ANDIS SHALA

Andis Shala

Nationality: German / Albanian

Age: 24

D.O.B: 15/11/1988

Place of Birth: Gjakove

Position: Central Forward

Club: Carl Zeiss Jena

Andis Shala, the son of Kujtim Shala, a former Croatia international player began his career at Hannover 96 youth team. He made his professional debut for VfR Mannheim while on a short loan and scored twice during the 9 games played there..

Subsequently, Shala was signed by Dundee Utd, and despite being described by Craig Levein, the manager, as a "decent prospect" for which he had "high hopes" his goalscoring record was less than impressive, with only one goal scored in his 30 appearances for the club. 

Having failed to impress at Dundee Utd, he was released and subsequently he returned to Germany where he signed for Hallescher and earned promotion to the 3 Liga with the club in the 2012 season.

He eventually left Hallescher to join lowly Carl Zeiss Jenna who plays in the Regionalliga Nordost in January 2013.

At one stage while he was playing for Dundee Utd, Shala was the subject of interest from the Albanian National Football team with rumours suggesting that  Jozip Kuze was keeping an eye on Shala and tracking his progress. Shala was himself quoted as saying at the time, that he would love to represent Albania.

Four years have passed since that, and his decision to sign for Carl Zeiss Jena, may have set him back in regards to helping him achieve his objective of playing for Albania - however at the age of 24, Shala has the opportunity to change his fortunes around, start scoring and start impressing.

He comes from impressive heritage, and we all know that he could easily transform his form, because as they say - "Form is temporary, class is permanent" - and Shala is in possession of plenty of class.

We will be tracking his progress and we will be keeping our fingers crossed that he achieves his potential.