Skip to main content

'God Helped Him Score'

Albanian Salihi has his prayers answered

The power of prayer has paid off for Albanian League side KF Tirana striker Hamdi Salihi.

The marksman had gone a month without hitting the net when club owner Refik Halili decided to take action and drafted in 30 Muslim priests to pray for the end of his barren spell.

Just 41 minutes into their next match with FK Partizani, Salihi found the target in a 3-2 win.

'Salihi is a born striker and the fact he had not scored for four weeks had blocked him mentally,' Halili said.

'I think I lived up to my duty. God helped him score and Tirana to win.'

Comments

Anonymous said…
I think there's a mistake at the end of the article, which it should be:
"I think I lived up to my duty" said God. Added Halili: "God helped him score and Tirana to win."

In fact, Salihi had been praying on his own for the whole month, but apparently it didn't work. Ah, Salihi, when are you going to learn that God doesn't work during the holiday season? He needs vacations too. The 30 Muslim priests, well versed in inner workings of God, held they prayer in the first day when he was back in the office, and it worked like a charm, err... you know what I mean.
10:07 pm
Anonymous said…
No chances to tirana!
3:42 am
Ll.T. said…
I'm curious, which paper carried this article?
4:23 pm
olli said…
I came across it through google alerts on a Welsh website. It was part of a summary of football news from the South Wales Echo - a regional Welsh newspaper.

Before that, it was carried on the UEFA website and also on the Guardian website where it is attributed to Reuters.

A google news search on "Hamdi Salihi" will bring up the links.
9:07 am
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Albania and the Perils of the 21st Century

Another article on religion in Albania appeared yesterday. Patrick Poole, writing in the American Thinker , argues that Saudi funding for the construction of mosques and the training of imams is a threat to Albania, since these mosques and imams reflect the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia.
34 comments
Read more

Kamëz Part 3

For those who want a lengthy detailed report into the election there will, undoubtedly, be a range of them to chose from. In the meantime, here are my brief reflections on the last few weeks. At the heart of the problems around this election is the unwarranted influence of political parties on all aspects of the electoral process. Every institution responsible for organising and facilitating the election is under the control of political parties. The Electoral Code itself was heavily revised only days before the original date for the elections and only weeks before the actual date (Law 9676 13 January 2007). It was these revisions, specifically Article 181/2, that created the overly complicated identification requirements that caused so much confusion, and undoubtedly disenfranchised some voters. Let's be clear though: these revisions were not designed to protect the interests of the electorate. They were drafted primarily because the political parties do not trust each other. The ...
27 comments
Read more

Big in Albania

Ask me how much I knew about Albania before coming here and my list would be a short one: Enver Hoxha, bunkers and Sir Norman Wisdom. I have no idea when or how I acquired this extensive body of knowledge, but the association of Norman Wisdom with Albania was by far the most interesting part of it. I remember watching Norman Wisdom's old films on British television. My parents were fans of his wholesome, slapstick comedy, but apparently missed the ideological significance of Pitkin's relationship with Mr Grimsdale. Pitkin, the downtrodden and oppressed representative of the workers, triumphed every time over his capitalist oppressor, Mr Grimsdale - and he got the girl. It took a theorist of Hoxha's insight and profundity to discern this deeper political message. It always seemed tremendously unlikely, yet the story of Sir Norman's fame in Albania has been reported in worthy sources like the BBC , the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph . According to the Guardian, when Wi...
22 comments
Read more