During the summer of the 1982 World Cup, Edi Lama's best friend happened to be the only person he knew who had a color TV, so every night Lama would pile into his kitchen with a bunch of other people, desperately praying that the fuzzy, flickering signal wouldn't die.
At the time, Albania was an island nation under the repressive and conspiratorial rule of Enver Hoxha. Travel abroad was prohibited, except for a select few insiders. Even communication with the outside world, especially with the West, was restricted. Lama and his friends could only follow the World Cup matches through a “dark network” run by the Italian national broadcaster RAI.
In a recent interview with Italy's Tuttosport newspaper, he said he still remembers that month with warmth. Italy became Albania's symbol in the tournament; in Lama's assessment, the two countries are “separated by the sea but united in all other respects, like two drops of water”. When Italy captain Dino Zoff lifted the trophy in Madrid, it also felt like a victory in Tirana. “We saw the trophy in his hands and it was as if it was in our hands too,” Lama said.
But the victory was really something of a bonus. More than anything, what Rama carried with him from that summer, decades before he became Albania's prime minister, was the sense that there was life outside his own country. The commentators' words “had an indescribable effect on us, of not feeling alone in that black hole,” he said.
Earlier this year, at the opening of an exhibition on the life of Paolo Rossi, one of the tournament's great Italian heroes, Lama was even more eloquent: “For us, football was not just a ball or a game, it was an image of another world,” he said. “A moving mirror, a chance to see forbidden dreams.”
Four decades later, Mr. Rama hasn't forgotten that power. As prime minister since 2013, he has missed few opportunities to use sports in general (he played basketball in his youth) and football in particular as a means not just to garner votes but to define the nation.
Last year, he launched a national competition to find an architect to design new stadiums for the cities of Durres, Vlora and Korçë. During the local election campaign, at least part of his platform was focused on an agreement with Premier League champions Manchester City to open a soccer school in Durres. In 2022, Tirana will host the Europa Conference League final.
This stands in stark contrast to much of Albania's football history, where the country has always lagged behind other Eastern European countries. Under Hoxha, Albanian teams frequently refused to take part in international competitions, fearing that players would defect to the West if they were exposed.
Since Hodja's departure, Albanian club revenues have been minimal and match-fixing and corruption have become rife. There is little youth development in Albania. Of the 26 players on Albania's squad for this year's European Championships, only eight were born in Albania; the rest are products of the diaspora, tracing their origins to places as varied as Greece, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and the London satellite city of Slough, the setting for the original version of “The Office” and the proud birthplace of Albanian forward Armando Broja.
Of course, for Lama, the team's entry into Europe's top clubs this summer will be proof that his efforts are beginning to bear fruit. Albania is finally emerging from the cold, at the same time as much of Eastern Europe is doing the same.
Albania is an extreme example, but its experience in the three decades since the collapse of Communism is applicable to other former Soviet republics: State-funded youth facilities fell into disrepair and corruption became rife. Team owners and player agents squeezed what little money remained from the professional system. Western clubs pounced on the slightest sign of talent.
And for a long time, the decline felt irreversible. Romania hasn't been to the World Cup since 1998. Serbia hasn't played in the European Championships since 2000. An Eastern European team hasn't reached the European Championship semi-finals since Russia in 2008. Until 2016, only a handful of teams had managed to qualify for the tournament.
But this time, 11 of the 24 participating teams are from Eastern Europe, and more importantly, the opening week of the tournament has made it clear that Eastern Europe isn't just benefiting from the tournament's somewhat awkward expansion.
Georgia, the bottom-placed team at the Euros, struggled against Turkey on their major tournament debut; Slovenia picked up a point against Denmark; Serbia nearly achieved the same against England; Portugal needed two lucky late goals to beat the Czech Republic; and Romania shone under the Munich sun with a win over Ukraine.
And Albania took the lead against Italy with the fastest goal in European Championship history, then earned a point against Croatia, long an exception to the rule in Eastern Europe, and still theoretically has a chance of progressing to the knockout stages.
It's certainly unlikely — Albania will likely have to beat Spain in Dusseldorf on Monday — but it's more likely that by the time of the semi-finals it will again be a decidedly Western affair.
It may almost be inevitable: International football is now defined by club football, with the best players, the best coaches and the best ideas moving to the richest, most powerful leagues, where they can develop young players on an industrial scale.
Which other national teams succeed will depend largely on where each league chooses to invest its money, time and resources. The best players tend to be in the places that the major European teams are looking at. That means countries like Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands, which have been scouted extensively with vast amounts of data compiled about each young player, have an advantage over countries that are a little less familiar and a little further away, like Hungary, Poland or the Czech Republic.
The playing field is tilted against Eastern Europe, and the balance may never truly shift: economic realities may prevent Romania from ever reaching the quarterfinals of a World Cup again, or the Czech Republic may be closer to their golden goal of becoming European champions.
But the first week of Euro 2024 suggested that not only is it possible to close that gap, even if only slightly, but that doing so would benefit the tournament and European football as a whole. The European Championship is better when emissaries from football's other world arrive from out in the cold, when it feels truly representative of the continent.
Fooled twice It's tradition among soccer commentators to do a little prophet cosplay on the eve of a big tournament. Everyone, famous and not, is asked to make two predictions: the overall winning team and the surprise package.
The first one is very simple: there is a limited number of real contenders to win the tournament – a maximum of eight teams in the European Championship and ten in the World Cup.
The second challenge is much harder, partly because the subject matter is much broader, of course, but mainly because nobody knows what the rules are.
How far does the surprise team need to go for your prediction to be correct? Do you think they have a shot at winning? Will they make it to the semi-finals? Or will they threaten one of the favourites before bravely exiting in the round of 16? Could the Netherlands be the dark horse? What about Croatia? What about Italy?
The answers to these questions are entirely personal, but generally, the uncertainty regarding the parameters has led everyone to nominate either Turkey or, at most, Serbia for many years.
This time, no one wanted to fall into that trap. Turkey were considered Euro 2020 outsiders, but quickly lost all three of their group stage matches. Serbia had never won a knockout match as an independent nation, last appearing in a European Championship in 2000. Even football journalists can't ignore the overwhelming evidence.
So, as I watched with some trepidation in the pouring rain in Dortmund as Turkey beat Georgia in thrilling, open style in their opening match, scoring two magnificent goals. Of course, the opposition was limited, but at the same time, a hesitant thought crossed my mind: Turkey could be the dark horse of the tournament.
A show of force Much has been made about the woes of Germany's public transport system during the first week of the Games (more on this later), but it's equally notable that riot police forces were more visible and vaguely menacing on the streets of the host city.
This type of policing is now generally seen in many countries as counterproductive and an unnecessarily confrontational measure. Scholars and law enforcement agencies say it is far better to rely on information provided by undercover officers strategically placed among fan groups than on intimidation.
German authorities have taken a decidedly different approach, cancelling all holidays for the month around the tournament and letting fans know they will be monitored at all times. They will no doubt cite the shooting last week of a man with an axe not far from a fan zone in Hamburg as justification for their decision, but the impression is that Germany is a very tense country.
Forest and trees Perhaps one of the obvious logistical challenges in hosting the tournament for Germany is that many of the stadiums are built in wooded areas, meaning many more police officers than expected will be spending much of this month in or near forests.
Hamburg and Frankfurt in particular have an uncommonly rural feel, while Cologne is almost forest-like. Düsseldorf and Berlin's stadiums are far enough from their respective city centers that they have a distinctly forest feel. I don't pretend to know why, but my hypothesis is that it's some throwback memory of Wales' defeat in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.
