AN air of familiarity will provide some cultural comfort for those Scots embarking on a maiden voyage to Albania this weekend. An obsession with football is one common trait as will become apparent when the nations square off for only the second time in Shkoder this evening. The other is a deep-rooted fascination with history and heritage, and the need to keep alive those memories of the past.

Lorik Cana embodies both elements. Albania’s most-capped international with 93 caps, the one-time Paris St-Germain, Marseille and Sunderland defender retired from football after captaining his country at Euro 2016, Albania’s first ever appearance at a major finals.

History is his other passion. Born in Pristina, Kosovo, his family fled to Switzerland when he was nine years old following the outbreak of the Balkans conflict in the early 1990s.

His career subsequently took him all around Europe but he has returned to Albania where, a year after retiring, he established the Lorik Cana Foundation. Its twin purposes are to enable a healthy lifestyle among young children, while also nurturing their knowledge of their culture and national heritage, and he is evangelical about both.

“The foundation is based on my two passions which are football and cultural heritage,” he says, as he breaks off temporarily to acknowledge a border guard as he travels back into Albania from a working visit home to Kosovo. “In this part of the world we have an amazing history with some really deep roots, with stories that go back many hundreds of years.

“The foundation started initially with a kindergarten programme that included building new multi-sports facilities that allow us now to provide activities for around 450 kids every day. We want to have a direct impact on the way that kids interact with sport and get the best values. If you can do that when they are young then you can help influence them become better people and healthier people when they grow up.

“I think it’s important to teach them about the country and its heritage, too. The past must serve you to be proud of who you are and where you come from. And that is what we also teach the children from a young age.”

Cana is evidently a man of influence and power – he is missing tonight’s match as he is en route to Rome for an audience with The Pope – and has his sights set on deploying that at a professional level soon. He and a group of Albanian investors are scouring Europe looking for the ideal club to work with, with Cana hoping to be deployed as their sporting director.

“When you are an ex-professional and want to stay in sport you could become a coach, a manager or work in the media, and I am doing a little bit around the Champions League for TV,” he added. “But I really want to start a career in sports administration as a director, leading a project in a club. This is what I am now working towards in the next few years so we will see where it takes us.”

The high of qualifying for the Euros in France two years has set a level of expectation in Albania that the national team has failed to subsequently live up to. Having won only one of their three Nations League games, relegation to League D looks more likely than promotion, although a home win over Israel at the start of this campaign should serve as a warning for Scotland this evening.

With this being their final competitive match before qualifying for Euro 2020 begins next year, Cana hopes his countrymen can go out on a high.

“We are maybe not in the best shape just now,” he admitted. “The team has not had a great journey since the Euros because of injuries and players retiring and other things.

“When you come off the back of such a historical achievement of qualifying for a big tournament for the first time then it’s very hard to keep going as the expectations are very high. In football you don’t always get a lot of time and we maybe haven’t had the results we would like but we will definitely look to win this final match against Scotland. We want to be in a good shape going into the qualification group next year. It will be very difficult to reach the top of the table as we would need to win by four goals and other results to be positive for us. But the team will definitely look to win this last game in front of our home fans. Scotland deserved to win in the first game in Glasgow but tonight I hope it will be a completely different game.”