The draw for the qualifiers for the 2026 World Championship was made this Friday at the FIFA headquarters in Zurich, where Albania fell into group K with England, Serbia, Latvia and Andorra.
Albania defeats Serbia by recalling the tense and interrupted match in Belgrade after the flight of the “Autochtonus” drone into the stadium.
GROUP K:
ENGLAND
Serbia
Albania
Latvia
ANDORRA
While Kosovo is positioned in group B where it faces Switzerland.
GROUP B:
Switzerland
Sweden
SLOVENIA
KOSOVO
Albania will face the Serbs, recalling what happened on October 14, 2014, when the Serbia-Albania match played for the qualifiers of the European Championship France 2016 was interrupted at 21:27.
Tense, with an obvious Albanian lead, the match continued like this until the 42nd minute, where from the sky of Belgrade, above the fans, more slowly and waving from a drone, on the playing field, the flag with the map of the Albanian ethnic regions, with the portraits, approached of Ismail Qemali and Isa Boletini and with the inscription “AUTOCHTHONOUS”.
Then a Serbian football player took the flag with Albanian symbols in space, without falling to the ground, and the players of the national team immediately ran after him, snatching it from his hands.
After that, the ball was “forgotten” and a physical battle began between the players of the two teams. The Serbian spectators who teach the Albanian players come down from the spectators’ stands.
The Albanian players, after recovering, handed over the fallen flag on the field to the UEFA officials and returned to Tirana around 3 am.
The Disciplinary Commission of UEFA decided on October 24, 2014 that the interrupted match should be recorded in favor of Serbia, until the two national teams were punished with 100 thousand euros each, Serbia was deprived of two points and played two matches without fans.
After Albania’s appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne, on July 10 of this year, the 3 match points went to Albania’s side.
In the meantime, the author of the drone, Ismail Morina, Ballisti, who lived a double life, was “discovered”: in the fame of his flag and in the suspicion that he is really the author of the launch and of hiding and keeping it from the Serbian security from which , he said, wanted to be killed.
