Trigger Warning - there’s a lot of chat about genocide in this one. I’ve formatted it separately but it couldn’t be avoided so if you do want to skip that, you can.

Share

Slovenia

We’ll start this time with not Celje’s midweek exploits as the first round of the cup came in with a huge shocker as third tier Rudar Trbovlje knocked out Olimpija 1-0.

Also having a shock defeat this week domestically were Celje, who swapped ten of the eleven who started the second leg of their Champions League playoff vs Slovan Bratislava and promptly lost 4-1 to Brinje. Celje were very, very slack at the back, especially in the second half and they certainly will have raised questions about their squad depth.

That followed Celje’s playoff loss to Slovan Bratislava after extra time that demoted them into the Europa League that followed a 1-1 draw in the first leg. After an aggregate thrashing a couple of years ago from the Slovaks, this close miss will be progress. Svit Seslar should have scored before Andraz Sporar finished excellently to put Slovan in front in the second leg. Seslar equalised from the spot and Celje were much the more dangerous side during the ninety with Armandas Kucys missing an open goal in the 90th minute, a miss that would inevitably be punished - Cristian Martinez doling out the pain in the 99th minute.

Here’s Celje’s challenging Europa League path, including a rematch vs Ararat.

Having skipped two gameweeks of coverage, I’m sure no reader would appreciate blow-by-blow coverage of all the games so, instead, here’s the table

Celje, of course, carry two games in hand and, with them vs Aluminij and Radomlje, you’d fancy them to be a net 1 point back from Maribor at the top as they look to manage Europe and domestic matters once again. Maribor sit as the only unbeaten side in the league and, in spite of a season opening that hasn’t been all that pleasing for Koper, they’re well in touch at the top. Olimpija will be concerned with their form and haven’t scored more than one in a game yet this season. Bravo, as a curio, have two losses this season and James Arinze has two red cards this season already - each in their losses to Nafta and Maribor respectively. He’s averaging a red card every 125 minutes so far.

Your standout players so far? I’ve mentioned Josip Zorica before but let’s bring up Tio Cipot who is top scoring so far from the wing and has looked very good for Maribor, Nal Lan Koren has done well for Brinje and Leo Rimac continues to make you wonder how come he’s not been picked up by a bigger league.

Big transfers in the meantime have seen Benjamin Tetteh finally league Maribor going to the UAE, Omar El Manssouri leave Koper on a free (didn’t feature much this term but previously a mainstay) and the big headline of Blaz Kramer joining Celje from Konyaspor. Kramer is, of course, a Slovenian international striker and Celje native who made his name in Zurich. He last turned out in the Prva Liga in 16/17 for Aluminij.

Subscribe now

Croatia

Firstly, condolences to the loved ones of Ivan Gudelj who died on 2 September aged 66. Gudelj is perhaps the greatest “what might have been” of the Yugoslav era. Spending his whole senior career at Hajduk, he was part of the national team at the 1982 World Cup making 33 appearances for Yugoslavia.

Born in Imotski, he came through the youths at Mracaj coached by Zvonimir Boban’s father, who gave him his senior debut at 14 vs Zrinjski before being picked up by Hajduk at 15. As a player, he was a defensive midfielder, but with the modern drive of a true box-to-box midfielder with his favoured goal being this vs Rijeka He was forced to retire at 25 after collapsing on the field during a game against Crvena Zvezda that resulted in a diagnosis of Hepatitis B and, in spite of attempts to resume his career, his body simply wasn’t able to handle professional football any more and the disease progressed into a chronic form - at the time, he was awaiting a move to Real Madrid. With this being during the mid-1980s, rumours abounded as to what the cause was, including theories that he had AIDS which caused social exclusion to add to his forced exclusion from his sport. He went into a period of years of a transient existence trying to find a cure in alternative medicines, to the point he lived in remote herbalist communities for a time to attempt to cure himself. He would turn to coaching, being a long term part of the Croatian set up managing both the U17s and U19s. His legacy is as one of the greatest players Hajduk ever produced and one who fate alone decided would not be allowed to prove he could perhaps have been THE greatest.

Hajduk had had a historic week to that point, starting with their qualification for the Conference League taking out Rakow. They took the lead twice during normal time, being pegged back by the Poles each time with Rokas Pukstas scoring the decider early in extra time and Rakow didn’t do too much to get themselves back into the game after it. It’s their first League Phase appearance in 16 years and this is how that looks…

Fans of history repeating itself will note that Hajduk met Ajax in the 94/95 Champions League Quarters.

Dinamo fell into the Europa League after defeat in Stavanger after a fairly comprehensive loss to Viking that gave football the concept that running up and battering a penalty down the middle is now called a “Scottish Panenka”.

Dinamo’s line up is as follows:

The table doesn’t have Dinamo at the top just yet…

Part of that is thanks to Istra taking a point from the champions at the weekend as they continue to be extremely entertaining. Osijek went top after beating Slaven Belupo and that led to the first managerial change of the season as Slaven replaced Mario Gregurina with Silvio Cabraja, a move that was likely a little overdue given how Slaven fell over the line last season.

Transfer-wise, there’s absolutely loads going on so here we go…

Osijek striker Arnel Jakupovic has left for 600 thousand euros to Vitoria Guimares. He already had two goals this season. Osijek haven’t been buyers at the close of the window given they’re not flush with cash and have likely had a few fewer sales than expected or desired by the accountants.

Hajduk have sold Niko Sigur to Toulouse and Rokas Pukstas to Middlesborough, making the best part of ten million. On the ins, they confirmed Dennis Hadzikadunic since the last newsletter (CB) and, most recently, Khalil Fayad from Montpellier. Ongoing at the time of writing are Leander Dendoncker, who they’ve not announced but have registered, Carlos Martin, an Atletico striker and, incredibly, Esmir Bajraktarevic who PSV are allowing to be loaned out.

Dinamo’s goalkeeping question was solved with a loan for Dominik Kotarski (Livakovic has gone to Barca as their back-up. For £2m a year and an extra £3m if they win the Champions League so, you know, not a bad salary to do very little) and they’ve also brought back Luka Ivanusec to the club permanently, whose time at Feyenoord saw him go backwards. Finally, Iker Almena has confirmed his move to Dinamo after last season on loan at Hajduk. The window is open for another few days so the other deals to quickly mention are Fran Brodic returning to the league to boost Gorica, Robby McCrorie moving from Kilmarnock to Varazdin to presumably replace Oliver Zelenika who has moved to Cyprus while Varazdin have also let Ivan Mamut go to South East Asia for a decent fee.

Bosnia/Serbia Controversy: Ratko Mladic

Giving this its own section because there’s so much to talk about on this and it requires backstory. Last week saw the passing of Ratko Mladic, convicted war criminal who had been in charge of forces that led the siege of Sarajevo and, of course, the Srebrenica massacre during the Yugoslav Wars. Mladic was 84 and incarcerated in spite of multiple requests for a compassionate release due to severe health issues - he had suffered a series of strokes in 2026 but was retained in a secure facility, dying in The Hague.

In general, my policy has always been to try to stay as neutral as possible in writing about these sorts of things as, to this day, they inflame the passions of both sides of the Bosnian/Serb divides so I’ll attempt to recount his life in that manner. Mladic was a career soldier who rose steadily through the ranks until becoming a fixer for Milosevic in the early 1990s with an early prominent role being in command around Prishtina during the oppression of Kosovan Albanians before war kicked off. He would be promoted and then take part in the war in Croatia, being convicted of war crimes for his part in the Siege of Kijevo as well as taking part in the battle of Zadar.

His work in Croatia would see him promoted again firstly to the point where he set in motion the Siege of Sarajevo and, after starting that, becoming the head of the army of the Republika Srpska, a role he held for the remainder of the Bosnian War, which included the overrunning of and the eventual massacre of civilians within the UN protected zone around Srebrenica. On entering Srebrenica, Mladic stated “we give this town to the Serb people as a gift. Finally, after the rebellion against the dahis, the time has come to take revenge on the Turks in this region.” (2)

Mladic retained popularity with the Serb public more so than others and, post-war, lived freely in Belgrade until the fall of Slobodan Milosevic at which point he lived more underground but still reasonably comfortably and without any great effort from the Serbian authorities to facilitate his arrest to face trial for crimes against humanity until his eventual arrest, save for a botched attempt in 2006 that targeted his brother. He was arrested less as a matter of hard work and more by chance as a small patrol went to check in on relatives and walked in and found him (3). His trial, like many in the Hague, tended towards farce somewhat due to a refusal to enter a plea, errors from the prosecution and Mladic disrupting testimony from a Srebrenica survivor.

Mladic remains a lightning rod in the region and retains popularity in Serbia. His arrest was deemed as treason by many on Serbia’s right and he continues to be venerated by many in the nation. Why? While defending Mladic’s orders in war is impossible, one has to recognise that unlike the ruthlessly corrupt Milosevic or the odd Karadzic, Mladic had a cleaner CV before his rise to prominence - his father was killed during World War Two as part of a Partisan attack on Ante Pavelic’s hometown, he was a career soldier who worked his way through the ranks in the army ruthless in his prosecution of war to Serbia’s enemies rather than to his political enemies.

As we saw earlier this season, Mladic had already been chanted and tifo-ed on the terraces but, since his passing, this has gone into overdrive.

In Radnik-Borac at the weekend, the game was suspended due to chanting of Mladic’s name from Borac’s fans. This followed the announcement of his passing at their Conference League game with Vikingur being responded to with rapturous applause and a banner from the fans (something UEFA don’t seem to have announced anything about yet but victims associations have gotten in touch with UEFA to request that they do). Zeljeznicar fans are also banned from their trip to Banja Luka this midweek due to tensions (albeit, that’s actually fairly normal, but this comes after Zeljo fans raised a banner stating everyone who felt sorry for Mladic should die) but all public gatherings near Srebrenica are also banned for security reasons. Sticking with Sarajevo clubs, academy keeper at FK Sarajevo, Veljko Vucetic, was sacked by the club after his father (and, more relevantly here, his agent) posted praise for Mladic on social media - the club, unsurprisingly, felt they no longer wanted to deal with that (4).

A pro-Mladic banner appeared at Sparta Prague’s city derby which was responded to by Hajduk in their game vs Lokomotiva by setting fire to a Sparta banner they had previously captured from the Czechs.

Novi Pazar (Serbia’s main Muslim affiliated club) fans threw nappies onto the pitch to dishonour Mladic, chanting that they were going to defile his corpse. Partizan unveiled a pro-Mladic banner at their latest League game, albeit didn’t do it during their European tie vs Getafe.

Of most note, of course, is the reaction of Crvena Zvezda who have had UEFA open up the book to throw at them over a banner stating “General, Eternal Glory and Thanks” at their Europa League playoff tie vs Plzen (which, if you didn’t see it, they were silly enough to post on all their socials and it’s the “the club endorse this” angle that is the big issue) along with multiple incidents of chanting his name. On the back of the club’s apparent support for the banners, the Srebrenica Memorial Centre has requested Zvezda be thrown out of Europe - there is precedent from UEFA to treat pro-Mladic material as more ethnic/racial insults than glorification of an individual albeit how much they do so given the contextual element of him having just died, we shall see.

As is likely clear, Mladic is still an extremely hot topic in the region politically. Rumours abound that Mladic will be granted high honours in a funeral in Serbia, rumours that most of Europe are telling Serbia to avoid doing and rumours Aleksandar Vucic is downplaying - albeit having a go at the international courts for failing to allow Mladic to die “free”. Bosnia, a nation under the Dayton Accords still really in a state of frozen conflict rather than a permanent state of peace, does not need another hot topic on which to thaw out the enmities of past generations yet it has it.

This section has, rather inevitably, taken over this issue of the newsletter but I’ll leave it with this - a great many people who did a great many unconscionable actions during the Yugoslav Wars have never faced justice. Ratko Mladic did but it would be wrong to describe him as unrepentant - to be unrepentant would be to suggest that he understood his actions as potentially requiring penance of any form. He did not. He believed fervently he was defending his nation in what was an existential conflict and that his “crimes against humanity” could not be that given he felt he stood as a defender of Serbia’s humanity, much as Tsar Lazar was to the same side six centuries earlier.

We, as a species, justify a great many horrors with that sort of logic but that sort of logic is what justifies Mladic as a villain (to put it lightly) to many and a hero to those whose values he sought to defend. The facts are plain - he bore responsibility for the deaths of thousands at Srebrenica and set the rules of engagement of a siege that destroyed two thirds of Sarajevo neither of which are things that are in the least bit debateable - but like so much in the region, and in the world in general, the importance of fact in discourse can be extremely malleable depending on the viewpoint you’re starting from and it so often feels many choose the viewpoint to dictate facts rather than the other way around. Few people have discourse as malleable or lacking in moderation as Mladic in spite of facts so clear or so inhumane.

Bosnia

We’ll start with the table because whenever you discuss the Bosnian League at this point in a season, you have to illustrate it with the fact that no league in Europe seems to delight as much as Bosnia in postponing games for European commitments. Hence you get the nonsense above, exacerbated by the Sarajevo derby still not having taken place after being postponed for a Prodigy concert. There’s also still the Super Cup to play for which will happen on October 3 which, if you state “Isn’t that in the middle of an international break” – yes, yes it is and that’s just normal for Bosnia.

Borac are in the Conference League after defeating Vikingur in a pair of games no-one’s done an official highlights package on Youtube for. In the competition itself, they’ve got…

In bad news, it’s not in Latin script. In good news, it’s got badges so you can tell who they’re playing with two winnable home games vs KuPS and Riga giving hope of qualification. Borac are also in the midst of a VAR controversy domestically as Mladen Jurkas managed to get away with (probably) handling outside of his area vs Zeljeznicar. They’ve also brought Branimir Cipetic back to the league - the right back had been with Kisvarda. Yes, it’s all a bit “Borac News” this edition.

Share

Serbia

Serbia will have one side in the Conference League group stage this season - Crvena Zvezda. Partizan were expectedly, but bravely, knocked out by Getafe in their playoff tie but Crvena Zvezda took 3-0 first leg lead to Plzen and then, well, Celtic-ed it - after Osman Bukari was sent off for punching an opponent with 40 minutes to go, Zvezda fell to pieces. Over the 90, they gave away three penalties, with two converted and, most damagingly, one in the 93rd minute after Plzen had sent the keeper up and Muhammad Cham-Sarcevic fouled the keeper. The home side took the lead in the tie early in extra time and didn’t ever look like relinquishing it. Albert Riera stated “I take all the responsibility and I’ll eat all the shit” before blaming the ref.

Given Zvezda are in the competition two levels below the one they expected, they’ve been sellers - Jay Enem has gone to Bologna (but will be on loan this season, likely in Lugano - more on them in a sec), Nair Tiknizyan moved early to Olympiacos, Seol has gone to Augsburg, Jovan Sljivic to Fakel and Bruno Duarte to Vasco de Gama which, all in all, has made them somewhere in the region of 15 million euros before one starts thinking about add ons.

Here’s Zvezda’s Conference League schedule which, unhelpfully, they’ve only put in cyrillic…

In the script used by most of the world, that’s Lugano away, FC Kobenhavn at home, Inter d’Escaldes at home, Gent away, Saburtalo away then Trabzonspor at home. One note is that those last two games come after the end of the Autumn period of the season domestically. Zvezda did recover to beat Zemun domestically after that embarrassment midweek.

Obviously, there’s more transfer news so here we go in rounding up deals…

Korean starlet Je Geun Kim has joined Crvena Zvezda from Jeonbuk - the 18yo plays all across the attack and is one with the word “wonderkid” attached. Yuta Nakayama is also joining from Machida Zelvia, a left footed ball playing centre back of the sort always in demand. Strahinja Erakovic’s loan (sort of) from Zenit ended so he’s gone back to Russia and is likely off to the Middle East

Adem Ljajic has returned to Novi Pazar in the most predictable move of the summer after his year in Sarajevo. Karel Mustma is on loan at Cukaricki from PAOK. Petar Ratkov, occasional international, has joined Levante on a loan to buy from Lazio. Srdan Plavsic, the former Zvezda winger, has joined Zeleznicar from Rakow. Vojvodina have added a new sporting director - legendary midfielder Vladimir Jugovic.

Partizan should be bringing in LB Cristian Manrique from Panetolikos but, on the outs, Ognjen Ugresic finally moved, going to PAOK for six million while RB Milan Roganovic has joined Genk for 3.5 million. Distinctly not going anywhere are Partizan’s board - in spite of stating before the Getafe tie that if Partizan weren’t in the Conference League groups they’d resign, they didn’t and, on the fans showing support for the current board, opposition stalking horse Predrag Mijatovic has left the club entirely, seeing his chances for a coup up in smoke.

And now, the table…

Partizan, with their game in hand, do currently sit in the relegation spots while Zvezda, with two games in hand, are top on goal difference from Vojvodina. Oh, and it’s the eternal derby this weekend so expect things to be very rational in the discourse in the run up to that one. Save for Zemun, everyone remains in touch but, with so many games in hand around the league and with the lopsided split this season, there’s a little while for things to even out and give us an accurate idea of how everyone is going to do this term - certainly, you wouldn’t put the mortgage on IMT staying in the top three for long.

Montenegro

Arsenal Tivat were involved in a game in which a goal was scored! Yes, after opening the season with four successive 0-0 draws, they finally had goals in their fifth game, a 2-1 loss to Otrant.

Buducnost’s financial issues are about to get dragged through inquiries from politicians after an 18 point plaan for looking through their books was brought to the local assembly, including removing the independence of the club to run its own finances until such investigations are complete.

The league currently is running at 1.72 goals per game (HNL 2.88) so not exactly entertainment central unless you’re Decic who will be quite happy with things, thank you very much.

Subscribe now

Kosovo

Drita were knocked out of the Conference League by Inter D’Escaldes (who, I realise, I’ve always thought had an extra a in their name) after a penalty shootout in Andorra. An even tie saw both sides have big chances in extra time but, after a pair of excellent saves from both keepers in the shootout, it was Igball Jashari’s wayward spot kick that was the decider.

Not doing the table given Kosovo started so much later than everyone else but there’s already a little gap opening up between the top six and the rest after only three games. Malisheva sit top at the minute but Prishtina and Drita are both a point behind with a game in hand so that’s not really worth anything.

North Macedonia

Yeah, you can tell the story of this season almost immediately - Shkendija are running away with it while Bashkimi are already in considerable and perhaps irreparable bother.

Obviously, one of the problems with covering a league that a) has scarcely any media coverage and b) is one you’re coming back to after a fortnight is that there’s news without context. So, someone’s obviously been having a moan about when games are scheduled and the FFM responded with a fairly clear statement - games are at odd times because North Macedonia is hot, some clubs don’t have facilities to play games late (ie floodlights!) and that the league is getting bumped off TV for live coverage so Arena Sport can, you know, show things people actually watch.

I also would like to credit the FFM for the absolute sass in this statement: “And for the TV commentator, who almost constantly repeated that “there is no foul for a red card” - if necessary, we will be happy to explain to him the Rules of the game of football and the refereeing criteria, so that in the future the public will receive expert analysis, and not an opinion based on ignorance of the rules.”

1 - However, if this is a bit lower depth update in certain aspects than usual (excl the Mladic stuff because that needed a lot), I’ve come back from holiday with a bug that has kicked my ass for the last few days meaning much of the time I’d planned to devote to this was devoted to being asleep so rather than being put together on Sunday, it’s been done bit by bit over a few days which has resulted in things like adding a little bit of deadline day stuff, some live Borac controversy and more. Hopefully it’s not too obvious which bits were written earlier (or more medicated) than others.

2 - For context, this is a reference to the Serbian uprising of the start of the 19th Century - the Dahije were a collective of rebel officers against the Ottomans who controlled the region at the time. They killed many a Serb (including almost every prominent one going in 1804) and were supported by Bosnian allies

3 - To the extent that 2009 polling of Serbs with the question “would you give the state information that led to Mladic’s arrest for a million euros” saw two thirds of respondents state they would not. Arresting Mladic was not a politically easy thing to do.

4 - To be clear, not the only person getting fired for Mladic-posting this week

5 - Obviously, that outcome isn’t likely - similar happened in 2018 against BATE and Zvezda initially received a stadium ban and a €50k fine which was reduced to €30k and the ban suspended for two years assuming no other incident.

Share

Slovenia

In places you won’t have expected Olimpija to turn up, UK comedian Maisie Adam shouted them out on her podcast after a recent visit to Stozice after buying their kit. I doubt her “Up the Ljubes” slogan will catch on beyond the dip, however…

Speaking of the Ljubes, it was, of course, the eternal derby this weekend so…

Match Analysis - Let’s start off there. A mention, firstly, of the fans given much of the run up to the game was about the potential that the game may be interrupted - it wasn’t. The main issues came from fans throwing flares at each other and a Maribor banner being taken and burned but nothing to write “won’t someone think of the children” about (save for the ones Maribor fans threw flares at).

It was a game of two halves with Olipija ascendant in the first and Maribor in the second. What we’re seeing in particular os that Olimpija are very effective down their left and Jost Urbancic, for a player I’ve never been too high on, is beginning to get to a point where I am. Defensively, he’s sill a little lacking but he’s offering plenty going forward and his goal to take the lead at the end of the first hald was excellent inversion play, picking the ball up on the left, running into the centre before laying it off and then simply staying central to provide an overload at the back post for Mitrovski’s cross.

