“Now in Tirana, you can find cafés, nightclubs, restaurants and cars,” sighed Vata, “but also criminals. In the old days, it was difficult to find anything to spend money on Now people are making millions out of corruption. There are millionaires next to starving people, and that makes me sad.”For a man who grew up in a country in the iron grip of the feared Enver Hoxha, where the Communist Blocwas distrusted as much as the western world, Vata has traded anticipation for sadness while watching his homeland metamorphose from the various pitstops in his exile.Vata never thought he would be contemplating a 68th cap when he walked into a Paris police station and sought political asylum in 1990 while on a trip with his club Dinamo Tirana.He spent a year in France, able only to play amateur football, and even after Celtic picked him up – “Liam Brady was the manager then and he remembered me playing for Albania in Dublin against the Republic of Ireland” – thedefender remained a nonperson as far as Albania’s old rulers were concerned.The old guard have gone, but Vata remains. Now 31, he plays his football in the Bundesliga with Energie Cottbus, but is perturbed less by the prospect of facing Michael Owen than his country’s future.”It makes me sad to say it, but the people have had too much freedom,” he reflects. “The country is not used to democracy and bad things happen when you have governments with no experience There are bad politics in the Balkan states A war here, a war there It saddens me to see the country go backwards The people suffered so much under Communism. For 50 years they dreamed of freedom, now the Communists have been replaced by the criminals.”Though Sven Goran Eriksson’s players are unlikely to get much opportunity to sample Albania’s changing capital, its football makeover will be encountered in the 12,000 capacity Selman Stermasi Stadium.When Vata was eventually allowed back into the fold, during his Celtic days, he was the only foreign-based player in the Albanian side.

“Now there are hardly any locals.We have guys playing in Belgium, Turkey, Greece, France, Germany and our midfielder, Igle Tare, plays in Serie A with Brescia.”The most exciting prospect is the young striker Alban Bulshi, who plays with Istanbulspor in Turkey. “He could do well in the English Premiership, and I heard that Everton wanted him. This side have been together for four years now, everyone has quality and we had good results We are not afraid of anyone now.”Last of all Vata. Albania’s pioneer footballer is modest about his own CV, but finding the net against Germany four years ago in the last World Cup qualifying campaign – in a narrow 4-3 defeat – proved to be his ticket to the Bundesliga. “I scored to make it 3-3 but Oliver Bierhoff got the winner for them in the last minute.

We were sick,” Vata recalls, dusting off the Parkhead vocabulary kept fresh by his Scots wife Anne-Frances.”I was playing for a club in Cyprus at the time, but I had a lot of offers to come to Germany after that and it has been great, financially, for me.”Albania’s gun-toting state of emergency four years ago prompted Fifa to declare Tirana off-limits and Vata’s team to seek neutral venues. “It would be nice if we could perform well and give them some joy for the future,” he said. England would do well to remember the power of football coming home.. They have been the best of teams and the worst of teams, at times threatening results to go down in football history and on other occasions looking like opponents any country in the world would be pleased to play. They have been the best of teams and the worst of teams, at times threatening results to go down in football history and on other occasions looking like opponents any country in the world would be pleased to play.
They are Andorra, a nation whose principal stadium holds 1,414 spectators, which is why the World Cup fixtures against Holland last night and the Republic of Ireland on Wednesday were moved to Barcelona, a Catalonian home from home. Not, of course, that the Nou Camp was required to accommodate all the spectators desperate to see the two games. The venue for both is the nearby Mini Estadi, where the 4,000 Irishmen expected to congregate this week will almost certainly outnumber a combination of Andorrans and curious locals.Four thousand was the attendance on the famous day in June 1999 described as “the greatest in our country’s short history” when, with five minutes of a European Championship qualifying match remaining, Andorra were holding France, the world champions, 0-0.

Then the French were awarded a dubious penalty, from which a greatly relieved Frank Leboeuf scored the only goal.In Paris eight months earlier Andorra had lost only2-0, their massed defence holding out for almost an hour, and later in the same group they lost only 2-1 to Russia, making a mockery of the size and football traditions of the respective countries. The cluster ofPyrenean mountain valleys that makes up Andorra is approximately 18 miles by 11 and houses a population of fewer than 7,000, barely one sixth of whom are genuine Andorrans eligible to represent the national team.That team did not play a full international until 1996, and did not win one until the glorious day in April 2000 when Belarus were sent home beaten 2-0 in a friendly watched by all of 500 people. In competitive games, Andorra have a 100 per cent record – of defeats – yet what is noticeable is how rarely they are thrashed by the sort of margin that might be expected: the present World Cup campaign began with losses to Estonia (twice) and Cyprus, but all by the odd goal. Even Luis Figo’s Portugal managed no more than three against them last month.At club level, the expected drubbings have tended to materialise more often. Andorra first entered British sporting consciousness as something other than an occasional Tour de France venue in 1997, when Dundee United were drawn against CE Principat, the club formerly known as Real Madrid Supporters’ Club of Charlie’s Restaurant until Uefa demanded something rather more formal. Principat’s main striker, suggesting that a 15-0 aggregate defeat would be a respectable result, was guilty of over-optimism: they lost 8-0 and 9-0.There is, however, a certain wariness in the Irish camp, where memories of poor performances against supposedly lesser teams are fresh in the mind.

As the FAI president, Pat Quigley, put it: “A lot of people don’t rate Andorra, but they haven’t been going out and getting beaten 6-0 or 7-0. Their games have been closer than that.”The Republic’s manager, Mick McCarthy, said before last night’s game in Cyprus: “Andorra will make it very hard for us. They’re not bad technically, they’ll keep the ball and they can put 10 men behind it to stop us beating them.”The travel section of this newspaper has described Andorrans as “neither flamboyant Gauls nor exuberant Spaniards, but down-to-earth mountain people who do not like to dance”. A draw or an unthinkable victory on Wednesday and they might just enjoy a whirl or two..