I suppose when most people assess Albania's first gme in a major tournament agianst Switzerland they will commend them on their brave effort, and how valiantly they fought and still pushed forward with an equalizer armed only with ten men. But I don't want to get in such futile, useless discussion.
We have to be real here; Albania should have drawn this game and they had enough chances to do so. These were not half-chances were they got surrounded by defenders, and it would have been difficult to get a shot off. These were one-on-ones, where all they had to do was have some calm and slot it past the keeper.
Whatever level your team is at, a one-on-one is almost as great an opportunity as a penalty. The odds are against the keeper, with the player having so many options as to how to get the G. All it requires of the player is composure.
Culprit #2 and the worst of them all was Gashi, who came off the bench. When he was put through late in the game, Gashi was all alone with only Sommer ahead of him. He had so much time that he could have cooked a feast for six families, travel around the world and even convert to Buddhism, and still had time to finish off this chance.
But somehow, Gashi smacked it straight at Sommer.
He could have opened up his body to put it in the far corner or even more advisable, he should have taken it round the keeper. As a professional footballer who is paid to do this, Gashi had no business not scoring what was an incredible chance. Once he missed, I just threw my hands up. You could see the anger on De Biasi who knew how important that miss was.
You just can't spurn these kinds of opportunities.
When you think that Albania will most likely lose to France and may not beat a good Romania team, any hopes they had of squeezing through in third will have been dashed. And it didn't have to end up that way if Gashi had just calmed himself, focused and put the chance away. HH
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