That said, the goal was controversial enough to the point that the NZS have published the VAR discussions about why it wasn’t called offside…

Anyway, the issues of both are reasonably similar - there’s not a lot of goals there and much of the key battles were down the flanks and on providing delivery which, as the game progressed, Maribor improved on with good work from Bumbic. Maribor’s equaliser came from perhaps the one central move Maribor worked all game - a ball slid through to Luka Zahovic by youngster Nejc Viher and him running into space pulled away by the run of Mlakar for a simple finish. Each side had periods on top, each side were able to impress down their own left flank, neither side created enough to win and both can argue themselves a bit of a moral victory.

But both are also clearly well away from Celje as things stand. Maribor improved for having Luka Zahovic in the pitch playing as a ten because they look like they’ve gotten the bad version of Jan Mlakar - such a good finisher when he’s on his game, but replaceable by a mannequin when he isn’t. Olimpija don’t seem to really have a main striker and, while that worked reasonably well as both Kojic and Cuni want to drift left and combine with runners from deep, it leaves Mitrovski on his lonesome on the right and he isn’t really athletic enough to help out his full-back, so you end up with a rather imbalanced side and, at this point, I wonder if Mitrovski isn’t better off just calling his agent and asking for a move as he seems a very awkward fit. Bluntly, you can see why Olimpija have only scored 2 goals in 5 games so far and they’ll hope today’s signing of Yayah Kallon can help with that. In positives, Urbancic is probably showing enough to keep his place in the national team and maybe even start ahead of the now 33yo Erik Janza. Olimpija, after five games, sit bottom. Maribor are top.

Celje prepped for their playoff with a straightforward win over Nafta, with Yaya Dukuly taking most of the plaudits.

For the second time this season, Koper had a game with major interruptions due to a blackout and that’s not the only issue - the pitch isn’t coping with the amount of use/heat to the point they may have to host some games elsewhere to allow it to recover. Presumably, they’ll also get the wiring of the place checked given the game started late due to a power outage and then had a ten minute break in the second half after another one. It was 0-0 vs Bravo at the end.

Aluminij were the last winless club in the league - until this weekend! A Bede Osuji first half hat trick did the job for them as well as some iffy goalkeeping on the opener. Also notable was Andrej Pogacar getting one of my favorite types of red card - one where the foul isn’t THAT bad but it’s so cynical, it’s upgraded. Brinje were swept aside by Mura with the frontline combo of Simun Butic and Niko Kasalo being particularly impressive - Kasalo got one goal but could easily have had a couple more. Mura were doubly celebrating as they’ve received new investment from Hawaiian-based Bosnian financier Nash Subotic

Croatia

Sport is, of course, not the major story in Croatia at the moment. The mass evacuations around Omis, south of Split, due to wildfires (likely caused by negligence, but some by arson) exacerbated by the extreme weather caused by climate breakdown has dominated the headlines, with other fires breaking out around the country, notably near Zadar.

Hajduk finished the job in the Confrerence League against Zalgiris with a 4-0 win at Poljud with the main takeaway being that Andelo Sutalo is rapidly becoming a very, very good player. They face Rakow in the Playoff, who have to play with a partial stand closure due to fan issues.

Rijeka progressed past Ilves after a 1-1 draw in Finland which sends them to a playoff tie against Midtjylland, who defeated Dinamo 2-0 in the Europa League League Phase last season.

Winger Gabriel Vidovic is departing Dinamo for Paderborn - Vidovic was fine during his time at the club having joined permanently last season but was never direct enough to really be effective at Maksimir.

Dinamo-Rudes opened up the weekend and was the predictable outclassing of the promoted side. The highlight of the game was, of course, Dion Drena Beljo’s incredible bicycle kick that opened the scoring in the sixth minute.

Osijek are three from three after a last gasp winner to beat Lokomotiva 1-0. The game ended with Marko Pajac getting sent off for Lokomotiva after throwing an elbow though Osijek were much the better side throughout with Lokomotiva not really looking like scoring at all.

Both Istra and Slaven entered the weekend winless but Istra came out of it with one of them after a 3-0 home win. Slaven were a man down in under three minutes after 17yo Filip Kutlesa, making his fourth senior appearance, got a straight red for DOGSO after clipping Nik Skafar Zuzic. Istra dominated and could have had more with a bit more ruthlessness.

Varazdin’s sparkling start continued with a 2-0 win over Rijeka with Ivan Mamut scoring both goals early. There was no Toni Fruk in the starting line up for Rijeka once more as his future continues to seem like it’s away from the club.

The weekend was rounded off with Hajduk beating Gorica 2-1 away. Gorica, like Slaven and Rudes are on zero points after three games but it was a late show from Livaja that denied them a draw here and they look the least hopeless of the pointless so far.

Share

Bosnia

Renato Gojkovic, the Sarajevo CB, has seen his season end already - he missed much of 2025 due to a right knee cruciate injury and, from the opening game of the season, has had the same happen in his left knee.

Matej Sakota is next on the outs from Zrinjski - he’s on his way to Qatar, albeit much of the fee ends up with his former club Slaven Belupo.

Borac didn’t play this weekend after their game was postponed to allow them time to recover from their European exploits - they required penalties to get past Vitebsk with the headlines taken by 16yo Matej Deket who came off the bench to score Borac’s goal in extra time then slot away a penalty to help them progress. He’s been a fixture of the side since the spring. It’s Vikingur Rekjavik up next in the playoff of the Conference League.

Celik-Siroki Brijeg was the Friday game and fans of the rules will have been delighted to see the first goal I’ve noticed from the substitute delay rule where, if you take too long to get off the pitch, the entry of the new player is delayed to the next stoppage of play as long as that is at least a minute after the referee’s call. That next stoppage? Celik scoring against the shorthanded visitors, albeit the away team would take the win after a stunning half volley from David Fernandez.

Zeljeznicar-Sarajevo didn’t happen courtesy of, as previously mentioned, an evening of 90s dance music, but the youth side derby did happen and brought a bit of fire with it after two red cards were issued following a robust challenge and ensuing handbags. Also not playing this weekend were Borac whose game was cancelled to allow them to prep for Vikingur - the Republika Srpska government are covering the cost of their flights to Iceland.

Matches that did happen were BSK 2 Velez 0, albeit it was 1-1 on the red card count (1) while Zrinski thrashed Radnik 5-1

Serbia

Albert Riera is the new manager of Crvena Zvezda. He’s signed a deal to June 2028. Shall we…?

Hire Analysis - I have no doubt that Riera is a good manager. What he achieved at Celje is undeniable and, for a club in Zvezda who define themselves on the basis of how they do in Europe, his European calibre in getting Celje to go deep in the Conference League is undoubtedly attractive. Great though that is, it has to be placed alongside that Riera is an extremely spiky customer and that he has taken two leaps to the west of Europe with Bordeaux and Eintracht respectively and they have both been punishing failures.

On leaving Eintracht, his goodbye message included the phrase “I go in peace but sad knowing that you just used 20% of the power of Albert” which pretty much sums up how his brain works. Eintracht fans will tell you he’s insane and I don’t really believe that but what I do believe is that, when the going gets tough, he is extremely easy to get going. His jumps to Bordeaux and Eintracht were to clubs with deeper issues than needed solving solely by head coach changes and bringing in someone who is extremely dogmatic into a bit of a damaged dressing room can be problematic. At Celje, his reputation preceded him enough that that didn’t matter - at Zvezda, it’s debateable. Things like subbing a keeper at half time for not listening because they weren’t playing the ball short is something you can do in Slovenia but, in Belgrade, the sheer volume and intensity of coverage makes certain decisions not transferable. I’ve seen some wild Eternal derby build-ups, at the level of pressure that isn’t replicated in Slovenia and isn’t even replicated in Germany - how Riera deals with that is a real unknown at this point and I, personally, have my doubts that he will always deal with that in the most productive manner. As I’ve said in the past, I always felt he came back a different manager after Bordeaux - less self-owning of failures, more likely to lash out at opponents, more likely to be overly defensive of his team. How he then manages a side in Zvezda which already has big personalities, which already has older players who can’t necessarily do what he’ll ask of them and with a difficult Europa League playoff tie vs Plzen as his opener is a bit of an unknown. I suspect we’ll see quite a hard and fast switch of generations. Whatever happens, my key descriptor of Riera is box office. Whether it’s an Odyssey or he gets trapped in a Madame Web of his own creation, it’ll be one to have a ticket for.

Nikola Cumic has joined Partizan with a fee only payable if he plays a set number of games. Given he hasn’t played for a while, he’s unlikely to be close to fitness soon. They’ve also loaned in Igor Miladinovic. They finished the job vs Tobol in Kazakhstan and it’s Getafe in the playoffs for the Conference League.

That European success was, however, Partizan’s only good news on the pitch this week after a home loss to Radnicki Kragujevac in spite of the visitors being down to ten for 60 minutes after Hassan Hilu was sent off for a rough body check. This was the first time Radnicki Kragujevac had defeated Partizan in over fifty years - Uros Sremcevic was the winning goalscorer. Partizan’s game between the legs vs Getafe won’t be postponed - they’d like it to be but because of outstanding punishments against fans, they have to play Mladost without fans as the alternative would be playing Crvena Zvezda without fans.

Zeleznicar had sold Sylvester Jasper and replaced him with former Crvena Zvezda starlet Luka Adzic. Adzic, who has played in South East Asia for the past two seasons, was highly rated before injury spoiled his growth after moving to Belgium.

Radnik-Macva finished 2-1 to the home team albeit it seems like it was a game with the instruction “don’t shoot from inside the box” while Cukaricki defeated OFK 2-0 in the other Saturday game. Mladost beat Zemun 1-0 thanks to an excellent Vasil Tasovski goal while IMT-Radnicki Nis was a 0-0.

Share

Montenegro

Sutjeska’s season just goes from bad to worse to “Oh my god, the horrors!!” after getting hammered 4-1 at home by Otrant. That means Sutjeska remain pointless after three games but, including Europe, on a seven game losing streak. Otrant scored from all of their shots on target. On the back of that, Sutjeska, which is owned and run by the local government, will be replacing the entire board of directors.

Arsenal-Buducnost was a 0-0 which means Arsenal, after three games, are on three points with zero scored or conceded which isn’t something you see every season. Mornar beat Mladost 3-2 while Petrovac beat Jezero 3-0.

Kosovo

Drita finished the job vs Tre Fiori with ease to reach the Conference League playoff. They go from microstate to microstate to face Andorra’s Inter, who certainly appear to be the best side Andorra have sent in many a season.

The league season began this weekend, opening with Gjilani defeating Feronikeli 3-1 (2), Drenica going 0-0 with Dukagjini and Vushtrria losing 6-1 at home to Malisheva (albeit that one was a legitimate goal of the season contender). Having just mentioned the ultimate in goal-shy Arsenal, Kosovo went goal crazy on Sunday - Drita defeated Llapi 5-3 while Prishtina-Ballkani brought a 4-2 win to the capital club. Just the casual five goals per game.

North Macedonia

Europe is done for the season after Shkendija’s 0-0 draw vs Hibs in their second leg saw them out 2-1 on aggregate. Shkendija could, at least, console themselves with a 4-1 win vs Bregalnica in spite of a rotated and injury hit side with 17yo CB Anes Abdurrahmani debuting such was their depth issues. They’re the only side with a perfect record so far.

1 - This is apropos of nothing but, whether this is an ArenaSport or a NFSBiH decision, each highlights package comes with players striking an animated pose, similar to what they did at the World Cup only with more autonomy and less aura. Anyway, I’ll leave my opinion on this to Said Duranovic…

2 - If you’re wanting to follow the league, well, things are hosted on the Klan Kosova youtube which is notable purely because it’s a TV channel rather than a league specific one so you will get recommendations of the football and also a lot of random Kosovan TV.

Subscribe now

A lot has gone on so this is a special edition to try to keep track of the madness that has been the last 48 hours.

Share

Slovenia

Just missing the last newsletter was a tranche of revelations about potential fraud at Olimpija. A couple of media reports had come out previously about potential money going missing and the club reacted by sacking financial director Tina Tkalec with club owner Adam Delius stating she “fraudulently withdrew large sums of money from Olimpija”. Delius did not go deeper into the amount potentially lost and Tkalec vehemently denies the allegations - she’d been at the club since 2019. Delius reacted to her denial by stating that she had confessed to the allegations privately

Olimpija’s PR team was, however, in overdrive. They then indicated they were going to sue local news outlet SportKlub over what they claim is fake news about the club. They then issued a statement around why Matevz Vidovsek had to play in a training kit vs Celje (they forgot to bring GK kit and not because Puma didn’t send kit because they hadn’t been paid). And then Adam Delius had a go at the fans having a go at him. They did, at least, make over a million euros selling Admir Bristric to Leicester City (1).

As mentioned last time, there is the potential that the Olimpija ultras disrupt this weekend’s derby against Maribor - some Maribor fans are already claiming they’ll chicken out of doing just that. Olimpija, meanwhile are trumpeting that they are “respected by the biggest clubs” based on who they’re selling to.

One of those clubs is in the third tier and another one is probably the cause of me publishing this midweek to keep up!

That keeps Celje off the top of this section after their late show vs Ararat to reach the Playoffs of the Champions League - they’ll face Slovan Bratislava there, who defeated them 6-1 on aggregate in 2QR of the Champions League in 2024/25. Two goals in three minutes from Yaya Dukuly and Benjamin Verbic - both new signings and both subs here - sent Celje to at least the Europa League and, potentially, to becoming the first Slovenian side in the Champions League since Maribor in 2017/18. If the team do reach the League Phase, the team are arranging a group celebratory visual (eg shaving all their heads) and Vitor Campelos is in. Their weekend clash vs Nafta will continue as normal - as their match vs Slovan is on Wednesday, they don’t feel the need to take the weekend off.

To add a another Slovenian wrinkle to that playoff tie - Slovan Bratislava’s captain? Long time Slovenian international forward Andraz Sporar, albeit he’ll likely miss the tie injured.

Mura have brought in a new keeper - Adnan Golubovic was last at Ballkani but counts Koper, Domzale and others amongst his Slovenian jaunts.

Subscribe now

Croatia

Not mentioned last week was the Mladen Ramljak tournament which is one of the biggest youth football galas in the region. Dinamo lost the final to Ajax but of more import is that Paco Horvat and Ivan Juricic of their squad both suffered ACL injuries - neither are first teamers but both had featured with the first team squad and Horvat, in particular, wasn’t too far from breaking through more regularly.

Jakov Pranjic has joined Gorica on loan from Celje - the attacking midfielder hadnt featured prominently since joining from Zrinjski in the winter.

Dinamo are, unsurprisingly, through to their Playoff tie in the Champions League against Viking after winning the away leg in Kaunas in spite of being down to ten. Missing that first leg through suspension will be keeper Ivan Filipovic after he was given a very obvious straight red but the real highlight of the game was Josip Misic, not a regular scorer, cracking a stunner into the top corner.

Niko Sigur is linked (again) to Celtic which isn’t really that notable save for the fact that SN’s article on it appears to think that Brendan Rodgers is still Celtic boss.

Bosnia

Okay, this one might need a little background… As noted last time, FK Sarajevo can’t play at home at the moment due to damage to their pitch caused by three successive nights of concerts. They were meant to play Zeljeznicar over the weekend except the game was postponed four days on short notice to allow the pitch at Grbavica to recover from… hosting a concert. Yes, two days before the game was originally scheduled, Grbavica is hosting a gig by The Prodigy, who presumably will be the Firestarters rather than the Zeljo fans. Sarajevo aren’t happy and feel procedure wasn’t followed.

It’s not just Zeljeznicar leeting players go for free - Stefan Ristovski has left Sarajevo after a mutual termination of his deal. Adem Ljajic is also likely to depart to return to his hometown club of Novi Pazar.

Zrinjski are also cutting their cloth - Marijan Cavar, Adi Nalic, Antonio Dakovic, Toni Maijc and Toma Palic have all been told to go and find new clubs.

Serbia

Where to start with Crvena Zvezda… Well, on Dejan Stankovic’s fourth go at trying to get Zvezda to the Champions League, he flopped and big time. Hapoel Beer’Sheva won 2-0 at the Marakana, sending the side out 3-0 on aggregate and Stankovic lost his head and his job. Osman Bukari had a big chance to equalise the tie just after half time but skied it and, from there, everything fell apart. Fans turned on players with the Marakana being a chorus of whistles and barracking but the key incident saw Abu-Fani go down at the edge of the box in the 55th minute under pressure - Dejan Stankovic demanded a penalty, didn’t get it, argued with the referee, got booked, kept on arguing, got sent off then spat at the referee and sarcastically clapped the Delije walking off. Shortly after Igor Zlatanovic put the Israeli side 1-0 up on the night after some frankly pitiful defending and the fans began to walk.

It would end 2-0 on the night because, again, terrible defending. In a game Zvezda needed to win, they didn’t get a shot on target until the 85th minute and ended with ten after Abu-Fani was sent off for, well, being a right Abu-Fani and kicking a player on the ground. When the players went to the fans at the end of the game, they were told to turn around and get down the tunnel such was their unhappiness. For Stankovic, he waited till the team was in the dressing room, said goodbye then walked out of the club. There was no post-match press conference, given there was seemingly no-one there to do it.

Also irritating the Delije after the game was the Hapoel staff member who decided to parade in front of them with the Israeli flag. They got bottles thrown at them though Serbia is actually one of Israel’s more steadfast allies (2).

Zvezda have apparently already spoken to two potential replacements of three they are looking at - we can safely assume two of those names are Albert Riera and Vladan Milojevic, with the latter being the fans’ pick and the former being someone who would be absolute box-office in the run up to an eternal derby. Someone has to be in place before Friday to meet UEFA guidelines ahead of the Europa League tie vs Plzen next week.

Share

Jay Enem, who started last night, will likely be the first out the door to recoup the lost income - an 8 million euro fee has been quoted from Russia as already in for him.

Ognjen Ugresic misses the second leg vs Tobol for Partizan due to a minor injury and part of that injury is trying to sell him - Panathanaikos are the latest club linked.

Erhan Masovic, sometime Serbia international, has joined Vojvodina - he was on a free after leaving Bochum at the end of last season. Added to Vosa’s go big or go home season is that they expect to lose Lazar Randelovic but replace him with Veljko Birmancevic, which would be one hell of an upgrade.

Montenegro

After their poor start to the season, Sutjeska sacked Milorad Pekovic - Miodrag Dzudovic, formerly of Jezero, is likely to take over.

1 - I know some readers will be of the sort for whom this is a bit of an intro into football in the region. Every now and again, Olimpija just have a season where they defy any sort of logic about things going on at the club and it looks like this is one of them. This sort of thing doesn’t come up when Olimpija are winning but it’s also fair to say that the concurrence of nonsense also doesn’t happen at any other club either. It’s why Olimpija are Olimpija and why you can’t help, as a neutral, but love them a little bit as no club seems as committed to random bouts of weird self-destruction as they are.

2 - Distinctly not a fun fact - Israel’s stated position is that Srebrenica was not an act of genocide, in case you were wondering just how much they align with Serbia politically.

Share

Slovenia

Celje lost 2-1 in Armenia vs Ararat in their Champions League first leg - they took the lead through a Svit Seslar penalty and hit the post before Serobyan cracked in a world class free kick.

Vinicius is on the move! No, not that one, but another one - Artur Vinicius who has joined Olimpija from Fluminense. He’s an 18 year old left back.

Celje picked up their first win of the season as a heavily rotated side beat Olimpija 1-0 at Z’dezele - 17 year old debutant Tilen Letonja with the goal after a defensive mix-up presented him with an open goal. Olimpija’s next game is the eternal derby and there are rumours that ultras will disrupt this - in recent years, there have been a lot of disruptions (from both Olimpija and Maribor fans) and the discontented Green Dragons may look to add another chapter.

Maribor go into that game top, after an easy 2-0 win over injury hit Koper. Ljudski vrt was empty but fans were gathered outside creating their own atmosphere while the current stadium ban carries on. Isaac Tshipamba scored the pick of the goals. Nafta and Aluminij drew 1-1 (Aluminij’s striking woes continuing but Petar Petrisko scored a peach) as did Bravo and Brinje. Mura and Radomlje is a Monday evening game so missing this one.

Croatia

Dinamo thrashed Kauno Zalgiris 5-0 in their Champions League 3QR first leg at Maksimir. There’s not a great deal to add save for the words “Job done”.

They’ve finally also brought in Noah Nsoki from PSG. Nsoki has been linked with Dinamo for much of the summer but talks had dragged on for some time over fees. He’s a left sided attacking midfielder who has been captain through PSGs youth academy but will be joining up with the B team. This slightly complicates matters in terms of Dinamo’s European registration as they are currently limited on spots due to lacking the volume of club-grown players - likely this can be sorted with a couple of transfers, particularly of goalkeepers but they are running with an A-list three spots lower than it should be. Raul Torrente has left today to Le Mans - a fine defender on his day but missed last season with a serious injury.

Rijeka have signed goalkeeper Igor Vekic from Vejle. Matjaz Kek has worked with Vekic before as he’s the long term reserve keeper for the Slovenian national side - he came through the youth system at Bravo.

For Rijeka, it’s three European games and three 1-0 wins - this time winning at home in their first leg against Ilves, they of the strung out lynx badge. It’s almost certainly Midtjylland waiting in the playoff.

