TIRANA, May  2 /ATA/- By Maela Marini/ The final phase of the international competition for the “Skënderbeu” stadium project, a new hub of Korça, was held on Tuesday in Korça. In attendance were 3 world renowned architecture studios, ARCHEA Associati (Italy), BOFILL Architecture (Spain) and CEBRA ( Denmark).

In his address delivered on this occasion, Prime Minister Edi Rama underlined that “our ambition is to create new models, where the stadiums of our cities can also become engines of social and economic development.”

Rama said that this competition attracted a great deal of interest, adding that “this is one of the three finals held these days, which will be followed by the final of the competitions in Durrës and Vlora.”

Rama assured that another 3 stadiums join the national stadium generation, which is an exemplary success story but also a meaningful story of experience in the cooperation between the government and the Albanian Football Federation.

The Prime Minister also added that without the AFF it would have been impossible to build the stadium and go ahead with these new developments.

“The synergy between the government and the AFF provides the basis, the foundation, the main impetus to build an Albania with a completely different face also in this field, where Albania boasts 3 new stadiums, the most modern infrastructure in terms of their geographical spread in the country and the region. We managed to catch up with the region which was ahead of us,” said Rama.

Regarding the integration in the European and world sports systems, Rama congratulated the President of the AFF, Armando Duka, on his election to the UEFA Steering Committee. “It is a great honor for Albania, Albanian football, as it is the first time in the history of UEFA that the head of Albanian Federation is elected to the UEFA Committee,” said Rama.

This, according to him, “strengthens our position in the effort to achieve the ambitious objective of hosting the 2025 European Youth Football Championship in Albania.”

“This means that by 2025 we will be ready with these new stadiums added to the “Selman Stërmasi” stadium in Tirana, which will be reconstructed based on these principles and we will continue even further,” added Rama.

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