England's victory not certain

Albania, who take on England at James's Park tonight, is a country of limited stature in football terms. They are bottom of Group Nine and have conceded even more goals than Germany.

While Rudi Voller's defenders were shipping goals at the weekend Albania were going down to a 2-0 home defeat by Finland. The coach, Sulejman Demollari, is already under pressure in a football daft country. The Finnish game was his first in charge.

But, as David Beckham noted on Monday and Eriksson said yesterday, Albania are not be either patronised or dismissed. Albania are growing in stature.

It took England 70 minutes to score their first goal at the Quemal Stafa stadium in March and before the score became 3-1 in the last minute it could easily have been 2-2 had an Albanian equaliser not been disallowed controversially for offside. No one in the group has won by more than two goals against Albania.

The Germans had similar difficulty to England in overcoming Albania in Leverkusen five days before that England match. The Albanians were drawing 1-1 in that match only to lose 2-1 to an 88th-minute winner from substitute Miroslav Klose.

So Albanian football has moved on since the day not so long ago when the international team turned up in Belfast to play Northern Ireland without a kit. Yet that improvement has brought increased expectations.

Demollari, for example, was once Albania's most admired player. Now he is suffering the plight of managers everywhere.

"We did not concentrate tonight," he said after the Finland game. "We have some problems at the moment, not only with the way we play but also mentally. My players are not sure what they are doing and I must change that."

Demollari sees strengths in the side. "There are a number of our players who play with good European teams now." He adds: "We are not going into this game with an inferiority complex."

Edvin Murati is Albania's star, "our Maradona" as he is known. Having turned up at Paris St-Germain as an illegal immigrant a few years ago, Murati now plays for Lille and thus will meet Beckham at Old Trafford again in a fortnight when Lille visit in the Champions League.