Armando Broja cannot stop grinning.
Talking to The Athletic while away preparing with the Albania squad, the subject of representing his country at the European Championship this summer has just come up and, after 18 months of heartache, this is the chance Broja has been waiting for.
“If I am involved, it will be an opportunity to show people who I am and what I am about,” he says. “Every time I think about it, it brings a smile to my face. I have been dreaming my whole life to be a part of something like this.”
Born to Albanian parents — mother Blerina and father Xhevahir — in 2001 in Slough, a commuter town half an hour west of London, Broja was named last week in the 27-man provisional squad for the tournament and then scored in a 3-0 win over Liechtenstein on Monday. One more name will be cut from the group by head coach Sylvinho before it begins, but that is expected to be a reserve goalkeeper.
For the 22-year-old Chelsea striker to be involved at all is some achievement, given everything he has been through since December 2022, including:
- a serious knee injury which ruled him out for nine months
- a bit-part role in the first team on his return to the pitch
- a loan at Fulham brought him just 82 minutes of action.
Now the possibility of playing on one of football’s biggest stages against the might of Italy, Spain and Croatia — World Cup finalists all — in the group phase at Euro 2024 awaits.
“I have a lot to prove to people, and to myself,” Broja admits. “In football, there are a lot of critics. People are always doubting you. They only remember your bad games and judge you at your lowest.
“The real pleasure in football is overcoming all that. I will use all the negativity as fuel to prove people wrong. I have had to do that all my life and this European Championship provides me with that opportunity — to show I am back from my injury, that I can do it against some of the best countries in the world, some of the best defenders, some of the best players.
“I just want to show the world — my country, my family, myself, people who have doubted me, people who have supported me — that I can achieve my expectations and become the player I know I can.”
It was Sylvinho, rather than now former Chelsea head coach Mauricio Pochettino or Fulham’s Marco Silva, who provided the backing Broja has craved.
Three months ago, he played for Albania for the first time since returning to full fitness, in friendlies against Chile and Sweden. But the strength of his relationship with the Brazilian ex-Arsenal defender was established well before then.
Broja playing for Albania against Sweden in March (Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)
“I have spoken to him numerous times on the phone and in person,” Broja says of Sylvinho. “He came to see me in England when I was still on my crutches, and when I was at Fulham.
“He would keep telling me how much he wants to work with me and that I am a big part of what the Albania team are trying to do. He made me feel loved and appreciated. It is something that young players need. He basically provided that arm around the shoulder when I needed it.
“When I went to the Albania camp in March, I felt the love from the moment I arrived. It was probably one of the most emotional moments when I played, too. I had all the fans screaming my name and the stadium was full. But it is a sad reality that I ended up playing more minutes for Albania during that international break than in four months for Fulham.”
In truth, Broja is just grateful to be able to get on the pitch at all after rupturing the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in his right knee towards the end of 2022. Anyone who heard his screams of agony when he went down during a friendly against Aston Villa that December will never forget them.
The match was played in Abu Dhabi as part of Chelsea’s preparations for the restart of the Premier League season following a six-week break for the playing of the World Cup in nearby Qatar. Broja started up front next to Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, and with the latter increasingly out of favour under Chelsea’s then coach Graham Potter and Kai Havertz allowed to take a break after Germany’s shock group-stage exit from the World Cup, the invitation was there for him to secure more starts.
Broja, who enjoyed impressive loan spells at Vitesse Arnhem in the Netherlands and Southampton after coming through Chelsea’s youth ranks, had scored his first senior goal for the club just two months earlier.
But any hopes of adding to that tally ended as he challenged Ezri Konsa in Villa’s penalty area.
Broja’s chances of making an impact at Chelsea have been wrecked by injury (Robin Jones/Getty Images)
“It was a massive shame what happened because, in that World Cup break, I had a great chance to get away with the manager (Potter),” he says. “I was hoping to break through. I really felt like I was able to get in.
“When the injury came, I was just screaming on the floor with tears rolling down my face, because it did not feel right. The physios came on and gave me oxygen straight away. I could not move my legs. It scared me. I remember getting to the physio room and I couldn’t really see because of the tears. I was just begging the physio to give me my phone so I could call my mum and dad.
“I spoke to (Chelsea full-back) Ben Chilwell about things because he had been out with injuries before, and the club supported me. But going through the rehab alone, watching your team-mates train and play, was difficult. The mental side was maybe a bit harder to deal with than the physical pain. I found it hard being out of the game for so long.
“It is a good thing to reflect on sometimes now, because it shows how I have moved on from it and got stronger. I appreciate being able to play even more now. There are people who don’t recover from these kind of injuries. It could have easily gone a different way, where you might not play football again. That is scary.”
In a twist of fate, Broja made his comeback against Villa last September, but it is his first start, a local derby against Fulham on October 2, that has stayed most in his mind.
Just 82 seconds after Mykhailo Mudryk had put Chelsea in front, Broja capped his first start for the club in 11 months with a goal of his own: “It was unbelievable. One of my best moments. It was not the best goal of my career but probably the one that means the most to me. It was a massive thing. I was smiling for one or two weeks over it.