Subscribe now

Staying in the Conference League and Hajduk can consider it job almost done away to Zalgiris. A 5-2 away win puts them on the brink of the playoffs - their potential opponents Rakow and Hammarby drew 0-0. Adrion Pajaziti scored the pick of the goals.

Croatia have joined the cohort of UEFA nations to pull their support for Gianni Infantino.

Zlatko Dalic’s next job after Croatia is the UAE national side. He had been offered a contract pre-Wordl Cup but has taken the job fully only after a bit of post-World Cup R and R. His contact is $5m a year until 2030. Igor Biscan joins him taking over the youth side.

Noa Skoko will spend the season on loan at Rudes from Hajduk - the midfielder appeared in the away leg vs Zilina.

In domestic action, Dinamo-Rijeka didn’t happen due to postponement for European commitments. As such, the weekend started with Rudes-Osijek and if you were wondering how big a gap there was between Rudes and this level, getting battered 6-1 confirmed it. Nail Omerovic came out of it with a hat-trick as Rudes consistently could not deal with Osijek in midfield. Or in attack. Or anywhere on the pitch, really. The other Saturday game was Lokomotiva 3 Gorica 1 - Gorica were arguably the better side but tended to pick the wrong final ball. Your Sunday games saw Varazdin hammer Slaven Belupo 4-1 (in four games this term, Ivan Canjuga has 5 G+A) and…

Match Analysis - …Hajduk host Istra. An awkward assignment on paper between legs for Hajduk against an Istra side who were an immense amount of fun vs Lokomotiva. Hajduk took the lead after 15 minutes as a corner from Hrgovic met a thumping header from Pukstas and set pieces were a fruitful outlet for Hajduk with options from corners to go inswinging, outswinging and short.

But no set piece could be as effective as Emil Frederiksen’s magnificent free kick to equalise just before half time. In truth, I think a lot of the responsibility lies with the wall on this one as both Pukstas and Sego turned to their side, made themselves small and the free kick threaded the needle between their groins.

It was the shot of confidence Istra needed. A big feature vs Lokomotiva was their long shooting and they opened the second half with Saranic cracking the bar - from there on, Hajduk were uncomfortable throughout. Istra likely should have had a penalty on the hour after Silic dropped a routine catch under little pressure and took out a player trying to smother it. Franko Kolic at the other end had to react well to keep Hajduk out before Marko Livaja put them in the lead after a rebound landed at his feet. But there was enough time for more drama.

Istra should have had a penalty after van Hoorenbeeck cleared out Jaganjac on a cross, given the defender led with his elbow. But Istra would get a point through Ahmeti on almost the last kick of the game, linking well with Jaganjac to fashion a chance he couldn’t miss. It ended a contradictory game - Istra could and should think they were very harshly done by by the officials to the point you can argue they should have won the game. Hajduk were the better side and created enough but without ever looking comfortable.

Hajduk’s title race is written off already but it’s hard not to think that the real story will come at the end of the month if Hajduk can get in the Conference League League Phase as this draw will take far less prominence. Varazdin’s smashing of Slaven Belupo shows that Hajduk’s opening day loss isn’t all that bad. Their set pieces worked early but Istra kept Hajduk honest and reinforced that they’re an exciting proposition this term - if not in results, certainly in entertainment value.

Bosnia

Borac take a slender 1-0 lead to neutral ground Hungary against Belarus’ Vitebsk after their Conference League first leg in spite of Vitebsk being down to ten for an hour.

Zeljeznicar’s issues continued this week. Enes Alic, the club’s left back and best player of last season, has sort of left. Alic has joined St Johnstone in Scotland but there’s a lot of but to cover. Alic had a contract with the club to 2027 and joined up with the club for pre-season up to mid-July - when the club left for a training camp in Croatia, he refused to go and requested termination of contract. Zeljeznicar demanded he turn up again and he didn’t then gave him a final warning on July 30 at which point he turned up, then walked out on media commitments. Last Monday, he sent a note of unilateral termination of his contract stating non-fulfilment of contractual obligations (presumably, paying him).

As far as Zeljo are concerned - Alic is under contract and he needs to arrange a termination of contract which reflects that the club are losing out on a comparatively valuable asset. As far as Alic is concerned, the club made a blanket offer to players to leave, he asked to go and they reneged hence he’s gone to the lawyers.

Ahead of their opening league game vs BSK Banja Luka, it was then revealed that none of the eleven players they signed this summer are actually able to play for the club due to not being registered as they hadn’t paid taxes in time for the process to be sorted. In short, the club are in a mess. In spite of all that, Zeljo stuttered to a 2-1 home win to open the season after an equaliser on the last kick of the game was written off for offside. If you want more on Zeljo, you can check the article I posted over the weekend for the background.

It’s not great elsewhere in Sarajevo either - FK Sarajevo can’t play at home due to pitch issues caused by a set of concerts hosted at the stadium over the summer. They had to host their opener in Mostar, a sterile 0-0 draw vs Radnik in which Sarajevo were poor for the whole first half. Also 0-0 was Siroki Brijeg-Sloga

Dinamo aren’t the only club signing from PSG - Benjamin Zulovic has joined Velez out of their youth system. He’s a centre back for the nation at U19 level.

Borac have added Anderson Esiti, formerly of Fradi, ZTE and others to their midfield.

VAR had a big part to play in Borac-Velez.From this image, the VAR credited Borac’s Dani Romera as onside - ArenaSport’s refereeing consultant on the broadcast stated it was offside and the VAR image does appear to have Romera’s toe clearly beyond the line drawn on by the officials.

But that wasn’t the big story coming out of the game. Early in the second half, the match was suspended for over thirty minutes due to offensive chanting from sections of the Borac support. Fans were warned in the 59th minute that chanting in support of Ratko Mladic needed to stop and then, under a minute later, the match was stopped. Fans were cleared from the north stand, chanting racist slogans against the refereeing team while doing so and the match eventually resumed, ending 3-1 to Borac. Zrinjski closed the weekend, defeating promoted Celik 2-1.

Serbia

Hapoel Beer’Sheva may not have any home advantage in their tie but they have a 1-0 lead to take to the second leg of the Champions League tie vs Crvena Zvezda in spite of playing much of the game with ten men. Dejan Stankovic is, perhaps unsurprisingly, under a good deal of pressure to turn things around in the second leg, especially given their potential Europa League tie if they lost is against a very decent Plzen side.

Partizan do have something to hold onto in Kazakhstan after a 3-0 win in Belgrade over Tobol in what was a one sided contest and blessed relief from their league campaign so far.

Another week, another debt for Partizan to pay off - this time to the agent of Goh Jung-Jun. The club revealed that almost all of the fee for Vanja Dragojevic has gone on various bits of debt reduction. They also received a fine and further partial stadium closure from UEFA after issues at the UNA Strassen game - the fine more or less takes up the entire gate receipts from the game.

OFK have sold Aleksa Cvetkovic to the MLS - he’s joined Vancouver Whitecaps for around €1.5m.

Douglas Owusu joined Zvezda in January and has already been flipped - moving to Israel and Hapoel Tel-Aviv.

Match Analysis - Radnicki Kragujevac got off the mark with a 3-0 win over Zemun. Feda Dudic had complained a little about his club’s lukc and that they should have already been off the mark and they were up early, breaking though on 12 minutes after turning over possession in their own third and breaking, with Mohamed Cisse running an overlap down their right. Radnicki Kragujevac’s physicality was a consistent issue and Cisse could have scored a second on the half hour when he shot instead of cutting back but they broke again just before the half with Cisse advancing up the middle, ignoring the overlapping run and putting a daisy-cutter in the bottom corner (that arguably should have been saved - it was right in the corner but the keeper was a little slow to get down). Uros Scremcevic added the cherry on top in the 73rd minute being in the right place at the right time to get a rebound from the post.

Godswill Vadze had Zemun’s best chance of the game shortly after but it was smartly saved by Luka Lijeskic. Obviously, things are a little odd in Kragujevac at the minute - they are playing behind closed doors for six games due to the incident at the end of last season that saw players fighting fans (this was the first of those six) and the pitch is dire.

Dudic had rightly pointed out his side had been unlucky - the previous two games had seen their opponents goalkeeper in the league’s team of the week - and 3-0 was likely deserved. Cisse’s double was the headline of the match but I suspect there’s a little bit of luck there purely from the perspective that they could have scored a second earlier had his head been up a bit more and, for his second, he chose a low xG chance over an easy pass to slide in his overlapping full-back who would have been in a much better position.

In spite of being down to ten men, Crvena Zvezda got back on track a bit with a 2-0 win over Novi Pazar. They were much changed from midweek and much better for it. That game at the Marakana was sullied by the home fans producing a tifo honouring the war criminal Ratko Mladic - Novi Pazar is, of course, the ethnically Muslim area of Serbia.

Most games came on the Sunday - Macva handed IMT their first loss of the season 1-0, Vojvodina beat Radnik 2-1, Mladost came from 2-0 down in the 83rd minute to draw against Cukaricki (that’s four draws from four for Mladost) while OFK also came from 2 down to draw with Zeleznicar.

Share

Montenegro

Being played when last week’s edition went out, Buducnost won the first eternal derby of the season beating Sutjeska 1-0 (1).

The league’s TV rights are a problem. Like many leagues, the rights are sold to an intermediary who then sell them on to broadcasters, for which the league gets very little for. This time around, said intermediary went to Arena Sport to offer them two games a week, which Arena Sport accepted. They then went to the state broadcaster RTCG to offer them the same deal for a similar fee. RTCG said no. They then went back to RTCG to offer them two games again including first pick of the games each weekend and RTCG said “Only if you give them to us for free”. So, anyway, Arena Sport (or the 1CFL streaming service) is the only way to watch the league on TV in Montenegro this season.

Mark Djokaj was the star as Decic managed a 2-0 away win vs Buducnost. The 17 year old winger scored both goals, with the second a stunner, to truly announce himself on the wider stage.

Bokelj beat Sutjeska 1-0 to have the only 100% record in the league after two games while Jezero beat Mladost and Otrant and Petrovac played a 0-0. At the moment, the entire league is averaging under a goal a game.

Kosovo

Drita have parted company with their head coach, Zekerija Ramadani - Ramadani had been at the club for two and a half years.

Unsurprisingly, interimly under Visar Sermaxhaj, they battered San Marino’s Tre Fiori in the Conference League though it took time to make the breakthrough after Tre Fiori took a shock lead through Matteo Prandelli. Raddy Ovuoka, who was sparkling from the bench against Floriana, was on form again. Ardian Nuhiu has since taken over permanently, his second spell at the club.

Gentri Hetemaj has joined Llapi - the defender is a U21 international and has come through academies in Germany.

Tangentially Kosovan news - Mirlind Daku (from Kosovo, plays for Albania) has moved to Spartak Moscow. The ultras welcomed him to the club with a chorus of anti-Kosovan chants, with flags stating Kosovo is Serbia. Daku is from Perlepnica, which was forcibly evacuated and then burned by Yugoslav forces during the Kosovan War, when Daku was one year old. Perlepnica is also the birthplace of Prince Lazar which, if you know your Serbian history, is the guy who holds a lot of responsibility for the whole “Kosovo is Serbia” thing.

North Macedonia

Shkendija will need to overturn a 2-1 deficit in their second leg against Hibs next week. Hibs were much the better side and Shkendija will be satisfied to be in close contact after that ninety minutes.

There are two Shkendijas in the league this season - the Haracine one drew 1-1 with Sileks on Friday to get their first point of the season in a VAR-tastic game. Tikves stuck five past Bashkimi with Bregalnica putting four past Arsimi.

Qendrim Ismajli has joined Struga - he joined from Teuta in Albania.

Share

1 - Just to note, getting highlight packages for the CFL is just not really a thing. It’s very annoying and even the independent person in Poland who dubs their own highlight package every now and then tends to do so simply by ripping footage from news bulletins.

In Zeljeznicar Sarajevo’s 105 year long history, many crises have happened in amidst their journey to being one of the biggest clubs in the region and, arguably, the biggest club in Bosnia. Before World War Two, they were out of favour with authorities for the political sin of being a workers club (1) that was, unlike other clubs in the city at the time, built along class rather than along ethnic or religious lines. There was the Planinic affair in the mid-60s that resulted in multiple bans for club officials and points deductions after the club’s complicity in match fixing. There is, of course, the war that saw their stadium, Grbavica, on the front lines and burned in part which saw the club homeless for years and the neighbourhood the stadium is named after a bullet-holed, burned out barbed wire jungle.

And yet the crisis they’re in now may be the most serious of all. As the Bosnian Premier League begins, FK Sarajevo are unable to play at Kosevo due to pitch trouble and Zeljeznicar begin a season unable to register players and in the sort of financial fuddle that could kill the club. Sarajevo may be the capital of the nation, but it feels like it can no longer claim to be the nation’s footballing capital.

Share

Mirvic’s Misery

Perhaps one of the unique elements of Zeljeznicar’s current predicament is that it’s genuinely hard to know where one can apportion blame. Generally, as to the south at Partizan, when a club finds themselves in a crisis that could be described as existential, it’s very easy to know where to point the fingers at. At Zeljeznicar, it defies that.

But it’s very difficult to start any illustration of the why of the matter without talking about Sanin Mirvic, the businessman whose departure from the club has sent things spiralling rapidly and erratically (2). Mirvic, who made his fortune at the American Farmer’s Network (he founded the premium beef merchant) first began his affair with the club in August 2025. A year earlier, the club had announced that they were looking to partner up with investors and tendered out to gain interest.

Mirvic’s talks with the club turned into something tangible over the winter with it having dragged on a bit awaiting for the club’s democratic processes to whirr into effect. At a general assembly meeting on Boxing Day, Sanin Mirvic was confirmed as the strategic partner of the club, that he would be able to have a majority vote on the club’s board and strategic bodies and things were brought in to improve governance.

Mirvic got things up and running relatively quickly - per a press release in February, the first six weeks included a full financial audit, clearing all debts to staff, clearing tax debts and arranged plans for investment that were awaiting approval. Two weeks later, he sacked the entire board of directors, some of whom he had appointed just after taking over the club.

Swiftly, it was clear all was not well and, as the 25/26 season closed, the reasons for all not being well became clear. The administrative changes made at the December assembly to make the club run better were swept out and the concept of Mirvic as the club’s strategic partner was in doubt due to the attitude of the government both local and national. Which poses the question - why?

In short, Zeljeznicar are registered as a citizens association, or Udruzenje Gradana, which isn’t necessarily that abnormal in Bosnia but that designation basically makes them a NGO, as far as we’d think of it in western terms. This makes them eligible for state funding and, going back a few years, they would get around £500k a year in state funding to reflect their importance to the economy. This is a pretty long run down of the state of play in 2023 that exposed discomfort at the concept of the state funding Zeljeznicar as udruzenje gradana when the club owed substantial tax debts but perhaps the key element to understand is this - it is illegal to privatise any company designated as udruzenje gradana (3) (4).

Those adminstrative changes were swept aside because they were seen as privatisation which led to a standoff between state and Sanin. Mirvic stopped investment until the changes were made and the state refused to allow the changes to be adopted. The state viewed the changes as ones that would have placed Mirvic’s investment as above the club assembly and that Mirvic needed to work within the limits of the bureaucracy, not above it. Mirvic attempted to get around it by being elected club president but that did not break the deadlock and, at the end of June, he departed Zeljeznicar.

Subscribe now

From President to Penury

On leaving the club, Mirvic told Klix “I reject the claims that I had no intention of investing my own funds in FK Željezničar. The truth is easily verifiable through documentation and confirmations of payments of my personal funds to the club, as well as payment of the club’s obligations directly by me. However, every invested fund, whether mine, bank or from a third party, represents an investment that must be returned at some point”.

This neatly encapsulates the stand-off. Mirvic had no intention of investing without the changes and the state appeared to have no intention of finding a middle path that focused on the club getting what it needed in money rather than on the minutiae of the how of the thing.

That’s not to say the state were wrong. In Zeljeznicar’s statement on Mirvic departing, they stated that the changes to the statutes the state rejected were entirely written by Mirvic, that people at the club had advised him that they needed amends to be compliant with the law and that advice was ignored. On finances, the club stated Mirvic had backed about £300k in loans but that there were - at the point Mirvic took over, no direct financial threats for the club. This was due to the sale of Abdulmalik Al-Jaber to Al-Nassr (£2m-ish) - the club state that money that should have gone to the agent did not and that debt began to rise also, including delays to salary for players at the club while at the same time, contracts were being signed to bring new staff into the club.

At the start of this week, the emergency committee now running the club laid the situation frankly. In the first six months of 2025, the club lost around £400k - an amount turned around due to the sale of Al-Jaber. In the first six months of 2026, they lost over £1.4m with income dropping and expenses leaping nearly 40%. They admitted that the state of finances as is means that discussions have involved the potential bankruptcy of the club. Their immediate focus is on rearranging debts to keep the club ticking over until 2027 and ensuring they could get a UEFA licence for 27/28 but in a situation where the money for this season has more or less all been spent.

Which takes us back to the point about it being hard to apportion blame. One can perhaps, at worst, claim naivety on the part of Sanin Mirvic’s part in thinking things would just go through, but one can hardly claim he’s naive for not throwing money at a club situation in which the state were refusing to permit changes Mirvic clearly thought were essential - albeit that didn’t prevent hiring for a future in which those changes were simply waved through. On the other hand, how realistic is it to expect large investment into a club, into a stadium, into something that’s potentially a large income and tourism driver for the city if the club’s statutes are such that they dissuade a return of investment or fail to provide appropriate governance? I doubt anyone could reasonably expect Sanin Mirvic to solely be making charitable donations.

As such, the stand-off becomes stagnation. After Mirvic left, the emergency committee offered players the opportunity to mutually terminate their contracts to reduce the spiralling expenses at the club. With left back Enes Alic, however, they rejected the request reasoning, presumably, that they would be able to make money on a player who was important to them and who had time left on his contract. Alic has since sort of left the club, unilaterally tearing up his contract this past week to pursue a move to Scotland with St Johnstone on the basis that the club hadn’t been paying him. As far as the club are concerned, he’s their player and he is now under disciplinary procedures for the club. Who’s in the wrong? Who knows? If finances are bad, the board obviously have to try to protect whatever saleable assets they have. If they haven’t been paying players, then the players surely have the right to ensure they are in a working environment that does the bare minimum and pays their salary. The only people likely to benefit any time soon from that situation are the lawyers.

None of the players Zeljo have signed this summer were able to play in their season opening win over BSK Banja Luka - their registration is held up due to alleged late payment of tax monies. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the club state that all relevant obligations are paid up but any long time viewer of football will tell you that it tends to be the case that the first obligations that tend to fall by the wayside are those of salary which, when the club are claiming they can’t afford to pay domestic players because they ask unreasonable salaries (5). This is the inevitable result of what happened with Mirvic - six lost months of wrangling that no club can afford meaning that the monetary buffer the club had has evaporated, meaning that the investment that the club needed has not just failed to appear but has led to loans that need paid back with interest and means that, fourteen seasons on from their last league win, Zeljeznicar seem set for a seventh successive season outside of the title race and outsitde of relevance.

So why should we care?

I don’t normally include this question in my writing but it’s usually one that is somewhere in my thought process be that as part of my own impostor syndrome or as part of a justification to get you to read this. If you’re an outsider, why would you care about a random club you have no affiliation for?

Well, Zeljo’s problems are indicative of a longer change in Bosnian football where this decade is one where the traditional powers of Bosnia in Sarajevo are an irrelevance. After a decade in the 2010s where the Sarajevo clubs appeared in the top three every season, no season has seen both in the top three since 2020. Borac and Zrinjski have locked the top two positions for all of the last four seasons. In a Bosnia where the nation itself is divided on a three way balance between Bosniak, Croat and Serb communities, it feels the latter two of those have been able to have their sporting symbols invested in and excelling on the national stage while the clubs that are Bosnia’s own institutions act on seemingly more stringent rules with a differing path to the future. It is, to the cynical eye, somewhat reflective of Bosnia itself - a nation that has almost gone back a hundred years where a cross-community citizens asset like Zeljeznicar takes a back seat to the single-community ethnicity based clubs who can get investment or in whom political and external interests are such that their success is needed.

Zeljeznicar are in danger. They, for their history, are one of the great clubs of the region. But that appears to matter little in modern football. Whatever it is that’s a blocker - be it the realism of an investor, the choices of the government or whether or not the corporate structures of sport as udruzenje gradana is actually fit for purpose in 2026, the reality is the same. As we see across the region, it’s the great clubs, those with the most storied histories of their nations - Zeljeznicar, Partizan, Olimpija, Vardar, Buducnost and more who have suffered plenty over the past few years - that are the ones struggling the most.

They are the ones who fade the slowest but whose fading leaves the biggest impact and, while Zeljeznicar may not go to the wall, the fact that they sit close to hitting it in the first place shows the structural problems Bosnian football faces if one of the few clubs domestically that produces elite talent (only they and Zrinjski of domestic clubs produced more than one national team player at the World Cup) is the one at most existential risk.

Share

1 - Zeljeznicar came out of the Railway Unions - similar to Lokomotiva in Zagreb.

2 - This bit doesn’t really impact things but it’s a curio nonetheless - Sanin’s brother, Ismir, owns FK Sarajevo. Ismir made out extremely well from COVID due to his background in selling PPE. In fact, if you bought a sports branded mask over COVID, it’s probably Ismir Mirvic’s company that made it. He took over across the city in the Summer of 2021 working alongside Vincent Tan, owner of Cardiff City but became sole owner of the Kosevo club earlier this year.

