Albania will host Serbia on Saturday in the next round of the World Cup qualifiers, in what is a high-risk match between two neighbouring nations in the Balkans.
The Serbians certainly still remember the infamous game against Albania from more than a decade ago and the incident that occurred in Belgrade when a drone carrying an Albanian nationalist banner landed in the middle of the pitch at Marakana Stadium. This sparked a fierce response from the crowd and the match had to be abandoned, with Albania ultimately taking the win at the green table.
So, this will be a tense match, but we hope that we’ll get to see good football too. Albania enter this match in poor form, having been relegated from League B to League C of the UEFA Nations League. However, they did win their previous match in the WC qualifiers against Andorra after previously losing to England.
On the other hand, Serbia managed to avoid relegation from League A of the UEFA Nations League by beating Austria in the playoffs, 3-1 on aggregate. Those matches were played in the previous international window, so Serbia will only now play their first game in these WC qualifiers.
Recent head-to-head: Only two previous meetings
We already mentioned that abandoned match from 2014, which was the first of the two games between Albania and Serbia in the EURO 2016 qualifiers. The second match was played in Albania and it was finished, but not the way the hosts wanted since Serbia won 2-0.
Predicted line-ups
Both teams enter this game nearly with a clean bill of health. That being said, Serbia will miss their goalkeeper Predrag Rajkovic, while Albania don’t have missing players to worry about ahead of this game.
Albania: Strakosha, Hysaj, Djimsiti, Ajeti, Mitaj, Asllani, Bajrami, Uzuni, Laci, Hoxha, Manaj.
Serbia: Petrovic, Milenkovic, Pavlovic, Erakovic, Zivkovic, Gudelj, Maksimovic, S. Mitrovic, Samardzic, Vlahovic, Mitrovic.
