—and a mirror of the false social hierarchy that reigns here. Let’s skip naming names—some media have already done so and will continue to—but it’s exhausting to see the first rows filled with people who stir absolutely no emotion.
And even more exhausting than the fake glitz is the performative patriotism: the drum-thumping, the outbursts against an opponent who, truth be told, no longer represents anything memorable in football. This wave of excessive nationalism, lashing out at a team that has long since lowered its head in defeat, is overkill.
Remember the German military officer’s order to the Serbs: You have one hour to leave. And when the Serbian colleague asked for clarification, the officer replied: Now… and counting.
Our memory of what the Serbs did in the late ’90s should serve as a way to reflect—not to repeat the same past filled with pogroms, death, and trauma—but to wake up, in both Kosovo and Albania. Yet, reviewing this period, the ongoing absence of justice for the disappeared, the lack of empathy for the KLA fighters now in The Hague, and, above all, the failure to confront Kosovo’s present—makes all this pseudo-patriotism feel empty and manufactured.
We might be taken seriously if we showed the same nationalistic fervor against Turkey, which molded us for centuries into what we are today; or against Italy, which burned us and colonized us; or Germany, which plowed through Albania in WWII. But you’ll find none of that on the banners of so-called patriotism.
Meanwhile, across the border, there are still forces keen on keeping Albanians and Serbs stuck in this murky relationship—even while businesspeople and investors from both sides continue to work together undisturbed, artists collaborate routinely, and athletes team up wherever they are. Some of them are even playing on our national teams—and playing well.
The fake patriotism evaporated just hours after the match—back to a reality where Albania and Kosovo can’t even finalize their elections, a month and four months later, respectively. Fake patriotism finds no voice for the thieves in our two countries, the ones who rob us blind and grow richer before our very eyes—untouchable.
This pseudo-patriotism only reveals our deep lack of genuine love for our homeland, for Albania and the new Kosovo, both now riddled more by the wounds left by local thieves than by the Serbs.
But you won’t see that on the fans’ banners—just as primitive, in fact, as the Serbian nationalists who scream nonsense without knowing a single thing about Albanians, alongside Vučić, who treated his national team like it was going to war.
And in the end, in Tirana, what awaited them was a theater full of “pseudo-celebrities” gifted tickets simply because they spew nonsense on TV, or because they’re social media-famous, or useful to the Federation chief’s current agenda.
But that’s a different stage—one ruled entirely by Duka, the almighty head of the Federation and everything tied to Albanian football. When it comes to ticket handouts, the kingdom belongs to him—and him alone.