3 - Back to Ismir for a sec, one should note that, however you want to look at how Sarajevo are run, they’re a) technically the same and b) ownership have invested millions in the club and I think it’s fair to note that it’s likely the government look more kindly on things when there’s tangible things going on.

4 - Obligatory “not a lawyer” but the very basic reasoning behind it is that a citizens association has a stated aim (in Zeljeznicar’s case, being a sports club) and that, unlike in private companies, the assets and responsibilities are not to shareholders, etc, they are primarily used towards furthering the aims of the goals written in their statutes. These are literally the first thing in Zeljo’s statutes and I’ll paste those aims here: “Football Club “Željezničar” (hereinafter referred to as: the Club) is a voluntary, non-governmental, non-political and non-profit sports organization for football, founded on May 4, 1921 in Sarajevo, in which citizens and other members of the Club are united to achieve the goals of the Club, improve football on a professional basis, organize football, and harmonize personal and collective needs with social needs, in accordance with applicable legal regulations and this Statute.”

5 - “Many people do not know that the salaries demanded by players of average quality from the Balkan region on the BiH market regularly exceed the salaries of players of the same level of competition from Portugal, Belgium, Spain and even France.” Suffice it to say, I cast doubt upon this one.

Champions League

Dinamo/Kauno Zalgiris vs Viking - Awkward

Ararat/Celje vs Mjallby/Slovan Bratislava - Best draw they could have hoped for

Haopel Beer’Sheva/Crvena Zvezda vs Aarhus/Sabah - likely the same difficulty as 3QR

Europa League

If Celje lose, vs KuPS/U Craiova - Awkward but doable

If Zvezda lose, vs Plzen - Ouch. Likely the more difficult of the routes compared to the CL

If Dinamo lose, vs Hradec Kralove/Besiktas - As above. Ouch.

Conference League

Tre Fiori/Drita vs Flora Tallinn/Inter Club d’Escalades - Surely a second successive run into the League Phase incoming as both options are a green light

Loser of Thun/Vikingur vs Borac/Vitebsk - Presumably Vikingur, who have done well this term. Borac likely slight outsiders.

Zalgiris/Hajduk vs Rakow/Hammarby - the nicest of the options available and the sort of side you have to beat in a League Phase

IFK/Gent vs Hibs/Shkendija - Definitely outsiders

Bohs/Midtjylland vs Rijeka/Ilves - Similar to Hajduk, not a great draw but the best of what was available and one where Rijeka would have a chance

Getafe vs Partizan/Tobol - See below on this one!

Share

Slovenia

It took penalties to get Celje beyond Albanian champs Egnatia in the Champions League after a 2-2 draw on the night - Mario Kvesic got both of Celje’s goals, his first a brilliant 25 yard free kick. However, Egnatia were terrible at penalties, losing 4-1 in the shootout. Celje have a trip to Armenia in the next round, after Ararat KO’d Shamrock Rovers.

Koper, Aluminij and Bravo all saw their European seasons end in the second qualifying round. Bravo saw their first leg lead end with a 3-1 loss in North Macedonia as Shkendija advanced to face Hibs in the next round. Koper took a 2-0 lead from the away leg vs Runavik and ended up out on penalties after a long night at Bonifika - Josip Ilicic missed one of the penalties after a failed panenka. Aluminij’s creditable European campaign (given their minnow status) ended away in Albania with a 3-0 loss to Dinamo City.

Present at that game was Albert Riera, who is currently without a club. A third unconvincing performance on the bounce from Vitor Campelos’ side will not have done his long term job prospects a great deal of good. Riera also turned up to the Celje-Maribor game at the weekend sat in the box with the president of the club.

Always been a fan of managers retelling things that didn’t happen, so here’s Vitor Campelos with a new entry into the genre…

Actually returning to Celje for certain is Benjamin Verbic, who has signed a 4 year deal with the club. Verbic left the club in 2015 having come through the youth system there.

Having managed to get last week’s edition out a few hours earlier than normal, I immediately got ambushed by news as Olimpija sacked Miso Brecko after two games in charge. Intriguingly, as I’ve not seen it used as justification before, Olimpija stated that Brecko’s results in friendlies also counted against him.

Brecko also hit back: “I knew from day one that long-term cooperation with certain people in the club’s management probably wouldn’t be possible for long, they don’t seem to be interested in progress, neither in the youth academy nor in the club’s organization. I pointed out some things that weren’t good in the club and needed to be changed. Maybe someone didn’t like that, but it’s also true that there’s no presence of the management, neither in the media nor in the operational part of the club.”

Subscribe now

Jugoslav Trencovski is the man picked to replace Brecko. Trencovski had been linked earlier in the summer and acquitted himself extremely well at Radonmlje last season. He got off to a winning start against Aluminij, albeit Olimpija really went to great lengths to try to not win that game given how wasteful they were in front of goal.

Olimpija’s fans turned up to the game wearing clown masks with a none-too-complimentary banner directed at club owner Adam Delius…

Some tourists turned up also - almost buying season tickets because they thought the price of those was a more realistic value for attending a football game than the actual price of a ticket (8 euros)

After game week two ended with Radomlje reporting Koper to the police over a physical altercation between staff after the game, Koper did the same back at them. Reports indicate that Radomlje’s sporting director came out of it with bruised ribs and down one tooth.

In the other derby between Nafta and Mura, it was the promoted side who smashed their neighbours 5-2 in an extremely entertaining game. Nafta took Mura apart in the first 15 minutes of the second half going from 2-1 to 5-1 very quickly as Luka Pihler and Josip Zorica, neither of whom have played at this level before, really impressed throughout - combining for Nafta’s opener. Nafta, after three games, sit top, just like everyone expected.

Bravo bounced back from European elimination by defeating Radomlje. Brinje managed a point against Koper in spite of being down to ten men for 65 minutes and nine for 15!

Share

Croatia

Dinamo came back from the dead to knock Thun out of the Champions League qualifiers - from 2-0 down at Maksimir with 16 minutes to go to winning the tie in extra time, the night swiftly went from tragic to magic. The highlight, of course, being Moris Valincic’s winner - galloping 50 yards forward with the ball from right back and spanking it into the opposite corner was a special winner for a special night.

The following morning, though, saw Zvonimir Boban enter the dressing room to remind the squad as a whole of what standards are expected of Dinamo and that such a performance, as across both legs of this tie, can’t be replicated. That, presumably, landed well because Dinamo opened their league season with a 2-0 win over Slaven Belupo at Maksimir during which they hit the post three times. It was a double for Beljo as he picked up where he left off last season.

Varazdin’s European campaign ended with a loss away to Jablonec. The story of the tie being Varazdin need to defend set pieces MUCH better.

A second 1-0 win over Derry got Rijeka into the third qualifying round of the Conference League. Oh, and honestly, the less said about Hajduk the better. Albeit, entertainingly, UEFA did say they’re playing the wrong Lithuanian side during today’s Playoff Draw…

With both Dinamo and Rijeka in the third qualifying round, their game this upcoming weekend has been postponed.

Share

Injury news at Hajduk - Roko Brajkovic is out for the season due to an injury picked up in training prior to the second leg of their Europa League tie vs Pafos. He’s managed to tear his ACL, PCL and Meniscus all at once and that’s surgery and then at least a nine month recovery time. Unavailable more permanently are Filip Krovinovic and Hugo Guillamon who have both had their contracts terminated - Krovinovic is moving to Gremio in Brazil. Marin Soticek has joined Hajduk on loan from Basel, a deal likely accelerated by the need to add a winger with Brajkovic out.

Monsef Bakrar’s deal to Al Ahly is finally complete - Dinamo are getting around three million euros for him.

Lokomotiva would like to remind you that they are the club of trains. Cynicism aside, that’s a genuinely nice home strip with an original twist on the stripes.

Itsuki Urata, formerly of Maribor and Varazdin, has returned to Croatia from Uzbekistan, joining Slaven Belupo.

Istra-Lokomotiva was a very fun game that, most fun of all, really highlighted the fine young talent in the league. Nik Skafar Zuzic is one you can absolutely stick in your notebook and follow for a few games because he absolutely has a bright future with his assist and his wonderful disallowed goal (disallowed through no fault of his, I might add). Dusan Vukovic was one I challenged in my league preview to add a bit of ruthlessness and he did just that, helping Lokosi to a 3-2 win. For a forgotten prospect in Ivan Saranic, he went plenty of the way to reminding everyone also as he was a consistent threat.

Hajduk’s week didn’t get better - they were defeated 2-1 by Varazdin with Marko Livaja (who else) missing a last minute penalty after a defensive brainfart gifted Varazdin a winner. Hajduk, in general, were rotten at the back throughout.

You may already have seen that Hajduk fans set fire to their stand at Varazdin. Originally, the torcida were protesting the game due to high pricing, which Varazdin relented on, but they then set seats alight after the Livaja penalty miss.

Rijeka closed out the first weekend with a 2-1 win over a spirited, if clearly outmatched, Rudes.

Subscribe now

Bosnia

Borac are the last team standing in Europe albeit they were made to work for it in Moldova by Petrocub. Zrinjski were eliminated with a 2-2 draw at home to Iceland’s Valur - Zrinjski fans were unhappy and, as former manager Igor Stimac was at the game, called for Simon Rozman’s head to welcome Stimac back.

You know those scouting videos you get, made by some random with the best bits of a player backed by some thumping, thumping EDM? Well, for “some random” you can include FK Sarajevo who have done just that for midfielder Agon Elezi.

Bosnia has a Super Cup except, this season, it’s been postponed - it was meant to happen this weekend just gone but has been cancelled to allow at least Borac to focus on Europe - it’ll be played during the September international break instead. Bosnia love holding domestic games during international breaks,

Dejan Vidic has joined Celik - he returns to the league after a 24 day spell in Kazakhstan but scored only once in 1932 minutes last season at this level. They’ve also brought in Montenegrin midfielder, Oli Sarkic.

Ivan Kukavica has joined Borac - the young midfielder impressed at relegated Posusje last season.

Zeljeznicar have dipped into the “random Brazilian” market, bringing in Gabriel Cunha from Coimbra. Zeljo will be his tenth club at 22. Zeljo have also added Amar Ibrisimovic, a Bosnian U21 international who comes in from Schalke. They, however, were hammered 3-0 in their final pre-season frinedly vs lower league Sloboda Tuzla at Grbavica so a long season may be in store.

That situation became far worse over the weekend - as you may remember, the former head of the club left recently over political differences but the interim emergency committee running the club published a statement on what they’ve found which can be best summed up with the word “eeek!” In short - in the last few months, two million euros of debt has been piled on the club and most of the money for this season is already spent to the point that they were openly considering bankruptcy - that’s been staved off in the short term but they are looking to shed any and all expensive contracts ASAP. The players union have demanded that the FA investigate urgently and that, whatever the past, the basic principle that a club play players has to be upheld.

Edin Dzeko has chosen to carry on another season at Schalke, taking on the Bundesliga. Likely joining him at some point in the Bosnian set-up is defender Zinedin Smajlovic, who met up with Sergej Barbarez over the weekend.

Share

Serbia

Crvena Zvezda finished the job vs Larne with a 5-0 win at the Marakana to win 9-0 on aggregate.

Partizan are the only ones left in the Conference League - Braga put four past Zeleznicar and Ajax put another four past Vojvodina. Partizan only managed another one vs UNA Strassen but it’s enough to book their ticket to Kazakhstan against Tobol.

After their league game, I actually have good reason for once to state people at Partizan are unhappy after they lost 2-1 at home to IMT. Much of the blame will land on Alexs Zekovic who got a straight red after 14 minutes. Some at Partizan do feel the injury time winner by Leblanc should have been chalked off for a foul - file that as six of one, half a dozen of the other given the defence fell asleep to be dispossessed in the first place. That said, only two players starting were over 22 in a line-up with one eye on Tobol. With three wins from three, IMT top the Superliga.

Marko Savic, formertly of Cukaricki, is the new boss at Vojvodina. Miroslav Tanjga had been looking after the side for the past 18 months but the aim was always for him to move back upstairs once someone suitable was found and, now, they have been.

Partizan have been hit with a partial stadium closure by UEFA after being found guilty of fan issues during the home leg vs UNA Strassen. A combo of a blocked passage and inappropriate chanting means the capacity will be down 5,000 for the next game.

The last bit of Partizan news this week came today when the club’s leadership stated they wanted to enact extra responsibility and ownership over the side’s performance. Specifically, they said that if Partizan do NOT reach the League Phase of the Conference League, they will resign. An hour later, Partizan were drawn against Getafe, receiving the most difficult draw they could possibly have gotten. The leadership’s opponents immediately jumped on it and, very logically, noted that that’s not taking ownership of anything, that’s just giving yourself an out to run away when the expected happens.

Sylvester Jasper has finally seen his move from Zeleznicar confirmed - €1.5m plus bonuses is what it’s taken to sort out his move to Standard Liege.

Saturday saw a pair of clear wins in the Superliga - Cukaricki 3-0 over Radnicki Kragujevac which OFK travelled to Novi Pazar and picked up a 4-1 win. Radnicki Nis defeated Zemun 1-0 with a 95th minute goal after a huge defensive mix up.

Games are ongoing at time of publishing because Monday evening games play hell with deadlines. Crvena Zvezda haven’t played this weekend as their game was postponed for European commitments.

Share

Montenegro

1cfl.me is the new home of the league, with live streaming of all games. It is, however, €7 a month or €29 for the season and it’s a single camera set-up with AI in the background directing the camera on where to zoom to follow the action which, historically, is a set up that’s had issues. If you’re looking for highlights, honestly, that just isn’t a thing that is put out by anyone.

Buducnost are still messy, with their Sporting Director resigning after six weeks after the club’s ultras tried to sign a goalkeeper for the club without his permission. The original plan for this season was to bring through the very talented keeper Simon Sosic from the youth system into the side but that was made more difficult when random goalkeepers turn up to training unannounced and tell staff they’ve already been signed without them knowing it.

On the day the league started this weekend, this was one of the lead stories. Not a preview, not a big signing, not a sign of intent - no, it’s that Mornar have bought themselves a Dacia Jogger. James May will be delighted, I’m sure.

Ten games played, ten defeats and that’s all she wrote for Montenegro in Europe this season. Literally the only nation in Europe to earn a grand total of zero coefficient points after Sutjeska’s elimination to Vitebsk. Not only does that mean that Montegnegro remains the only non-microstate to never have a side in a European group phase, they’re also the first nation to ever lose every single game in the current set up including the Conference League.

The season opened with Bokelj beating Petrovac 1-0 - your opening goal of the season being a direct free kick from Dejan Perovic, albeit responsibility perhaps lies more with the keeper on this one…

Decic-Arsenal and Jezero-Mornar on Sunday both ended 0-0 while Mladost beat Otrant 2-1. Sutjeska-Buducnost is ongoing as this goes out.

Kosovo

Drita snuck past Floriana after extra time. Raddy Ovuoka was the difference maker for the Kosovan champs - coming on as a sub and being the catalyst for both of Drita’s goals. Drita have a rather easier assignment in the next round - San Marino’s Tre Fiori, who received a bye in the second qualifying round.

Dukagjini were always up against it vs Lugano but crumbled 5-1 in the away leg to depart the Conference League. Armand Dallku has also taken over as head coach for the season - this isn’t his first spell at the club.

Ballkani won the second leg vs Bohemians but exited Europe on penalties while Hibs did what they were expected to do in the first place vs Malisheva.

North Macedonia

Vardar are out of Europe - having lost their first leg 3-2 in Skopje, they dragged themselves back into the tie in Latvia with ten men vs Rigas, holding on to a lead in the tie until the 87th minute before crumbling to a 5–2 loss on the night in extra time. Vardar weren’t happy, perhaps rightly, at firstly the initial red card for DOGSO (when the ball was taken fairly cleanly) and then the scoring of Rigas’ third (from a quick throw in taken about 8 yards further forward that where it went out).

Over the past couple of seasons, Hibs’ European tours have begun to resemble guided tours of the former Yugoslavia. Partizan last season, Malisheva last week and now Shkendija, who got past Bravo in the second leg of their second qualifying round tie to set up a tie that I’ve seen many Hibs fans think is a reasonably easy one, but does that really bear out in reality?

Share

Shkendija in Europe

For one, one thing Hibs haven’t done lately is much in Europe. The last time Hibs were in the main stage of a European competition was 2005/06, losing 5-1 to Dnipro. The last time they won a main phase European tie was 1989/90 - Hibs were linked with a move from Easter Road to Meadowbank, Margaret Thatcher was PM, Steve Archibald was playing up front and it was only 12 months after “Sunshine on Leith” was released. There has, clearly, been little in the way of sunshine in Europe in the interim.

Last season, of course, marked Shkendija’s first main stage appearance, as they reached the KO playoff of the Conference League. On their way to that, they’d defeated the likes of FCSB and Slovan Bratislava with, save for Samsunspor in their European exit, no side during the league phase beating them by more than two - and only Rayo Vallecano managed that. It is a side who ended up starting in the Conference League this time around not as a reflection of their merits, necessarily, but as a reflection that trying to run the Conference League and the title tilt at this size of squad/finance is an extremely difficult thing. This is their twelfth successive European campaign since the takeover of the club from the Ecolog group.

On the managerial side, they are managed by former club legend Artim Pollozhani, who took over this season after spells at firstly Ballkani and then Flamurtari which likely means little to any Scots reading but the takeaway is that his apprenticeship before becoming a Head Coach was under Ilir Daja - Daja is arguably the best manager that had come through the wider Albanian region in the modern era, with multiple major honours. If you want to be learning under any head coach in the region, you want to be learning under him.

While, in terms of evolution from last season from a “what have they done with the money” perspective, it is primarily something being shown in infrastructure work at their ground than money being thrown at the squad, this is only a slightly noticeably weaker outfit than impressed last season. The key departures are Ronaldo Webster and Imran Fetai at the back and Adamu Alhassan, who was a regular option in the centre of midfield. Liridon Latifi also left from the wings while Reshat Ramadani (who is quality in the midfield) had his loan end, but partly down to serious injury.

Replacing them are the likes of utility player Bojan Dimoski, capped 21 times internationally for North Macedonia and capable across the backline and midfield, Jovan Manev, another international, this time a centre back. Marko Georgijevski up front flopped in Romania but his scoring at MFL level is absolutely fine. Almir Kyreziu is a direct Latifi replacement and has scored two in Europe already this term and Rafa, plucked from KF Tirana is your direct Alhassan replacement.

As such, it’s fair to describe Pollozhani as a manager choosing for evolution rather than revolution which is, perhaps, where Shkendija come a little unstuck.

Subscribe now

Shkendija’s flaws and strengths

If I was to use one word to describe Shkendija, it would be “Stodgy”. Yes, they dealt out their share of hammerings in the league last season but all too often, even against the weaker sides, things would be by the odd goal. As such, sticking to last season’s template could be problematic and while their summer business hasn’t been damaging, it came on the back of a winter window that was a little more damaging. It may not be the story of a side picked clean, but it is the story of a side who have seen players move on and seen finances demand their replacements are slightly less feted.

Hence why Shkendija are in this competition and not the Champions League as this policy of “like for like but a little worse” saw them fade on the run in and fail to maintain momentum in their failed attempt to chase down Vardar (already out of Europe entirely) at the top.

Hibs’ task in this tie is very different to that vs Malisheva. The Kosovan side showed in abundance in the first leg that if you left yourself open for the counter, they would counterpunch with ferocity. Shkendija aren’t that sort of side. What they are, however, is talented on the ball. As the description of the players in defence hopefully made clear, a lot of the defensive players they possess are ones which can multi-task in the midfield meaning that they can run from deep on inside and out and have multiple options to play direct balls either into the middle or down the flanks to let their three main attacking players in Kyreziu, Tamba and Fahd Ndzengue do their business because those three main attacking players are also Shkendija three most athletic ones also. It also means that, with the ball, different players can advance from the defence into the midfield making pressing them less predictable as they will produce slightly more in the way of angles of playing around a side than those with more standard set ups - their 4-2-3-1 will see a defender push into midfield to create a 3 at the back with the ball, but the defender going forward isn’t necessarily the same one each time.

This, in turn, makes them rather awkward to defend against because they will tend to be tidy and then spring a long ball on you or they can just be patient and have the talent to do both. In the second leg against Bravo, this attacking showed well - the long options meant Bravo couldn’t push forward, the tidy possession play meant they couldn’t dare sit back and, in truth, Shkendija could have won that second leg more handsomely than 3-1 and well before the set piece in the 88th minute that did for Bravo. As many will be aware, Slovenia is perhaps my most in depth nation covered so, suffice it to say, I’ve not seen many sides do a number on Bravo as Shkendija did.

As a result, Shkendija are an awkward side to play against - they aren’t likely to give too many opportunities to open them up, they aren’t just going to sit and pour forward on the counter like Malisheva, they aren’t going to harass you. They are going to be organised, have a good shape and pick their way around you.

But…

Share

Where Hibs can benefit is with an aggressive press. The nature of how Shkendija build is such that, with a lot of effort and a bit of fortune, you can press errors early and turn the ball over in extremely promising areas. Bravo showed this with their second goal in the first leg - against a right back that had pushed in, a quick triangle gave them an overload down Shkendija’s right that saw them score a well taken goal. Similar can be said about Bravo’s goal in Skopje (1) - they break one tackle and then the defence are caught narrow. Hibs have to be looking to exploit these opportunities, particularly given Shkendija enter the first leg on the back of a clear weekend and Hibs do not.

