The loss to Finland has complicated Albania's position for first place in Group C1, although of course the objective is quite achievable. But to do so, victories and goals are needed, starting with San Marino on Tuesday, the last chance to improve the goal difference, before the direct challenges.
For a long time now, goals scored have been one of the criteria that determine the positioning of teams, but perhaps because we have never found ourselves in situations that required goal difference, or because we simply do not have the right mindset to achieve it, the fact is that in matches where we should score goals, we do worse than all the opponents with whom we measure our strength. In light of the collapse in Helsinki, regardless of the factors, we see ourselves in pursuit of Finland, the only impossible team in Group C1.
To win the group we must either score 9 points in the remaining 3 matches, or hope that Finland will stop in Belarus, because no one expects favors from San Marino. In fact, San Marino could only offer favors in terms of number of goals, but there we failed in the mission, passed by both Belarus who scored 4, and Finland who caused the earthquake of 7 goals. Albania stopped at the most common figure, in the precedents with San Marino, 3. Even in this case, we escaped well in the second half without suffering the narrowing of the result, with a semi-amateur team.
6 goals in 3 games is not a bad statistic, but the point is that goals can matter if the points in the end will equalize us with one or both of our opponents and at the moment we are only ahead of Goncharenko's men, 6-2 against 4-2, but if we want first place, we have to get past Finland who are running with a goal difference of 9-1. This is also the reason why on Tuesday, even to erase the bitter taste of the defeat in Helsinki, Rolando Maran's team must play for play and goals, hoping that in the two games in November things will be clear about what we have to go through to qualify.
