Albanian sport has a long and glorious history. Even if it is a small country Albania and the Albanian people stand out for their love and great passion for sport. All sports are practiced in Albania,also thanks to the climatic and environmental conditions of the country. Albania has a very young population: about 30% of the population are under 20 and this means that about 1 million people out of 3.5 are young and therefore fond of sport. The critical years of transition from a totalitarian society to a democratic one had a complex influence on sport in Albania. On the one hand, the intensive democratization of the society created the possibilities for a natural and profound development of sport, but, on the other, the inevitable problems brought about by these radical change processes caused the decrease of the importance of sport both to the State and to the society.
Neverthless, there is a wider participation of the private sector in sport and the benefits are quite tangible. The most loved sport in Albania is soccer, followed by combat sports and all the others. Soccer rouses a greater level of interest from the public, the media and the businesses. Albania has made considerable improvements in this sport and if once he used to participate only formally in the European and World competitions, this participation has now become a primary objective. Besides soccer, also basket ball and volley ball are very popular. In these sports several Albanian clubs achieved great results in the past, especially as for volley ball, the Albanian clubs were placed amongst the top four in Europe.