Conclusion

Hibs fans think this is an favourable draw. Of the options that were in the groupings, I’d agree that Shkendija are likely the easiest of the 3QR seeds they could have obtained. I’d venture, however, that that was more a reflection that the group of five seeds Hibs could have got were perhaps the most difficult set of all the groupings available to them.

Shkendija are a very definite step up from playing Malisheva and the sneaking through nature of that tie can’t give a great deal of confidence that Hibs will deal with this tie in a professional manner easing through. Shkendija are too solid for that, Hibs are too unreliable and the Malisheva tie shows that. This is a tie that is, for Hibs, doable, but certainly not “should be giving them a doing”-able. I would also look at Hibs squad and suggest that this is perhaps not the most well designed squad in terms of targeting the weaknesses Shkendija have.

In short, Hibees: flip a coin. This isn’t likely to be an easy one.

1 - Shkendija play their European games in Skopje rather than Tetovo which is a benefit for Hibs in that the national stadium is about 20,000 seats too big for what it needs to be but, on top of that, it means that the Shkendija ultras, the Ballistet, are not as audible. The Ballistet are named after Balli Kombetar, which tells you all you need to know about their politics (not good guys).

Transfers free unless specified - ordered in finishing position from last season

Share

Dinamo Zagreb

Ins - Mislav Orsic (LW, Pafos), Stjepan Radeljic (CB, Rijeka), Dani Rodriguez (RW, Barcelona), Aleks Stojakovic (ST, Lokomotiva), Smail Prevljak (€800k, ST, Istra)

Outs - Sandro Kulenovic (€3m, ST, Torino), Marko Soldo (€2m, DM, Sigma Olomouc), Gonzalo Villar (€1m, CM, Elche), Cardoso Varela (LW, Porto), Vito Caic (DM, Osijek), Monsef Bakrar (€3m, ST, Al-Ahly), Dominik Livakovic and Ismael Bennacer (loans ended)

Head Coach - Mario Kovacevic

Dinamo were miles ahead of the competition last season, ending up 18 points ahead of Hajduk on 86. They got their on the back of an absurdly good summer in 2025 with Valincic, Beljo, Sergi, McKenna, Bakrac, Zajc Topic and Bennacer all firmly in the hit column. Other players grew a lot, most of all Luka Stojkovic as the side went unbeaten in the league from mid-November onwards. Hajduk did keep pace with them through the autumn but couldn’t deal with the consistency shown at Maksimir in the spring.

It’s perhaps unsurprising, then, that this summer has been a little quieter. The big get is Mislav Orsic, given his past affiliation with the club and given he did find his way back to near his pre-departure form. Dani Rodriguez is a smart get from Barcelona who will hope to follow in the footsteps of another Catalan Dani in Zagreb - similarly to Olmo, Dinamo are already trying to bring his brother into the club to keep him happy. Stojakovic is a player few will know about but who was a great deal of fun at Lokomotiva last season - tall, energetic and always doing something: the sort of striker defenders hate because he’s really, really annoying to play against and, as a bench option vs tiring defences, will be a real weapon in their bow. Their 93 league goals last season was their most in a league season since the 93/94 season and the only single season total better than that of Dion Drena Beljo last term was from Eduardo in 06/07. That area of the side is absolutely no worse than last season and while Beljo’s extreme production may not be replicable, it’s not about to completely dry up and there is far too much in options for them to be less effective than last term to the point they are in trouble at the top.

That’s not to say there aren’t some concerns - at time of writing, the Goalkeeping situation, solved last season by loaning back Dominik Livakovic, is unresolved and one can easily argue that, in the one game in anger Dinamo have had this term away vs Thun, Ivan Filipovic filling in was at fault for the goal conceded. Other players will go too - Sergi Dominguez has a lot of admirers as do Luka Stojkovic and Arber Hoxha while Monsef Bakrar left while I’ve been writing this up.

Is that enough to lose faith in Dinamo? Probably not - to beat Dinamo will require a level of consistency that Hajduk couldn’t show last season or a level of improvement from Rijeka that isn’t likely. Even if you take all of those potential transfers out of the side, Dinamo have replacements already there for everyone but Luka Stojkovic - and they’d argue the returned-from-loan Lukas Kacavenda qualifies as that. Dinamo are closer to the pack this time - but they don’t look like they’ve been caught up entirely.

Side note - Dinamo’s third kit. Beautiful.

Hajduk Split

Ins - Mathieu Acapandie (RB, Nantes), Alberto del Moral (CM, Oviedo), Etnik Brruti (CM, Malisheva), Andjelo Sutalo (AM, Dinamo U19), Alec van Hoorenbeeck (Undisclosed, RB, Twente), Dalisson (loan, AM, Cordoba)

Outs - Bruno Durdov (€900k, RW, Gornik), Anthony Kalik, Filip Krovinovic, Hugo Guillamon and Ante Rebic (released)

Head Coach - Gonzalo Garcia

It would have been easy in the spring to pull the ejector seat on Gonzalo Garcia as Hajduk’s early season form stuttered and then collapsed entirely on the run in. To Hajduk’s credit, they’ve stuck with him as coach as he had managed to do the one thing no other manager at Poljud has done in years - cope without Marko Livaja.

That was primarily down to the form of Michele Sego who, for half a season, was perhaps the best player in the league. That, in turn, wound up Livaja which resulted in a fallout between Marko and Manager over the summer, which has been patched over for now, but it neatly shows where Hajduk are at this point - slowly moving into a new era, one defined by a greater team rather than a reliance on stars. And their moves this summer show that all quite well - a series of obvious moves of people either ready for a step up or who fill obvious holes - Brruti in the former category, Acapandie and van Hoorenbeeck in the latter. Hajduk come into 26/27 a better rounded outfit than they finished last time.

All of this makes Hajduk look pretty good and their European results so far this season in beating Zilina and Pafos (in the first leg at least) bear that out, Roko Brajkovic being ruled out for the season means they will have to move into the market for a replacement (likely Marin Soticek of Basel - that deal is close to done at time of writing) but it doesn’t reduce the fact that Hajduk look well stocked almost everywhere. Garcia has brought on youngsters like Silic and Hrgovic well last term and restored form/confidence of players like Pukstas and Sigur who had faded under the season long error that was Gennaro Gattuso. They play good football, they’re assured at the back, they’ve finally decided having right backs isn’t an optional thing - yes, there are still questions over their consistency and over how they will cope mentally if the two decade title drought actually looks like it might come to an end and they do lack a little star power, but this is, back to front, the most logically built Hajduk side in many a year and, as Europe has already shown, they look like they’re progressing on the pitch. If Dinamo flounder, they might just be able to take advantage.

Subscribe now

Varazdin

Ins - Ivan Posavec (AM, Zrinjski Mostar), Elvir Durakovic (LB, Gorica)

Outs - Antonio Borsic (LB, Tobol), Mate Antunovic (ST, Lokomotiva)

Head Coach - Nikola Safaric

Last season’s third place was not just the best league performance of Varazdin - it matched the best performance of the club even if one includes their history prior to their predecessor club’s dissolution in 2012. For opponents, last season saw them remain an awkward match for anyone albeit with more goals in a game than the season before and, perhaps unsurprisingly, they’ve not done all that much over the summer and the reality of the side will be the same. Oliver Zelenika is still in the discussion of being the best keeper in this division. They remain solid enough at the back with a mix of ages that perhaps, if you’re being critical, suggests they may be slightly weaker that ideal in the full-back areas.

In midfield, they have players coming through that are liable to improvements and similar applies at the top of the side as well with the likes of Iuri Tavares. Ivan Mamut comes in on the back of arguably his best season last term who scored a reasonable amount of goals but was able to link play well with his size. They’re not worse, they’re not better, they’ll continue to be one of the least entertaining sides to watch (and talk about) and they’re reliant on continued growth from within from the likes of Latkovic and Luka Mamic to challenge those around them. Given others have improved, fourth is surely the limit of their ambition.

Rijeka

Ins - Ivan Cubelic (€300k, AM, Slaven Belupo), Jakov Puljic (ST, Vukovar)

Outs - Martin Zlomislic (€500k, GK, Qarabag), Dominik Yankov (AM, Arda), Dejan Petrovic (DM, Johor), Stjepan Radeljic (CB, Dinamo), Merveil Ndockyt (AM, AS Rabat)

Head Coach - Matjaz Kek

Rijeka had an interesting season last time out in their failed attempt to retain the title. After starting the season under Radomir Dalovic, the energy that took them to the title evaporated early season seeing him replaced by Spaniard Victor Sanchez. Sanchez did… fine in his time at Rujevica trying to make the side that won the title in an unsustainable way in some way sustainable and to try to make the side somehow not entirely reliant on the performance of Toni Fruk.

It’d be fair to describe it as a partial success given how long it took for some sort of solution to be found and, after winning only one of their first eight and three of their first thirteen, they were out of contention early and a spring drop off around their elimination from Europe and cup commitments meant the writing was on the wall for Sanchez a little way out. So Rijeka decided to turn the clock back.

Matjaz Kek is, of course, the legendary manager of the club throughout the 2010s and the mastermind of their 2017 title win. In two spells as Slovenian national boss, he has taken them to multiple major tournaments, returning to Rijeka to transition the side into a new era of success in what will surely be his last major long term engagement. As such, it’s a work in progress - with Martin Zlomislic gone, Rijeka do look short in the goalkeeping department. There’s also a huge question as to where Toni Fruk will be playing this season - as their opener vs Derry in Europe showed, he remains indispensable when it comes to goals as well as the amount of work he gets through in 90 minutes (go and see his goal saving clearance for evidence of that) - but if he goes, Rijeka will be getting the sort of fee that will allow them to replace him well (£8m+ has been quoted). He will take a lot of replacing but Rijeka were fortunate that he stayed last season - even if the weight of being the centre of everything at the club did begin to show in his play as the season progressed.

Outside of Fruk, they look remarkably solid. Niko Jankovic was on the exit door before coming back for Kek, Teo Barisic missed time injured last term but is ready now, Ivan Cubelic gives them a solid holidng player to support the up and coming Branko Pavic and Jakov Puljic entered the sort of form that made him so good at this level as the season progressed at Vukovar. Dan Adu-Adjei improved as the season went on and is physical enough to trouble opponents well. Rijeka are probably due an improvement purely from the players being a season on in their development - most of the squad are under 25 and most will come on a little naturally from last season. Replacing Fruk well will be a necessity and it’s a case of replacing him with maybe three players - a top class goalkeeper, a creative player and probably a forward. How much of a leap forward they make will rely on how that job goes when it has to be done, but if any manager knows how to put together a Dinamo destruction unit, it’s Matjaz Kek.

Side note - Their third kit. Yeesh.

Share

Lokomotiva

Ins - Dardan Morina (AM, Dukagjini), Festin Shatri (DM, Dugopolje), Athanasios Triantafyllou (CB, Volos), Mirko Maric (ST, Monza), Mate Antunovic (ST, Varazdin)

Outs - Zvonimir Subaric (GK, Zrinjski Mostar), Denis Kolinger (CB, Persia), Blaz Boskovic (DM, Debrecen), Aleks Stojakovic (ST, Dinamo)

Head Coach - Nikica Jelavic

Last season, Lokomotiva were a lot of fun in terms of their original attacking line-up of Vukovic, Krivak and Stojakovic - a strikeforce that ran a lot, that threatened a lot and that were about as ruthless as a Care Bear. Two of those three are gone but what’s come in seems to rectify those issues - Mirko Maric hasn’t scored for fun for a while but, at this level, with the right prep and the right side around him, he is a 15+ goal a season striker. Around him is a lot of talent.

Josip Posavec is a good keeper and has to be as, if there’s a weak area in the squad, it is at centre back and they’ll need Triantafyllou to pay off to improve this season, but in Kamenovic, Pajac and Utrobicic, they have three good left backs and similar depth on the other flank. Feta Fetai’s return from loan gives them an excellent returnee in the centre to go alongside the recovery job they need to do on Leon Belcar’s form and confidence and, with Rog, Lorber and Vasilj there as well, the midfield is very well stocked. Morina, as an addition, is one you take notice of purely because few clubs scout Kosovo better than Lokomotiva so he must have something about him.

I may have criticised Dusan Vukovic’s lack of clinicism but he’s a fantastic winger who is missing just that one attribute before taking a step or two up the ladder. If, and it’s a big if, Lokomotiva get that element of the team sorted and actually get scoring goals (last season was their lowest return since 2020 as they underperformed their xG by 0.2 a game) then the ten point gap between them and Varazdin from last season will be eaten up quickly. Add onto that the fact that this is Lokomotiva, after all, and that there will be a 17-19 year old somewhere in their system who will come in and impress quickly then it’s hard to think this is a season where they’ll be due a regression.

Istra 1961

Ins - Ivan Saranic (RW, Sesvete), Daouda Doumbia (CM, Alaves)

Outs - Ville Koski (€3m, CB, Alaves), Stjepan Loncar (€300k, CM, Persia), Leo Stulac (DM, Koper), Marcel Heister (LB, Osijek), Smail Prevljak (€800k, ST, Dinamo)

Head Coach - Javier Cabello

Last season was one where Istra were expected to take a bit of a leap forward and it just didn’t happen. Cabello is perhaps a more experienced and better get in terms of resume than most that come in and take over at Istra albeit he’s mainly been an assistant for the past decade, which is always something I look at with suspicion because that tends to be for a reason.

This looks like a tougher season. They’ve made good fees, no doubt, but Koski was a very good player for them and Prevljak, for all he was maybe a little underwhelming, still scored a good volume of goals. Reports state others are potentially on their way as well including Antonio Mauric, Emil Frederiksen, Vinko Rozic and Advan Kadusic, all of whom they would miss. As a result, it’s hard to call Istra this season at this point because while they’re already weaker, they seem set to get a little bit weaker yet. Istra will probably be returning to where they were a couple of seasons ago - reliant on speed, reliant on sharply breaking - but looking to make the most from what they’ve got in their youth system (which is a fine vintage, to be fair - Nik Skafar Zuzic has been involved enough this pre-season to suggest he’ll be used a bit this term, Raul Kumar is already on his way to stardom) rather than bringing players in. They should be fine but their thoughts of looking for the top half are likely for next season, not this.

Subscribe now

Gorica

Ins - Filip Braut (RB, Orijent), Patrik Mijic (ST, Hartberg), Keenan Carole (RW, Tabor Sezana), Kevin Custovic (RB, Wisla Plock), Ivan Cvijanovic (LB, Vicela), Renato Josipovic (GK, Siroki Brijeg)

Outs - Iker Pozo (€1m, CM, Rodina), Ivan Fiolic (CM, Kauno Zalgiris), Jurica Prsir (CM, Wisla Plock), Elvir Durakovic (LB, Varazdin)

Head Coach - Mario Carevic

Gorica’s peak in the top flight is 5th and that was powered by peak Kiki Lovric scoring bangers for fun but it’s a pretty good estimation of Gorica throughout their time in the top tier - a fine player here and there but never an actual team. With Pozo and Prsir going, however, it feels a little like they may not have any fine players any more - Pozo was great last season, Prsir has been a permanent at the club for longer than his talent deserved (in a good way for him!)

That said, there’s positives to be had - Patrik Mijic should be a good get on his Rogaska form and did well enough at Hartberg to suggest he’ll be fine at this level. Renato Josipovic is perhaps one where it’s a surprise it’s taken him as long as it has to get to this level. None of those incoming players are exciting but they are uniformly competent, improvements in role depth and logical and while they’ve lost things in midfield over the summer, it’s probably reasonable to think that they’ve lost less than Istra have. In what should be a congested bottom half of the league, that’s enough.

Slaven Belupo

Ins - David Bosak (DM, Cibalia), Ante Bilobrk (CB, Rudes), Lukas Zahora (LW, Shakhtar), Lovro Banovec (RW, Vukovar), Karlo Sentic (GK, Diosgyor), Lovre Loncar (LW, Hajduk U19), Adetunji Adeshina (loan, DM, LASK), Ivan Cvetko (CB, Dinamo U19), Itsuki Urata (RB, Bunyodkor)

Outs - Gabrijel Sivalec (€500k, LW, Dinamo U19), Ivan Cubelic (€300k, AM, Rijeka), Osman Hadzikic (GK, Honved), Mateo Barac (RB, Siroki Brijeg), Ivan Bozic (released)

Head Coach - Mario Gregurina

After 24/25 saw Slaven Belupo fire up to 5th, last season was a bump back to earth. The sale of Adriano Jagusic mid-season robbed them of their best player (by a distance) and one win in their final twelve league games of the season does make you wonder a little how come Gregurina is still in post. However, this is a side that took the money for Jagusic and looks like they’ve used it well this summer - with a few caveats.

Slaven’s issue this season is the one they’ve had for a few seasons which is that they have good on paper, inconsistent on the pitch. A front four of Josip Mitrovic, Marko Dabro, Lovro Banovec and Ilija Nestorovski is pretty solid at this level but it’s frustrating as hell in practice - Dabro is a 25 goal a season striker if he’s locked in mentally, and he hasn’t been for a while; Josip Mitrovic was tipped for the national team if he had ever kicked on from where he was at age 20, but he didn’t and hasn’t really put it together. Behind that frontline is an extremely competitive side with Ljuban Crepulja a solid “first booking” bet. Of those incomings, Sentic is a good replacement for Hadzikic, Loncar didn’t have a route to the team at Hajduk but wasn’t far off it and Urata has enough experience at this level to suggest he’ll be a good contributor. It feels reasonably easy to build a side that concedes well under last season’s 61 goals this time around - less so one that will actually score anything near that.

Share

Osijek

Ins - Balelo (€75k, ST, Paredes), Senad Mustafic (RB, Sturm Graz), Marcel Heister (LB, Istra), Balazs Bakti (AM, ZTE), Vito Caic (DM, Dinamo), Ivan Dolcek (LW, DAC), Armando Leon (ST, Ranger’s Andorra)

Outs - Kemal Ademi, Borna Barisic and Renan Guedes (released)

Head Coach - Fede Bessone

Last season was not what was planned for at Osijek. Historically one of Croatia’s big four, last season saw Osijek finish ninth - their lowest ever finish in the league. They needed a good summer, they needed to make a bunch of good decisions and, instead, things have gotten worse.

Before talking about the team, one has to talk about the boardroom, which is never a good sign when previewing a season. CEO Aleksandra Vegh is awaiting judgement and a likely suspension from office due to multiple alleged rule breaches around holding multiple positions in sporting companies and, perhaps more seriously, maintaining a role as an agent arranging transfers for players while being at a club arranging transfers for Osijek. Not that Vegh has been especially effective in post - she’s been the subject of fan protests over the summer after the club suspended their long serving press officer (as in, about 25 years service) for the heinous sin of… posting that the club lost 4-0 in a behind closed doors friendly.

In pitch affecting matters, Kenneth Zandvliet has come in as Sporting Director after he left Heerenveen and Fede Bessone has joined as Head Coach after leaving Olimpija. Bessone didn’t really cover himself with glory in Ljubljana after moving over from Andorra - he picked them up in trouble, missed out on Europe and got KOd from the Cup by a second tier side. The best of a bad bunch at Stozice last term, but also a member of that bad bunch.

So to have confidence in Osijek, you’d have to think they have had a good transfer window. They emphatically have not. Rumours abound that almost everyone is open for offers (basically anyone in the last year of their contracts, which includes most of their starters) but there are more specific issues at play. For a start, of their strikeforce, Anton Matkovic is out long term with knee issues and Arnel Jakupovic is missing the start of the season due to an injury picked up in training that has meant he’s missed all of pre-season. As such, the only strikers they have available to them are new signings Balelo (who comes with a middling record from the lower end of Portugal’s third tier) and Armando Leon (who comes from Andorran football). On paper, they have a decent line-up there - in practice one starter is out, another is out short term and will take time to get back to speed and the depth options have a background that suggests they’re more an out-of-their-depth option. For a side who underperformed their xG by 0.76 goals PER GAME (over the season, they scored lower than half their xG), coming into this season looking at their strikeforce and being more worried than last season is quite the achievement.

The rest of those incomings aren’t great either - few tears were shed over Ivan Dolcek in Dundee after his loan spell in Scotland saw a couple of good early performances followed by months of disinterest, Caic and Heister were let go for a reason. Of a fashion, Osijek can’t be worse than last season because they’re far too big to be in this situation (and such a statistical underperformance is next to impossible), but taking out the loans they had in there last year (David Colina, Fran Karacic, Tonio Teklic, Samuel Akere, Vladan Bubanja), one struggles to look at their squad and think they’re actually better on paper. On the flip side, they massively underperformed last term - Omerovic, Malenica, Vrbancic and more are, on their day, some of the better performers in their roles in this league and they’re not the only ones who are probably too good to be involved in nonsense at the bottom.

It’s difficult to predict where Osijek end up. On one hand, they can’t be worse. On the other, given their injuries, their transfer business and the absolutely horrendous vibe around the club at the minute, it’s also hard to see how they could fail to be worse and I tend to lean on the more pessimistic of those outlooks. With them opening up with Gorica then Rudes both away from home - it feels like we know which Osijek we’ll be getting this season very quickly.

