Manaj: Let’s take the three points against San Marino

The Albanian national team striker, Rey Manaj, spoke to the media at the press conference on the eve of the match against San Marino, which will be played tomorrow at 20:45 at the “Air Albania” stadium.

Striker Rey Manaj said the team will play tomorrow only for victory and to take the three points.

Tomorrow’s match with San Marino and how is the team’s condition after the defeat to Finland? – The match with San Marino depends on the way we take it. It is a team much weaker than us, but things must be demonstrated on the pitch. After the match we played in Finland, on paper it is the easiest match of the others. We will go onto the pitch from the first half to close the match straight away, to win and take the three points.

A different way of scoring goals with coach Maran, not through moves. – These are statistics that people outside look at. For us, the important thing is to score a goal, while the way we score is another thing. We work both through moves and from corners. Hopefully we will be lucky tomorrow, score goals and make you happy too.

How long will it take us to take on coach Maran’s ideas? – I believe the coach has very little time, but we all follow his ideas. Everyone is a professional, both the boys who have been longer in the national team and the young ones who have come in. Every time that passes is better for us. I hope we will be 100% ready when the European qualifiers begin.

How much pressure is there on the attack to score as many as possible against San Marino? – I believe that the more goals we score, the happier we will be. It is a team against which we must play hard, thinking from the start that we must unlock the match. We also saw it last year against Andorra, which is weaker than us, but we only scored against them in the 80th minute. We want to attack hard in the first 20 minutes to open the match and then, hopefully, score more goals than the other teams have scored.

Do you expect certain players to pass to you to score and are you superstitious? – I get on well with all the players. The group is very good and has improved a lot. Every player who plays wants the best for the team. I am happy to play with all the players. I am not superstitious.

13 goals with the national team. Do you think you will break Bogdani’s record? – The desire would be great, but for me the main thing is to take the 3 points. Whether I score or others do matters little to me. We will see; in the last year I have scored 5 goals. Before, I also had injuries and I was not very stable with my condition to help the team with goals. Now things are going very well and I only hope we continue like this.