“I could only play 60 minutes against Fulham, because my legs were finished (that night). It was amazing just to be out there. I had been out of the game for so long it kind of felt new to me again.”
Broja takes on Fulham’s Joao Palhinha (Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)
Broja was named in the first team by Pochettino a further seven times and made 11 appearances from the bench in all. With the head coach reluctant to send first-team players to the under-21s for game time, or to organise friendlies behind closed doors, it made it harder for those coming back from injury to gain match sharpness.
Instead of praising Broja after he scored the opening goal in a 4-0 FA Cup third-round win over Preston North End of the Championship, Pochettino spoke afterwards about how he needed to “change his body language”.
When asked now if those comments surprised him, Broja replies: “A little bit, because I have been through so much with the injury and he was saying something about me needing to be more happy. I did feel like I could have had more trust and belief (from him).
“I basically just got thrown into the Premier League straight away — which is tough to deal with anyway, but I had no build-up.
“I have always been quite hard on myself because I expect a lot, but I have always had a really good attitude when it comes to training and games. I always try to do my best for the team; try to win. I am not a player who sulks or whinges.
“I did think when Nicolas Jackson went away with Senegal to the Africa Cup of Nations (at the start of 2024) that I would be given an opportunity to play a load of games. I started three times in January, but I thought there were times I could have been utilised more. I got the feeling people expected me to just run past three, four players and put it in the bottom corner. But I was fighting to get my fitness and things were going through my head like, ‘What will happen to me in January?’.
“There was a lot of speculation around me at the time, whether I would go on loan. I just wanted answers from the club, a bit of reassurance, and I didn’t get that. In the end, I decided to go on loan because I wanted to get more minutes. I thought it was the perfect time where I could play football continuously for four months up until the Euros.”
A rare outing for Fulham against Manchester City (MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Unfortunately for Broja, that plan did not work out.
Silva had made a big, but unsuccessful, push to sign him last summer, when Fulham sold their long-time No 1 striker Aleksandar Mitrovic. So when he made an approach over a short-term loan in the winter window, Broja said yes, because he felt he was truly wanted at Craven Cottage.
No one could have forecast that fellow striker Rodrigo Muniz, who had not scored for Fulham in the Premier League all season, would go on a run of eight goals in as many matches. Broja spent the rest of the campaign on the bench, making just eight substitute appearances. Even when the Brazilian’s hot streak cooled off — Muniz scored once in his last eight games — Broja was not picked.
His frustration is understandable.
“Marco Silva desperately wanted me to join,” Broja says. “He was telling me I would play games, that I would get an opportunity to start and get as many minutes as possible.
“It did not help that Muniz started scoring straight away. I completely understand you can’t drop a player who is scoring game after game. But I felt like we had conversations in between where he (Silva) would say, ‘Don’t worry, just keep doing what you’re doing, you will get opportunities’. But I never did.
“If you play me and I have an unbelievable game then it is my chance (to emulate Muniz). I did all I could to be involved. It had nothing to do with my injury. I trained like a professional. I got on with all the players. The staff were amazing. I got on with everyone.
“All thoughts go through your head: ‘I have wasted four months of my career just sitting around training’, ‘I could have been at Chelsea for four months and played more (than this)’. It did suck but that’s football. You have to move on and I count it as another lesson learned.”
Broja’s future lies away from Chelsea (Jacques Feeney/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
So what happens next?
It looks likely Broja will be sold this summer.
Among the clubs interested are Monaco of France’s Ligue 1, AC Milan in Italy and Premier League sides West Ham, Everton and Wolves, but Chelsea will not rush to the negotiation table. Like Broja, they will want him to have a good European Championship, but more because it will help them generate a bigger fee when he moves on.
The possibility of leaving the club he joined at age eight does not scare him. He has seen fellow Chelsea academy graduates Callum Hudson-Odoi and Dominic Solanke move on and enhance their careers at Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth respectively.
“Callum is a great talent and he had a major injury (Achilles tendon in his case) at Chelsea, like I did,” he says. “Things didn’t work out, so he joined Forest and now he is scoring goals and is becoming himself again. They believed in him and that is what a player needs when you go through something like that injury.
“Dominic wasn’t given games at Chelsea, or (his next club) Liverpool, but he has now got five seasons under his belt at Bournemouth where he has been allowed to make mistakes, have bad games, do the wrong and right thing. He finished this season as one of the top scorers in the Premier League and if someone wants to buy him, it will cost a lot of money.
“Nothing has been decided yet, but if I need to go somewhere else to get back in my groove, then of course I would want to do that. As a player, there is no better feeling than being on the pitch and knowing you have a club and a team who defends you; a club who allow you to make mistakes because they know you will become something.
“But right now, all my focus is on doing my best for Albania at the Euros.
“ I am as excited as any Albanian in the world. I cannot wait.”
(Top photo: Chris Lee – Chelsea FC/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)
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