Rudes

Ins - Toni Kolega (LW, Lincoln Red Imps), Marko Stolnik (CB, UTA Arad), Diego Zivulic (CB, Otelul Galati), Stjepan Plazonja (LW, Asia Talas)

Outs - Anthony Pavelesic (€250k, GK, Sigma Olomouc)

Head Coach - Alen Peternac

This time last year, the HNL welcomed Vukovar to the league who came up with their own admission within the club that they’d be going down and they duly did. Rudes are probably weaker than Vukovar were 12 months ago. Their transfer business has been in bringing in experience - Lovre Rogic is a decent goalkeeper who flips between this level and a level below. The likes of Marko Stolnik and Diego Zivulic fit that category as well - guys who are fine but on the way down from this level. They come into a squad that is equally mid but there’s a distinct lack of quality in pretty much every single area of the side and it shows in that the former clubs of many are the likes of Sibenik or Varazdin’s squad on coming up to the HNL - players who haven’t necessarily put enough together in their previous chances at this level to justify staying at this level.

If you’re of the opinion, as I am, that the next side that will be promoted and then stay in the top tier will be Kustosija, this Rudes side don’t offer a great deal to make you argue against that. Your argument for them staying up is entirely at other clubs.

With that all said, I’m obligated to predict the table so here goes…

1 - Dinamo

2 - Hajduk

3 - Rijeka

4 - Lokomotiva

5 - Varazdin

6 - Slaven Belupo

7 - Gorica

8 - Istra

9 - Osijek

10 - Rudes

Being honest, I think it’s fair to say that my thinking for a long time had Osijek bottom but the more I look at Rudes, the less I think they’re capable of making a go at staying up this term. Osijek are the side with the most variance in how they might do and, while they have a better squad than at least three sides above them, the sheer wrecking of the vibe at the club over the past few months makes it incredibly hard to think there’s a happy ending at the club any point soon - if this was a season with a good team coming up, I’d be sticking them bottom. At the top, Dinamo have nothing to prove and no reason to doubt them, but I expect Hajduk and Rijeka will push them harder than last season and will be pretty much neck and neck with each other for second place all the way.

Celje’s European bow this season happened in Albania as they managed a 3-3 draw vs Egnatia. Celje, who were unable to stay within an hour of Rrogozhine due to the town not having any facilities large enough to host them, had a hostile night with Mario Kvesic being involved in an argument with a ballboy and Armandas Kucys being hit by something thrown from the stands.

The other sides in Europe had decent nights - Aluminij managed a 1-1 draw vs Dinamo City, Koper, in spite of arriving late in the Faroes, beat Runavik 2-0 while Bravo will be taking a 2-1 lead to North Macedonia over Shkendija.

Zahovic is back at Maribor! No, I’ve not accidentally recycled something from weeks ago, Zlatko Zahovic has brought in a striking reinforcement - his son, Luka. Returning after six years away, Luka has 81 goals in 198 appearances in Maribor from his previous two spells at the club.

The next Rijeka player to join Mura is Lovro Kitin, who’ll be bolstering their defence.

Next weekend’s games are under threat due to the weather - the likelihood at the moment is that temperatures may exceed 37C and may put the current record high (40.8C) under threat. The FA are keeping an eye on this to see if matches will need rescheduled to less dangerous times. Presume this advice will apply to their southern neighbours also.

As for this week’s, Olimpija’s record is now played two, lost two after Mura defeated them 1-0 at Fazanerija. Mura weren’t at the level they were against Celje but it was enough against an off colour Olimpija who continued to be ropey at the back. Maribor defeated a game Brinje 3-0. Nafta got off the mark with a surprise 3-0 win away against Bravo - James Arinze was sent off for the hosts for an extremely robust body check that led with the elbow into the chin. Think Ben Thatcher on Pedro Mendes and you actually wouldn’t be too far off it.

The weekend rounded off with a wild game between Koper and Radomlje that saw the hosts come back from 2-0 down late to draw - a Leo Rimac double including the equaliser from the spot in the 8th minute of 4 added on the highlight. The game itself was delayed for an hour after a thunderstorm just after half time caused first a blackout and then an extended check to see if the pitch was playable and to give time to get some nice moody pictures of Bonifika…

That wasn’t the only drama, however. Koper (between European ties) wanted the game to be postponed on the basis that the sodden pitch would make it less likely they’d be able to come back from two down. Radomlje disagreed. After the game, Radomlje claim that the sporting director of Koper, Ivica Guberac, and other club representatives confronted and then assaulted both Radomlje’s president and their sporting director. The matter is with the NZS and the police.

Best wishes go to Slavko Vincic - after refereeing the World Cup Final, he has chosen to retire from refereeing. That’s what 120 minutes of that Argentina does to a ref…

Share

Croatia

Dinamo managed a 1-1 draw away to Thun in their Champions League first leg with the main takeaway being that Dinamo need to sort out the Dominik Livakovic return permanently sharpish.

Thursday night was winners night - Varazdin beat Jablonec 3-2 in Varazdin, Toni Fruk beat Derry 1-0 in Rijeka and Hajduk defeated Pafos 2-0 at Poljud.

Striker moves are dependent on Dinamo grabbing Smail Prevljak from Istra. That deal is pretty much done and, to replace him, it’s possible they’ll bring in Mariano Diaz from Alaves. Diaz, formerly of Real Madrid and scoring in a Clasico, has been snakebit by injury the last few seasons and is being sent away by Alaves to see if it’s possible for him to get fit.

Everyone wants a piece of Marin Soticek. The Basel winger is in demand from both Rijeka and Hajduk, if they can agree money terms with the Swiss club.

Arnor Gauti Jonsson has joined Slaven Belupo from Breidablik in Iceland. I suspect he’s the first Icelandic player to play in Croatia, but when I tried to check it, Google’s AI Overview spat me out responses in Chinese so I gave up.

The league season starts this week - the season preview will be out before then on here given, unlike for Slovenia and Serbia, I’ve spent plenty of time writing the thing already.

Thoughts are with the family and friends of Kalilou Traore who has died in a car accident at 38. The Malian made his name at Istra between 2008 and 2010, eventually playing 17 times for his country.

Subscribe now

Bosnia

An all Conference League job this time - Zrinjski lost 1-0 to Valur in Iceland, DAC defeated Velez 1-0 in Slovakia due to… well, stupidity and Borac hammered Petrocub 3-0 to move to the brink of the next stage.

But that’s not really the big Borac news this week. On Friday, the club were raided by police with club president and playing legend Zvjezdan Misimovic arrested on suspicion of money laundering. Four locations were searched with club documentation taken away - the belief is that the arrest is related to what happened with European bonuses and that Misimovic was arrested shortly after things were found.

Samed Bazdar may have featured at the World Cup but Real Zaragoza can’t find anyone to flog him to with a deal with AIK falling through. Jusuf Gazibegovic, who just missed the World Cup squad has left Koln to go on loan to Widzew Lodz.

Sarajevo have signed Ivan Saric and Selmir Pidra, both of whom come from Velez.

Serbia

Crvena Zvezda opened their European campaign up with a 4-0 thrashing of Larne in Northern Ireland but fallout has come courtesy of a Northern Irish fan attending the game with a political banner - Larne state the person attended as a neutral fan, albeit evidently not a politically neutral one.

In the Conference League, those with difficult tasks showed themselves well - Zeleznicar in a 1-0 home loss to Braga while Vojvodina were better than the 4-1 result suggested vs Ajax. Saving the coefficient for the first time in a few years were Partizan, who stuck four past UNA Strassen. Sasa Ilic still wasn’t happy. Nor really were many other people.

Crvena Zvezda have brought in Ghanaian international Derrick Luckassen. He’s part of the Brobbey family of footballers.

Vanja Dragojevic has left Partizan for Rangers for £5.5 million but the potential moves for Ognjen Ugresic appear to have dried up a little.

Share

Novi Pazar have made a couple of signings - Kaheem Dixon and Papa Amadi Gadio are bolstering their ranks.

Moment of the weekend goes to Milan Dokovic of Cukaricki from their 2-0 win over Radnicki Nis. Dokovic’s mother had passed away last week and, after he scored the second in the 29th minute, he was clearly emotional celebrating the goal.

Zemun drew on the opening day vs Partizan but were smashed 4-0 by IMT, after being reduced to ten when Novak Petrusic was sent off for a knee high tackle just after the half hour. Tadija Cojic scored the goal of the game to round off the rout. Radnik and OFK went to a 0-0 draw and you should be grateful I’m not linking the “highlights”. Mladost and Novi Pazar also went 0-0 but at least stuff happened in that one.

Having drawn vs one promoted side, Partizan did manage to beat Macva 3-1 but they were made to work hard for it, with the game 1-1 going into the final three minutes - Macva had equalised in spite of being a man down and both finished with ten men. VAR got Vrastanovic sent off for Macva for DOGSO which seems a stretch given there was at least one other defender covering and I’d definitely be appealing that one. Macva even spurned one huge chance to take the lead before Partizan eventually made their advantage count through Demba Seck who would then be sent off for putting his hands on an opponent’s throat right in front of the ref. I cannot emphasise the words “right in front of the ref” enough here…

As per any Partizan performance so far this season, people were unhappy.

Obviously, the big game of the weekend gets the larger analysis…

Match Analysis - Crvena Zvezda vs Vojvodina is, of course, the first big game of the season and one, for both sides, a high stakes game between a pair of high stakes European ties. Similarly to Vojvodina in Europe, it was another bit of a hard luck tale for them as well as, once again, they gave a good account of themselves and once again they came away with nothing. That said, Zvezda’s goals were too easy.

Above is the opener and all we see is a simple clipped in inswinger from Bruno Duarte met by the onrushing Osman Bukari (5ft7in) running between defenders for an easy header in. It’s not to reduce the quality of the cross, but this isn’t the sort of goal you should be conceding to a winger. Credit to Vosa’s reaction - with three minutes, Lazar Randelovic had two good chances to tie things up but they got counter punched - failing to clear from a break with the ball eventually bobbling to Kostov to easily slot the ball home. Vojvodina did make it 2-1 through Nardin Malahusejinovic with a very Nardin Malahusejinovic sort of goal. Randelovic had a huge chance to tie it before the break after good pressing earned a three on three break, but his shot caught Matheus’ trailing leg for the save. Rosic was forced into a fine save from Duarte at the other end in a big end to the first half followed by an even better save to deny Kostov within a minute of the restart.

The second half was one way traffic and, while Vojvodina stayed in it, there was no chance to equalise and Saric’s 93rd minute third was less a cherry on top of the cake and more bringing the cake up to the size it should have been in the first place. Perhaps that’s all to be expected three days after a difficult game against Ajax away to the best side in the league and the stats bear it out - 3.83-1.40 on xG (at 0.18 vs 0.1 xG per shot) is a bit of a paddling, but most of that gap came in the second half where Vojvodina have an excuse in fatigue. Randelovic, had he had his shooting boots on, could have had a couple but, as soon as you allow Zvezda in the lead, you’re going to struggle. Going deeper into the stats, the other big advantage for Zvezda was in the air - Cross completion was 32% vs 14%, long ball completion was 69% vs 40% (with one of Vojvodina’s unsuccessful ones leading to the opener) which meant they won 71% of aerial duels.

Montenegro

With a 3-0 loss to Vitebsk, Sutjeska look like joining everyone else in being completely out of Europe by the end of July. Montenegro’s record this year in Europe? Played 9, Lost 9.

Novica Erakovic has joined Panetolikos after leaving Cyprus at the end of his deal with Omonia.

The CFL is the 166th best league in the world - 58 places below North Macedonia, 99 below Kosovo and 7 below the Ecuadorian third tier.

Kosovo

It was Bohs vs Ballkani in the Conference League and the Irish side came out on top 2-1 in the first leg courtesy of an absolute thunderbastard.

Hibs-ed it. The Edinburgh side fell to an infamous loss away to Malisheva. Dukagjini couldn’t pull a shock off vs Lugano though but 1-0 isn’t a bad result to try to turn around back in Kosovo. Drita bring back a 1-1 draw from Malta to try to take out Floriana at home.

North Macedonia (1)

Vardar took the loss at home to Riga in spite of taking the lead and their European journey looks like it may be over in Latvia later this week. They did, at least, win their league opener 2-0 vs Bregalnica (2). Sileks top the table after one game after beating Bashkimi 6-0 while Shkendija started with a 3-0 win.

1 - Just as a note, the website I use to get stories from there has been taken down for some reason. There’s very little football specific coverage in the wider press so this may be a very quiet section for a little while!

2 - The FFM had, for a couple of seasons, shown all games live on YouTube. They don’t seem to be so far this term and the highlights linked are an unofficial channel taking caps of the ArenaSport live feed which, if you’ve ever dealt with ArenaSport, is the equivalent of illegally hosting for download a Metallica album.

Share

Slovenia

Aluminij were knocked out of the Europa League after a 1-0 loss to Sheriff in the second leg of their tie. In spite of probably being the better side over the piece, they drop into the Conference League to face Dinamo City. Aluminij’s game between those legs, vs Celje, has been postponed.

Koper will be taking on Runavik in the Conference League, who qualified weirdly.

Aldin Jakupovic left Bravo for Holstein Kiel in January and he’s back at the club on loan for this season. Bravo face Shkendija in Europe in their bow this season.

We’ve previously seen clubs get around the U21 rules by swapping goalkeepers after a minute - that’s been banned this season so each team must play at least the first half of a game with an U21 player eligible for Slovenia (unless they get sent off). Not meeting that bar will see the game forfeited 3-0.

Nafta and Koper put on a show on the opening day - a disallowed goal for the promoted side thirty seconds in set the tone - but it was Koper winning 2-0 with the first goal of the season scored by Kamil Manseri on the end of a Josip Ilicic assist. The other promoted side Brinje did rather better - opening their season with a 2-0 win over Radomlje

Those watching that game may note that Manseri held up a shirt after scoring - that was for team-mate Brice Negouai who was brought in this summer but, this week, was diagnosed with a cardiac issue that will require an operation to fix

Friday was highlighted but Celje-Mura, a dramatic 2-2 draw with multiple disallowed goals. Of most note going forward is that Armandas Kucys was sent off after the final whistle meaning he’ll miss their next league game: Maribor. Speaking of, they also drew their opener - a 0-0 vs Aluminij, albeit one where both sides had very good chances to score.

Featured Game

My season preview stated we’d tell a lot from Olimpija from their opening day game vs Bravo so… what did we learn? Well, Bravo are still good, taking the lead with a lovely finish from Sandi Nuhanovic from the edge of the box after Olimpija failed to clear their lines fully from a cross and, if we’re honest, architecture of their own downfall was a common trait with Bravo getting multiple chances from their own good pressing and helped by Olimpija’s tendency to have some slack touches and passing under that press. Jakob Brunnhofer could have made it two after hitting the post following a trundling run forward that saw Olimpija asleep to the one-two. Much of Olimpija’s threat was limited to set pieces and Bravo rode their luck a bit - especially on this weird free kick - but they got the second they deserved in second half injury time from Okpo Mazie, scoring on his first touch for the club after coming off the bench. Ales Arnol was hardly going to Tuchel it, was he?!

That’s five derby wins in a row for Bravo with Olimpija winning only one in the last fourteen Ljubljanski derbies. While the consensus is that Olimpija weren’t bad, when Bravo got a chance it was a good one, when Olimpija did, it wasn’t so much. As for what we’ve learned? If I’ve got Olimpija coming up soon, I’d certainly be focusing on pressing the midfield early as there’s slackness there at this point and I’d also focus on getting late runs from deep into the box to take advantage of their tendency to half-clear things. It’s early days and they may quickly get more fluent, but Bravo fashioned too many decent chances to be too optimistic about Olimpija this season.

Bravo will hope to take this forward against Shkendija in the Conference League and, to be fair, Shkendija are a bit weaker this term than last due to losing talent down their left. The Tetovo side will be favourites but Bravo look to have knitted together well already and that definitely gives them a chance in that tie against a side that made the main phase last time. If nothing else, we can already see Bravo are a more cohesive unit that Olimpija.

Croatia

Hajduk progressed past Zilina in spite of a second leg defeat but the club risk sanction after UEFA opened a case against them due to fan behaviour. They have Pafos next.

The mess at Osijek goes from bad to worse - Alexandra Vegh, the president of the club, has fallen foul of a legal issue. In short, it’s not allowed for one person to hold a position of power of two separate sports associations at the same time, which Vegh does - Osijek and the separate association that is Osijek’s academy. On top of that, it’s not allowed for someone to hold such a position within 12 months of holding a position of being an intermediary - Vegh, and her brother, own an agency which deals with transfers and represents players who have moved this summer. The state have investigated and confirmed there are breaches but continue to look into things.

Osijek have, at least, brought in a striker - Balelo comes in from Paredes in Portugal for around 75,000 euros. He’s not played above the third tier in Portugal and, having scouted for a club in that league in the past, it’s one of those where there’s a real gulf between the top end and the bottom end of the league - Balelo’s history isn’t on the good end of that gulf.

Last time, it was mentioned that Cardoso Varela had switched from Andy Bara after falling out with his agent. This time, he’s left Dinamo to return to Porto. Coming into Dinamo is Aleks Stojakovic who takes the promotion up from Lokomotiva - Stojakovic isn’t the most clinical in the world, but he is all action acoss the frontline and it’ll be fun to see how he adapts to a more dominant side. He is only the third player Croatian clubs have paid a fee for this summer. Lokomotiva are likely to replace him with Mirko Maric.

Niko Jankovic is back at Rijeka - he had been loaned to Slovan Bratislava for 12 months in January with an expectation that he’d be taken permanently but that agreement has been ended prematurely and he’ll be available for Matjaz Kek this season. Rijeka will be facing Derry in their first European tie of the season.

Iker Pozo has left Gorica to Rodina Moscow for up to 1.9 million euros. Kevin Custovic has joined them after leaving Poland.

Luka Modric - remember him? Well, it looks like he’ll be playing on another year with a shorter continuation in the national team, likely retiring from Croatia at Poljud vs the World Champions Spain in October.

If you want to dodge work, may I suggest that doing so while playing in goals in the fourth tier of Croatian football isn’t the best thing to do. One person got fined 600 euros for exactly that - playing 90 minutes in two games while being off from work sick.

Osman Hadzikic missed the World Cup but has got a move regardless - he’s leaving Slaven Belupo for Honved.

Share

Bosnia

Borac drop to the Conference League after getting taken apart 4-0 by Levski in Sofia. They have Petrocub next.

Sarajevo were knocked out of Europe by Inter Turku of Finland after a 2-1 loss up north. Velez did, however, progress to the next round after beating Milsami in their Conference League tie.

Mato Stanic, captain of Siroki Brijeg, has left to join Atyrau in Kazakhstan. Stanic had made 141 appearances during his time in the town.

Tarik Muharemovic completed his move away from Sassuolo - to Leeds. In spite of interest from Juventus and other Italian clubs, he’s made the move to Yorkshire.

Zeljeznicar have been busy - GK Angel Jimenez, Afonso Vitorino and Yacouba Dabo have all joined over the past couple of days.

Serbia

Crvena Zvezda will face Larne in their Champions League bow this term. Partizan’s will be vs UNA Strassen of Luxembourg.

Zvezda have brought Osman Bukari back to the club - the winger is available for the Larne tie, albeit has had a difficult couple of years since leaving Belgrade. On the move also is keeper Omri Glazer who returns to Israel.

Zvezda opened up their defence with a 5-0 thrashing of promoted Macva. 5-0 flattered Macva who conceded from crosses each time and created 0.01xg all game, one of the most inept attacking performances imaginable. The other promoted side, Zemun, however, took a point from Partizan with a 2-2 draw in a game we can’t yet decide who it tells us more about save that Partizan’s defending was rotten. Vanja Dragojevic wasn’t part of Partizan’s squad - he’s in Glasgow finalising a move to Rangers.

Luka Izderic impressed for Radnicki Nis but couldn’t prevent Zeleznicar from beating them on the opening day - Zeleznicar have added to their side as well with Christian Tchouante. Ivan Davidovic got the goal of the weekend as the winner for Novi Pazar as they should have beaten Radnicki Kragujevac far more comfortably than they did - Hasan Hilu will be joining up with Feda Dudic’s side imminently.

Darko Stojanovic also has claims to the goal of the weekend from Radnik’s 1-1 draw vs Mladost. The skyscraper Stefan Sapic scored the only goal vs his former club as IMT defeated Cukaricki.

The weekend surrounded off with perhaps the most impressive result of the weekend as Vojvodina bounced back from their Europa League exit to Ferencvaros by thrashing OFK 4-0.

After Partizan’s game, quite a few people were rather energised - Nemanja Matic (yes, that one - he own’s Jedinstvo Ub, at whose stadium Zemun were hosting) called Partizan fans “Belgrade cattle”. Sasa Ilic was also pretty unhappy with his team.

Partizan have paid off 1.6 million of their debt to players and staff to help pass the first set of UEFA monitoring this season. Anyone keeping track may notice that their debt value is higher than the salary value of players/staff currently on the books. But, later in the week, they were slapped with a registration ban by FIFA after CAS ordered them to pay 140,000 euros to a scout who had worked for them covering South America. Further fallout has also come from the refusal of youth players to go to Teleoptik - they’re going to Spain instead. One of those is Dusan Jovanovic who had originally gone on loan to Macva but did two training sessions, noped out of the club without explanation and is now in Alaves.

Cukaricki have brought in Fiorin Durmishaj to play up front - he has one full international cap for Greece.

Subscribe now

Montenegro

Every side was in trouble last time and, this time, every side got knocked out - Sutjeska get a second chance in the Conference League after dropping out of the Champions League vs Kairat but Decic lost to Liepaja, Zalgiris easily finished off Petrovac and, perhaps most embarrassingly, Mornar went from level on aggregate to a 4-2 loss after conceding TWO penalties in second half injury time to Andorra’s AC Escalades.

Editorially, CG Fudbal (basically, the only decent local outlet) were not happy.

Kosovo

Drama fans loved it, Drita fans less so as they were knocked out of the Champions league by Kauno Zalgiris after a VAR awarded penalty in second half injury time sent them to a 4-3 loss over the tie.

Malisheva were 2-1 down going into their second leg at home vs Vllaznia in the Conference League - then went and won 5-0! They’ve got Hibs next.

Having gone into their second leg on 0-0, Ballkani won at home to progress beyond Connah’s Quay Nomads.

Luan Leite da Silva has joined Dukagjini - he’s out of the Red Bull academy but was last at Hertha Wels.

North Macedonia

In spite of an impressive second leg win, Vardar were KOd from the Champions League by KuPS. Also defeated were Sileks, who were knocked out of Europe by Dinamo Minsk on Penalties. Shkendija also progressed but they were already 5–0 up after their first leg vs Europa so no shocks there - they’ve got Slovenia’s Bravo next up.

Share

It’s a purely symbolic number but it’s the one that, a few months from now, one team may have achieved. A decade of dominance. A dynasty from the Marakana. Whatever slogan you want to stick on the season for them, they may end this season as a Zlata Zvezda and not just a Crvena one.

Housekeeping note

Last season saw four teams relegated, most notably TSC Backa Topola as the league dropped down from 16 sides to 14 on its way to 12 sides next time around. The important note on that is that that means four teams will be getting relegated this season also.

Share

What that means in practice, because the split has been maintained, is that the league will split in two after each side has played each other twice (26 games) and then will split into a top six and a bottom eight who then play each other in what will end up a 31 or 33 game season depending on where things are in March. Basically, it’s the same system as last season shoehorned into a slightly smaller amount of clubs. As a result, we’ll split the league into three groups for the purposes of the preview - the title challenger(s), the top six hopefuls and everyone else looking to avoid relegation.

The Title Challenger(s)

Going for that decade of gold is, of course, Crvena Zvezda. We’re at a point where talking about them is less coming up with a reason for them to succeed and more asking if there’s any reason they wouldn’t. Unlike the last couple of seasons, however, there’s something that can actually be said about that.

I’m not really one for being convinced that Dejan Stankovic is all he’s cracked up to be as a manager. Zvezda’s form at the end of the season wasn’t blistering and Vojvodina did catch up some ground after the split, albeit the league was well and truly over by that point anyway. Form under him wasn’t really improved from what they’d had in the first half of the season under Vladan Milojevic. Zvezda’s pre-season form has been, at best, meh, and there are some roles in the squad which are a little short - such as at left back with Adem Avdic out long term. The attacking core of the squad is old in Mirko Ivanic (who is injury prone), Aleksandar Katai and Marko Arnautovic and there likely does need to be an ushering in of new blood in certain areas of the side. Let’s not kid ourselves that that’s a recipe for disaster, though, Zvezda have vastly more about them than anyone else and if they access the Champions League League Phase, the sort of money to automatically correct any issues they may come across. They do have absurdly talented youngster Vasilije Kostov and even those a little less coveted like Jovan Sljivic, Vladimir Lucic or Stefan Gudelj would walk into any other starting line up in the league.

Leading the charge to stop them will, of course, not be their eternal rivals, Partizan. The rotted husk of that club is still is the midst of a historically massive downsizing as a result of their historically massive debt levels. The good news? They’ve probably shaken about 20 million of debt over the past year. The bad news? That’s nowhere near half of the total. The result is more selling of the family silver - Andrej Kostic went to Milan earlier this year while Vanja Dragojevic and Ognjen Ugresic are likely to be moving on very swiftly. The replacements are iffy - Erik Kojzek comes in on loan up front who has a lot of potential but a lot of injury risk. Milan Aleksic, poster boy of the absolute incompetence that got Partizan into financial disgrace when they let almost every youth product go, returns on loan to shore up the midfield. Club legend Sasa Ilic takes over as manager but with nothing especially convincing on his coaching CV, a side that will be lower on talent by necessity and one that fell off a cliff towards the end of last season, it’s impossible to have faith that they will be a serious contender at the top but, on reputation alone, you editorially have to include them here.

Vojvodina, however… Vosa finished second last term, overhauling Partizan after the break and it is fair to say that they are throwing everything at this season. It’s a massive shame that they’ve landed horrid Europa League draws because they’ve the talent in the squad to make a League Phase and beyond (but Ferencvaros and Ajax being in the way doesn’t help).

I’m no Nardin Malahusejinovic fan up front - there are better big lumps at this level - but bringing in Dejan Zukic, Ifet Dakovac and Stefan Mitrovic gives them a midfield unit that is, dare I say it, not far from being the equal of Crvena Zvezda. They do have a weak area at centre back and their striking ranks are definitely not title contending but every other area of the field is. Both full back areas are well stocked and Randelovic is a fine winger at this level on the right. Those midfield additions complement what’s already there with Njegos Petrovic holding. If we’re being honest - it’d be a surprise were Vojvodina not to be in the top two.

Subscribe now

Top Six Hopefuls

Zeleznicar did magnificently last season to reach European football and, in the column of pros and cons, still having Radomir Kokovic in charge is a huge Pro. The problem is that that’s about the only person they’ve been able to keep a hold of. Stefan Prigic went to Plzen, Branislav Knezevic went to Korea, Sylvester Jasper is negotiating his move away which leaves Marko Milikic in the centre of defence as the one big player that’s not said their goodbyes. Reinvestments have been in young talent such as Norwich’s Billy Gee and Luzern’s Nemanja Zaric while the big money get of David Ankeye is interesting for all fans of strikers who don’t seem to score very much. This will be a good season if they can avoid the bottom eight.

Crvena Zvezda’s reserves, also known as OFK Belgrade (arguably Serbia’s most historic of clubs rendered into a modern day puppet) are a fine one to watch because you do get to see some fine players on the up - Vuk Draskic in goals will draw a lot of eyes this term getting his chance on loan. Throw on Andrej Pavlovic, Aleksej Vukicevic, Aleksa Cvetkovic and Ethan Horad, they’re a side you want to scout. Tjay de Barr is an interesting get as he’s definitely better than the last time he stepped outside Gibraltar. They should be in the mix.

Novi Pazar are the other side of this set who are defending a high placement but there’s a bit of the yikes about their business this summer, losing a bit of everything over the summer and replacing it which what feels a bit less of everything. With a winless pre-season vs sides smaller than them, They’re possibly one to be a little concerned about and definitely look short in midfield. That said, any side sticking Fejsal Mulic up front is always going to be alright in my book and no defender will enjoy coming up against that man mountain.

Two sides looking for a comeback this term will be Cukaricki and Radnicki Kragujevac. Cuka have made good money this summer selling Filip Matijasevic to RB Salzburg and Slobodan Tedic to Russia and, beyond doubt, they will have some 17yo whizz-kid to impress in the pipeline. Coby Ebere is a very fun get who was a prisoner of fate at Everton who couldn’t work out where to play him - in Serbia, where his power will come to the fore, he could kick on and through the league quickly.Andrej Bajovic is a more certain bet and likely a long term replacement for Marko Docic at the base of the midfield.

In Kragujevac, they’ve gone back to the future in returning Feda Dudic to his post as Head Coach. Their business looks good, not least giving Uros Sremcevic a chance on loan with Ilija Babic which feels like a good partnership. For a side whose issue last term was in attack, they have gone and gotten themselves a lot of attackers which at least shows they know what the problem was.

Avoiding the Drop

Mladost are a big hmm this season. They just avoided relegation last term but could easily be in the previous category here because there were reasons for that - specifically, losing Ognjen Bondzulic to long term injury early in the season. Having him back is worth a few points by itself once he’s at full fitness (though it may be spring we see him to effective purpose) and keeping Jovan Ciric is a big bonus. They’re better on paper than last season, have no doubt.

The “big” club down here are Radnicki Nis who tend to be hovering around trouble most seasons nowadays. They got good money for Dusan Pavlovic and will see Kwaku Bonsu Osei as their main reinforcement as well as the loan for Nikola Zecevic. Much of the rest of the business has been a bit punt-y in nature and they’ll be looking over their shoulder again.

IMT’s chances of success are this - have they or have they not sold Vasilije Novicic? If they haven’t, they’ll be fine. If they have, they’ve a lot of work on. They’ve brought no-one in yet this summer so that question feels even more important than it should.

Radnik managed the top half last season but, bearing in mind that there’s underperformance elsewhere to be put in that, it’s fair to expect them to drop further down the table this season. Like IMT, they’re little changed from last term with Rafael Pontelo the main get at the back.

Which leaves Macva and Zemun, both promoted after a few years outside the top flight but the nature of the league set up this season means the deck is massively stacked against them to stay up - it’s a stronger league and there continues to be more relegation spots than normal. Zemun are marginally the better of the two, but both are a way off what it will take to have four sides below them.

Well, you can’t say they didn’t get it. At Ljudski vrt, they’ve welcomed back the legendary Zlatko Zahovic as Sporting Director for a second spell and he’s got the band back together bringing Darko Milanic back as head coach. Olimpija, meanwhile, have backed Miso Brecko, whose coaching experience has solely been in the national team’s youth ranks to take the step up to senior football. But they’ve all got to try to catch up to Celje who wrapped the title up early and strolled over the line in spring. What comes next…

(Transfers are free unless stated, are in euros and just cover the senior players)

Share

Celje - Last season: Champions

Head Coach - Vitor Campelos

Ins - Veton Tusha (LW, Drita, 250k), Alpha Diounkou (RB, Omonoia), Pijus Sirvys (RB, Maribor), Yaya Dukuly (RW, Adelaide Utd), Leo Koutris (LB, Pogon), Ziga Frelih (GK, Spartak Trnava), Matic Ivansek (RW, Bravo)

Outs - Zan Karnicnik (RB, Maribor), Juanjo Nieto (RB, Castellon), Nikita Iosifov (unattached)

If all goes well, this season marks Celje’s promotion from a national to a regional force. From a club that wins the league every so often to a club becoming a dynasty like Dinamo Zagreb or Crvena Zvezda. They won the league last season at a canter. They’ve had two extremely successful European seasons on the bounce reaching the latter stages of the Conference League twice on the spin and their season will be, for the first time, judged in part on what they do before September begins and what European competition they play in - and that’s a “which” league phase and not a “if there’s a” league phase.

There’s plenty of reason to expect Celje to be stronger. For one, last season had injuries and those are gone - coming into a season with a fully prepped Mark Zabukovnik, Armandas Kucys and Simon Sluga is a huge bonus. The additions give Celje three GKs of a standard to start week in, week out at their competitors, a pair of wingers who both have upside and who both offer slightly different things (Dukuly sheer pace and power, Tusha inversion and trickiness) and, with Zabukovnik back fit, the midfield as whole comes with considerably more balance to it. Their attacking ranks possess not just quality, but quality in incredible depth and, crucially, the sort of depth that means you can easily run on with two competitions and not feel it too much - Armandas Kucys tired from Thursday, well there’s experienced poacher Matej Poplatnik to take over on the Sunday. Even taking out Zan Karnicnik, they’ve replaced well. They are, quite simply, a side without a weakness at this level - being picky, the centre back area is a level below other areas of the squad but it’s still a level above everyone else.

Is there a logical argument to say Celje won’t win a second successive title? Yes - but it’s not an argument you’ll find in Celje…

Koper - Last season: 2nd

Head Coach - Zoran Zeljkovic

Ins - Stefano Surdanovic (CM, Zrinjski), Alvaro Roncal (RB, Rudar Prijedor), Filip Backulja (CB, Novi Pazar), Giuseppe Agyemang (LB, Novara), Bangaly Diawata (CM, Flamurtari)

Outs - Maj Mittendorfer (CB, Yelimay), Mark Pabai (RB, De Graafschap), Metod Jurhar (GK, Voluntari), Brian Oddei, Felipe Curcio, Nik Omladic, Abdoulaye Dabo (all unattached)

…and it’s probably not an argument you’ll find in Koper either. Make no mistake, there’s plenty of good at Koper and they continue to slowly but surely improve, as they have done for the past couple of seasons, but there’s also multiple reasons to be wary. Josip Ilicic remains at the club but sort of unofficially and the vultures are circling around multiple other players - it’s be a surprise if Koper left the summer window with all of Isaac Matondo, Kamil Manseri and Leo Rimac and all three could make them very handy fees.

But perhaps the concerning thing is that taking Mittendorfer and Pabai out of the backline takes perhaps their two most defensively minded and defensively competent players out of the reckoning. For a side who were perhaps uncharacteristically solid last term, that’s not a thing I like to see though their friendly form has been pretty good and Backulja and Roncal are solid replacements, with Surdanovic offering a bit more of a shield in the midfield. Unquestionably, they’re a keeper short - and that keeper would likely be a starter.

Koper as of right here, right now do have the strength to make a run at Europe this season because they absolutely have enough in attack to blow sides away (and it’s an attack still improving), even if they are weaker at the back. But the Koper of right here, right now won’t be the Koper of six weeks from now and, with that in mind, it’s hard to think they could challenge Celje at the top.

Subscribe now

Bravo - Last season: 3rd

Head Coach - Ales Arnol

Ins - Jon Ficko (LM, Primorje), Maj Fogec (LB, Primorje), Okpo Masie (LW, Caen), Matjaz Rozman (GK, Aluminij), Ibrahim Halilou (CB, Lyon), James Arinza (CM, Midtjylland), Jakob Brunnhofer (loan - CB, Rapid Wien)

Outs - Fallou Faye (DM, Slovan Liberec, 1m), Venuste Baboula (LW, Slovan Liberec, 700k), Martin Pecar (CF, Tenerife), Matic Ivansek (RW, Celje), Uros Likar (GK, Neuchatel Xamax), Kenan Toibibou (CB, Cadiz), Nathan Monzango (CB, Gabala)

When it comes to clubs gradually improving over a few seasons, the inexorable rise of Bravo continued apace last term and, let’s be clear, there’s no chance anyone will play Bravo this season and not know they’ve been in a game.

At the same time, even though player trading is how the club survives, the exodus this summer is a hell of a lot more substantial than in previous seasons. Pecar is a star, pure and simple, Baboula is one of the most explosive players I’ve ever seen, Faye was very solid last term and, really, there’s no-one in that outs section that you don’t look at and think “huh, they’ll take some replacing”.

I don’t think they’ve done badly at it. I won’t profess to being an expert on the French players but they come from a step higher in the food chain than where Faye and Baboula came from and Bravo are so good at polishing French players up a bit that you wouldn’t doubt they’ll be a success. Ficko and Fogec aren’t bad pick-ups from a Primorje side that underperformed to be relegated last term and there’s more to get from both which Bravo, generally, do.

Bravo, perhaps more than any other side in the division, are a devil to predict. Certainly they, more than Koper, are vulnerable to changing fortunes at the next two sides to cover but they’re also vulnerable due to Europe impacting their squad depth and vulnerable not due to the squad turnover, but that those turned over were so important.

Olimpija Ljubljana - Last season: 4th

Head Coach - Miso Brecko

Ins - Marvin Cuni (CF, Rubin, loan), Federico Rose (CF, Mura, 150k), Xande (LW, Spartak Varna), Davit Kobouri (CB, Ujpest), Luis Perea (DM, Arka Gdynia)

Outs - Mateo Acimovic (AM, Las Palmas, 250k), Ahmet Muhamedbegovic (CB, Dynamo Dresden), Jasmin Kurtic (CM, Brinje), Jurgen Celhaka (DM, Muglaspor), Agustin Doffo, Diogo Pinto, Alex Blanco, Pedro Lucas, Reda Boultam, Vall Jankovic (all unattached)

If any side in the league can just be defined by their opening game to a season, Olimpija kicking off the season hosting city rivals Bravo feels like it. The first of two sides where last season was a big issue. Olimpija missing Europe a season after winning the title was a surprise but was a done deal in the early season, especially after the appointment of Erwin van de Looi - an appointment arguably the worst in Olimpija’s history which, given they used to be run by Milan Mandaric, is a very long list of coaches. Fede Bessone recovered things slightly but it’s fair to say that Olimpija were never really impressive enough to justify overhauling those ahead of them.

The result is a major squad overhaul. Many of the players in the outs list were extremely good at the club and the backbone of their title the season before and positive European runs. They need an exceptional recruitment over this summer to replace that. Xande is already out long term after injury, they haven’t replaced what they’ve lost in the centre of midfield and, while there’s plenty of talent up front, Antonio Marin is injury prone, Dimitar Mitrovski didn’t justify the outlay last season, Alex Tamm is a very specific sort of talent. In short, they have issues and Miso Brecko certainly has picked a challenging first foray into club management. They’ve very competent at the back, no doubt about that, they will be solid, but will they have the creative outlets to put themselves into title contention where they feel they belong? Will they easily exceed their goals total from last season?

The answer to both is probably no, and what is left is a very competent side, but one that will probably sit at around a goal a game and around that for concessions too - a recipe for fourth, perhaps. A recipe to tackle Celje? Perhaps not.

Share

Maribor - Last season: 5th

Head Coach - Darko Milanic

Ins - Zan Karnicnik (RB, Celje), Behar Feta (RW, Aluminij), Cluade Goncalves (DM, Legia), Zan Jevsenak (DM, Pisa), Miha Blazic (CB, Kalba), Ivan Lainovic (GK, Cukaricki), Jan Mlakar (ST, Pisa, Loan)

Outs - Pijus Sirvys (RB, Celje), Jan Repas (CM, AEK Larnaca), El Arbi Hilal Soudani (RW, Kustosija), Orphe Mbina (CF, Sabah), Sheyi Ojo, Luka Krajnc, James Furlong (all unattached)

Olimpiha have gone for an overhaul, Maribor have gone for a full on regime change. The dream team of the 2010s of Zlatko Zahovic as Sporting Director and Darko Milanic as Head Coach return so must success inevitably follow, much as it did for almost the whole decade?

It’s difficult to divorce now and then so, to focus on then. Zahovic left the club under a cloud based on his ludicrous implied threats to a journalist that made his role and the FA’s willingness to tolerate his antics untenable. In the interim, Zahovic has been through a couple of health scares and does seem to be a bit of a reformed character on the back of his experiences since Maribor (albeit, the old bluster is back a little with a camera in front of him). In the interim, Milanic struggled to keep a role and it’s hard to place him as coming here in a better place. It’s equally important to note that they both left as their golden age had well and truly decomposed to a husk - a side with not enough in attack, a side that aged and a side that was a tough watch.

So getting the band back together may be a “be careful what you wish for” and the players brought in are a mix of experience and youth - Zan Karnicnik is the highlight symbolically nicking your title rivals’ captain always makes a mark but Claude Golcalves is perhaps the best pick-up from a sense of balance. Jan Mlakar has a LOT to prove and in the light of thim being a replacement for rather than a complement to Benjamin Tetteh means that the goalscoring touch he’s been missing for a few seasons has to come back. With no Jan Repas at the club, the creativity in the centre hasn’t been replaced, albeit they’ve added solidity. The question that hangs over them is this - how much did they underperform last season? There’s certainly more to get out of this group but it needs to be gotten out of them all at once and the concern would be that if Mlakar’s touch doesn’t come back quickly, if they don’t replace the creativity in the centre, if sides mark well and negate their undoubted talent in wide areas… Maribor simply have a lot of unknowns about them and it’s enough to think they won’t challenge Celje. But Acun Ilicali as owner and Zlatko Zahovic as Sporting Director will expect nothing less.

Radomlje - Last season: 6th

Head Coach - Ivan Vukomanovic

Ins - Bruno Burcul (DM, Rijeka), Antonio Bosec (RB, Vukoar), Aleksa Paic (CB, Jedinstvo Ub)

Outs - Matej Mamic (RB, Voluntari), Stanislav Krapukhin (CF, Tabor Sezana)

The real losses, by the by, aren’t in that Outs section - Radomlje did well to rehabilitate Nikola Jojic last season, did well to physically bring Mihael Zaper back to fitness (both on loans) and Jugoslav Trencovski was a revelation as head coach to ensure Radomlje were never in any bother of relegation.

This side, in terms purely of the players permanently at the club, are probably better than last term - many of their side are on the upswing in their age profiles and those defensive gets are good and may mean they’re actually one of the better teams in the division in a couple of positions. Vukomanovic is an impressive coaching hire who has done reasonably well in each role he’s had and hung around in those places for more than just a few months as well. Radomlje are a couple of players short and it would make sense for them to go to their regular hook up with Hajduk and bring in a good prospect on loan. Do that well, and there’s no reason to think they’ll be in trouble.

Aluminij - Last season: 7th, Cup Winners

Head Coach - Jura Arsic

Ins - Dino Simunic (CB, Karlovac), Murat Bajraj (ST, Beltinci), Matija Boben (CB, Celje), Bede Osuji (ST, Punjab), Vito Tezak (CB, Varazdin), Petar Petrisko (LW, Koper), Maj Blazic (CM, Empoli)

Outs - Behar Feta (RW, Maribor), Aleksandar Zeljkovic (CB, Mura), Filip Kosi (LB, Sarajevo), Omar Kocar (DM, Niepolomice), Rok Maher (CM, Brinje), Matjaz Rozman (GK, Bravo), Emir Saitoski (RW, Gwangju), Marko Simonic (DM, Bravo), Stefanos Evangelou, Amir Feratovic, Gasper Pecnik, Uros Korun (all unattached)

Securing their first major silverware last term was huge and, in numbers alone, their squad size is one of the larger ones in the division so, with still having Jura Arsic, they’ve reason to look upwards. If you needed an idea of their quality, going to Moldova against Sheriff Tiraspol in the Europa League and perhaps being slightly unfortunate to leave with only a draw tells you - this is not a bad side. Vid Koderman is an underrated wide man who is rarely ineffective, Matic Vrbanec is as consistent a 7/10 as you could hope for to tick things over in the midfield. If goals were a concern, then Bede Osuji is as assured a few goals a season as you get in the Prva Liga and a presence in the attack who could do a job at some larger clubs while Murat Bajraj scored for fun in the second tier last term. It would take something for them to challenge much further up the table, but I’ve a temptation to mentally put them in the same box as Bravo this season.

Subscribe now

Mura - Last season: 8th

Head Coach - Mitja Morec

Ins - Aleksandar Zeljkovic (CB, Aluminij), Alen Kozar (DM, Paralimni), Simun Butic (RW, Rijeka, Loan), Kenan Kurtovic (CF, Kasimpasa, loan back after sale), Marko Ascic (ST, Rijeka, Loan), Aljaz Zalaznik (CM, Koper)

Outs - Rapha Hofer (LB, Austria Salzburg), Edvin Krupic (CM, Jesenice), Aljaz Antolin, Nejc Dermastija, Vanja Kulenovic (all unattached)

Mura have been, for various reasons, circling the drain the past couple of seasons. Well supported, since they won the title in 2021, they’ve Sideshow Bobbed from rake to rake to find themselves in this season where they aren’t in the most stable of financial positions and helped in recruitment by them having Matjaz Kek Jr on staff asking his father for loans - though Simun Butic is due taking a leap forward.

Mura have a lot of issues - the midfield has plenty of class in it but they’re all the wrong side of 30 and the wrong side of injuries like Luka Bobicanec. The attacking options… aren’t good and it’s no wonder they were the lowest scorers of the league that didn’t get relegated last term (by some way). Defensively they lack depth and the goalkeeping options don’t impress. Mura must surely still be a work in progress because, if they’re not, circling the drain will become going down it sooner or later.

Brinje Grosuplje - Last season: Promoted as Champions from Druga Liga

Head Coach - Goran Markovic

Ins - Tin Levanic (CM, Varazdin), Enej Marsetic (LW, Bistrica), Rok Maher (CM, Aluminij), Jasmin Kurtic (CM, Olimpija), Vuk Vlahovic (LW, Dinamo Zagreb)

Outs - Gasper Centre (CF, Beltinci), Marcel Kene, Lazar Ikac, Ajdin Dergic, Amin Tahiri, Marko Dimintrijevic (All unattached)

Last season, Brinje did for Olimpija, Maribor and Radomlje in the Cup as they were losing finalists so this is a side who, over 90 minutes, can push any side in the top flight. I don’t dislike their business either - Enej Marsetic is overdue another go at this level, Rok Maher is a canny pick up (as is Kurtic’s experience) to go alongside Maj Roric in the centre of the midfield. Like any promoted side, you have to ask - can they score and can they keep them out - especially as their record with Nafta last term was so close.

To both, they’ve had a miserable preseason (albeit, they’ve taken some tough asks on) and they’ve a tough open to the season starting away to Radomlje before going to Maribor and hosting Koper which limits their opportunity to get some momentum. They’ve enough about them to be good in possession and enough about them to be good out wide so should be able to create at this level. We need to see a senior striker come in (and there’s enough on the market of free agents to get) for them to look a bit more secure at this level.

Nafta - Last season: Promoted via playoff vs Primorje

Head Coach - Gonzalo Escudero

Ins - Andre Ferreira (RB, ZTE), Divaio Bobson (AM, ZTE, loan), Andrej Micic (LW, Osijek)

Outs - Josip Marinic (DM, Tabor Sezana), Gregor Bajde, Luka Verbic, Marcos Tavares Jr (all unattached)

Last time Nafta came up, they signed an amount of players that probably qualifies as a horde. This time, they come up with a new link to ZTE, with the manager from ZTE’s reserves and with a transfer policy that, as some of those outs show, is devoid of a lot of top tier nous. Amadej Marosa is a solid striker, but he’s a workrate guy not a scoring lots of goals guy. The back line is OK but has no depth at all. Similarly to Brinje, they come in on the back of a horrible preseason and one that was necessarily late starting due to promotion only being confirmed after the playoff and the squad looks like one that’s not had enough time spent on it.

So, now for the bit to screenshot and have a go at me at the end of the season for.

1 - Celje

2 - Maribor

3 - Koper

4 - Olimpija

5 - Aluminij

6 - Bravo

7 - Radomlje

8 - Brinje

9 - Mura

10 - Nafta

I can’t see past Celje - I do believe it’ll be closer than last term but Maribor and Olimpija both have just too much ground to attempt to catch up. Koper and Bravo are both a little worse than last term and I think it’s Aluminij who could surprise things a little pushing for Europe in the league rather than the cup this season. At the bottom, Mura need a strikeforce, Brinje need a sprinkling of quality (aka give Milan Tucic his bag) but Nafta need about half a squad and that’s the difference maker at the bottom right now.

Share

Share

Slovenia

Aluminij’s European bow ended with an impressive 0-0 draw against Sheriff Tiraspol. They may now be favouites to progress to the next stage of the Europa League.

Swapsies in Slovenia - Celje have picked up former Maribor player and Lithuania international Pijus Sirvys but the big one is Zan Karnicnik to Maribor. The Slovenia international left Celje and was expected to go to make bank abroad but has taken a lower salary to stay in Slovenia and be the symbolic centrepiece of the Zahovic resurrection.

But that’s not all - Celje have brought in Aussie Yaya Dukuly who comes from Adelaide United on a three year deal. Dukuly is a left footed winger who has been one of the better players in A-League, was previously at Reims and is having a second go at Europe. They’ve also added right back Alpha Dionkou from Omonia - he’d come through the Man City academy.

One player who won’t be at Maribor next term will be Oscar Zambrano. Zambrano had joined Maribor *WINK* from LDU Quito after a loan at Hull which had been curtailed by a doping ban but is now joining the parent club in Hull who clearly used Maribor just to get a player reps on the back of missing a year.

While Josip Ilicic hasn’t signed a new deal at Koper, he is still training with the side and is probably best described as just being at the club on a rolling deal.

Mura have brought in Marko Ascic on loan from Rijeka - he’s a striker originally from the Slaven Belupo system. And there’s more loans in the east as Nafta have brought in Divaio Bobson and Andre Ferreira from ZTE on loan

Croatia

Hajduk won in Europe?! Why, yes - 2-0 over Zilina at Poljud with some cracking goals from Brajkovic and Dalisson.

You all know the national team situation at this point - after nine years, on Wednesday, Zlatko Dalic resigned as head coach of Croatia. While he is expected to find work quickly, the original rumour that it’d be in the Middle East may be out of date as multiple other nations have been in touch with him since resigning to see if he’d like to take over.

Slaven Bilic was announced earlier today as the new head coach with a contract to Euro 2028. He’s already indicated he’ll be talking to Luka Modric about potentially continuing playing for the national team.

Broke: The summer window. Woke: The January window. That’s the feeling at Maksimir after agreeing a pre-contract with Junior Brumado of Midtjylland who’ll join in the winter.

They’ve been selling too - Marko Soldo has left for Sigma Olomouc and GK Niko Cavlina is away on loan to Poland.

Internally at Dinamo, Cardoso Varela, the Portuguese starlet, has been moved to the second team and has switched agent from Andy Bara. Andy Bara wasn’t happy - stating he dropped Varela because of attitude issues, alleging (amongst other things) that he fell asleep during training on multiple occasions.

Gorica are on the brink of confirming a few signings - expect Ivan Bozic, Renato Josipovic and Marijan Cabraja amongst others.

Osijek have seen fan protests after threatening to sack Mario Mihic. Mihic, the club’s media spokesperson, has been part of the club since 2000 and hasn’t missed a game in that time but was threatened with dismissal for ‘working against the club’s interests’ after publishing the result of a behind closed doors friendly. Hundreds of fans turned up at the Opus Arena to protest against the decision by club head Aleksandra Vegh. Mihic is now officially on sick leave. Someone ata Osijek whose employment status isn’t up in the air is Vito Caic, who has signed following his season on loan at Vukovar last term.

Subscribe now

Bosnia

Two 1-1 draws in Europe this week when Sarajevo hosted Inter Turku and Velez Mostar hosted Milsami with the Bosnian goals both equalisers in second half injury time.

Borac’s first leg in the Champions League ended 1-1 vs Levski Sofia - Luka Juricic scored from the spot to put Borac in the lead before Armstrong Oko-Flex equalised. Borac were arguably unlucky to not play 85 mins vs ten men as Nikola Serafimov’s lunge to give away the penalty was ridiculous (1). The game had a little bit of controversy due to some minor fan issues but because it was the first game featuring the new roof on their East Stand. The problem is that the roof isn’t actually allowed to be used nor did Borac apply to actually build the thing in the first place - the game also saw Borac’s attendance record broken. The club insist it was safe but did house the VIPs in another stand. UEFA are aware.

Siroki Brijeg have brought in plenty - Mario Mourelo del Huerto arrives after leaving Santa Coloma in Andorra, David Fernandez Virgili from Lokomotiva (previously of… Santa Coloma) and finally Luizinho, a Brazilian striker last at Karmiotissa.

Celik have been busy prepping after promotion - latest to sign up is Nemanja Tomasevic, who has joined after leaving his club in Iran for obvious reasons.

Zrinjski have brought in Hamza Ljukovac from Istanbul Basaksehir. The 21yo was a Sarajevo youth product before moving to Turkey in 2024, but has spent the interim on loans.

Two internationals have been on the move from Germany - Haris Tabakovic to RB Salzburg and Nikola Vasilj to Al Diriyah in Saudi Arabia.

Zinedin Smajlovic has indicated he will commit to Bosnia internationally

Serbia

Vojvodina lost their first leg in the Europa League to Ferencvaros 2-1 - a misplaced pass from Njegos Petrovic led to Fradi’s winner but Vosa are more than in it going into the second leg.

Partizan’s friendly vs Neftchi was stopped for ten minutes after descending into a benches clearing brawl after Stefan Milic took down Basala Sambu. Sambu’s roll from tackle into fight was a work of art.

There was also beef behind the scenes as two returners to Partizan from Serbia’s U19 campaign refused to accept being sent down to the farm team Teleoptik. They’re currently not training. Part of Makevic’s exclusion there will be the loan in of Timothy Ouma from Slavia Prague.

Sylvester Jasper was interviewed for Mozzart and had this to say about the quality of side in the Superliga: “I think that, based on everything I’ve seen, Red Star could play in the Premier League. Vojvodina, Partizan, my team (Železničar) and maybe Novi Pazar were in the Championship. Not in the top, but in the bottom half of the table, while the other clubs would compete in League 1.”

Share

Montenegro

Sutjeska fell to a close 2-1 loss in basically Asia to Kairat Almaty in their Champions League first leg. All sides lost in the Conference League - Mornar 2-1 in Andorra, Decic 1-0 to ten man Liepaja and Petrovac 3-1 at home to Zalgiris Kaunas (though Nemanja Carevic’s goal for Petrovac is a banger). That’s four games, four defeats and zero coefficient points.

Mornar have added Abderahmane Soussi. The Moroccan striker was last at Al Dhafra in the UAE.

Kosovo

Drita drew their Champions League QR1 first leg vs Kauno Zalgiris 1-1 in Lithuania - Blerim Krasniqi got the equaliser for the Kosovan champs after they took a while to get going.

In the Conference League, Ballkani played a 0-0 in Wales against Connah’s Quay Nomads who, nomadically, always play their European games the other side of Wales to Connah’s Quay.

Malisheva lost the first leg of their Dardanian Derby against Vllaznia 2-1 after taking the lead in the third minute.

North Macedonia

Vardar were beaten 2-0 at home in their Champions League QR1 first leg by KuPS and went down to ten after Nemanja Bosancic was booked twice in 5 minutes in the second half.

In the Conference League, Shkendija battered Gibraltar’s Europa 5-0 on the rock while Sileks impressed in beating Dinamo Minsk 1-0 in Belarus.

1 - I’d like to point out that I generally write this throughout the week bit by bit which means things in here shift about a little bit as I go through multiple drafts. I note this as more than one draft of this had me accidentally include Borac in the Serbia section which is not a mistake I’d have gotten away with publishing!

Luka Modric has gone, albeit a charm offensive is planned. Ivan Perisic says he’ll carry on but is still 37 so can’t go on too much longer. Multiple players are not just the wrong side of 30 but the wrong side of 35 or having their bodies already starting to give up. Zlatko Dalic has chosen to depart the Croatian coaching staff ending not just a nine year reign but a nine year era of unprecedented success. While the departure from the World Cup is more reminiscent of the horrible missed opportunities of Croatia at Euro 2016 and other such tournaments, it is very much the exception rather than the norm.

Share

Dalic’s Legacy

The legacy of the past nine years of Dalic in charge can be stated in face value based purely on the achievements of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups - two successive medals are, of course, what sits on the wikipedia page and what everyone decades from now will point at.

It’s not quite all, though, is it? From World Cup prize money alone, Croatia’s success over the past three tournaments has earned the FA somewhere in the region of $75 million. That’s before you add a penny on of sponsorships being more marketable, of general improvements in tv rights around Europe, in merchandising, in attention and in more beyond that.

That money goes places. Most importantly, it goes into bricks and mortar - the rebuilding of Kranjceviceva continues apace which will be swiftly followed by the rebuilding of Maksimir producing the sort of modern stadium that Croatia simply doesn’t have at a size greater than Opus Arena. That money has been invested in youth, has been part of a wider plan to overhaul and improve women’s football, has been used to do things like league reconstruction which has, broadly, brought clubs on a more stable footing financially, created a healthier system below the top flight and rose the tide of quality in the top flight itself.

Travelling back eight years to the World Cup in Russia, the entire lead up to the tournament was not about Dalic or his side or his playstyle or his expectations - it was about Zdravko Mamic. You could not cogently argue that Croatian football is in anything other than a far stronger state in 2026 than it was going to a World Cup under that cloud, one that engulfed all of the prior decade of football in the nation. Croatian football is more stable, more professional, less drama filled, deeper in quality and just, in general, better now than then. If the job of a national team manager was simply to leave the nation’s footballing landscape in a better place than it was before they took over, then Zlatko Dalic succeeded.

From a footballing perspective also, people have a better idea of what Croatian football is or, at least, Dalic-ball has been so successful that it has become Croatian football. It is hard to imagine a Croatia side being anything other than impressive in possession, iron willed, with consistent movement and running for 90 minutes. Having come out of a muddled era from Ante Cacic, who didn’t really gel with his squad, Niko Kovac, who didn’t really gel with Croatia and a series of successive scares in qualifying, Dalic has managed to make reaching tournaments the norm and, even with the expansion of the Euros and World Cup, Croatia have been typically one of the first to book their tickets, becoming a well oiled machine when it comes to organising tournament prep (2). On top of this, he has set clear standards of what he expects from players and, in his defence, those who he has put on the outside looking in for periods such as Nikola Kalinic, Marko Livaja and Luka Sucic have always had cause to regret their decisions because their slots in the squad got filled.

Subscribe now

The Negatives of Dalic

Without wanting to pile on Dalic, it is worth noting that his reign cannot be seen as purely an unqualified success. There are valid criticisms of what he put out on the pitch and some of his squad building that are there to be noted:

• Dalic’s plan B was to do plan A better. In spite of multiple attempts to adapt things, most recently in forcing a 3-4-2-1 that England exploited massively, things always came back to a narrow hybrid 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 that relied on being able to dictate the pace of the game and smother opponents on the ball.

• Save for Mario Mandzukic, who was a factor for only 9 months of Dalić, he was never able to get the most out of any striker he had. That’s in spite of having Andrej Kramaric available throughout his reign and Ante Budimir, both consistently prolific scorers at club level in top five leagues

• In fact, picking on 2026 specifically, there just wasn’t a consistent striker in general with Dalić only really getting use from those roles once using Budimir and then Matanovic from the bench rather than getting a great deal of effectiveness from the striker actually starting the game.

• He could be a little too wedded to things - much of the World Cup squad was built around either the 3-4-2-1 or around Josko Gvardiol being fully fit. The former didn’t work, the latter wasn’t fit and the squad didn’t have the players in it to adapt.

Who’s Next?

It is fair to describe Zlatko Dalic’s departure as well orchestrated. On a personal level, I believe it was always known that Dalic’s preference was not to be involved in the wholesale tearing down and rebuilding of the squad after a series of playing retirements after this (or any previous) tournament - he had made a generation and he would go with it. It’s a perfectly fine opinion to have and, while Dalic was hardly badly paid (somewhere in the region of 2 million euros a year), having a World Cup final on his CV does mean that, on the brink of turning 60, his next job can be one where he makes bank.

Slaven Bilic will (barring something extremely odd happening) take over. On the same day Dalic met the HNS to confirm his departure, Bilic went into the HNS to confirm his acceptance of the job and the delay in announcing him as manager is purely to dot the i’s and cross the t’s when it comes to Bilic’s backroom staff and, save for Vedran Corluka, it’s primarily made up of Bilic’s long time associates in Dean Racunica and Danilo Butorovic amongst others.

Since leaving Croatia the first time, he has jumped about clubs with, I think it’s fair to say, limited success outside of promotion with West Brom and one very good season at West Ham, with most of his appointments lasting under 12 months. However, looking at upsides, Bilic’s role in 2006 was in bringing through young players up from the under 21s and changing the guard in the national team, taking the side to Euro 2008 and being immediately competitive in difficult circumstances. Few people would deny that he is suited to international football due to the added time he has to prepare for games and few would deny he’s a very good motivator.

Unlike Dalic, he’s also a flexible tactician. Last time at Croatia, he swapped between 4-4-2 and 4-2-3-1, was flexible in how the midfield was deployed and, while such flexibility has diminished in the interim, he continued to be willing to switch game plans and surprise opponents with set-up tweaks.

It’s also fair to point out that the last of those criticisms of Dalic - squad construction - isn’t one that applies to Bilic. He likes having two players for every position and the “no proper left backs” issue of this World Cup just isn’t something he’d tolerate. Since his last club role, he’s mainly been punditting but, given he’s quite an obsessive watcher and preparer, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Subscribe now

Cui Bono?

We’ve already heard inklings of who Bilic wants to bring into the side but it’s probably best to slide these into a few separate categories as it may be more task specific than anything else.

Bilic with the holding players

The first name that came out was none other than Dinamo’s Josip Misic. Misic is a 32yo holding midfielder who comes with two caps (in the 2017 China Cup) and is no-nonsense and unfussy as they come and, at this point, is becoming a mini-icon at Maksimir.

Given Bilic is known to be looking at Misic, it’s fair to think about similar players as ones he may also bring in, given that Bilic first time around did, reasonably regularly, play with an out and out holding player such as Ognjen Vukojevic. This is probably good news for Nikola Moro and Kristijan Jakic, who are already in the international set-up, as well as Marko Bulat and Marko Soldo who aren’t but are of the age profile to suggest they could work their way into the reckoning in the next couple of years (3).

Bilic with the free role

Another feature is that Bilic tended to ensure his creative players back in the day weren’t burdened with too much physicality in their role - as you had to with accommodating Niko Kranjcar in the side. Bilic is chatting with Luka Modric to see if he wants to stay on and it wouldn’t be a surprise if a more advanced role was a compromise to use there to keep Modric in the side with Sucic and Baturina around him to do the running. But, looking beyond Modric, those benefiting here will be Toni Fruk and Luka Stojkovic, as well as Lovro Zvonarek, Adriano Jagusic and Fabijan Krivak from the U21s if their club form demands it.

Bilic with picking things Dalic didn’t

WINGERS! Bilic liking having two options in each area means that it’s likely he’d actually pick direct wingers such as Adrian Segecic, who was already around the squad, but it’s also very good news for Michele Sego, who may get included, Marco Pasalic, who may start more often and Marin Soticek. Ivan Perisic isn’t leaving the national set up either, but this will certainly be a transitional era.

FULL-BACKS! Bilic wouldn’t have had a squad that required him to shove Perisic to left back. On one hand, there’s LBs that are around the side like Borna Sosa and Domagoj Bradaric but, on the other, it’s hard not to think that Hajduk’s Simun Hrgovic (pictured) will leap to the top of the queue here. On the opposite flank, Ivan Smolcic has already been considered to be a winner here and you’d imagine Dinamo’s Moris Valincic would fall in that category as well.

Bilic going two up top

Now this IS the most interesting query of the lot. Andrej Kramaric is going under the knife to try to sort abdominal issues and, at 34, Ante Budimir may choose to bow out which means that the upcoming Nations League campaign (Vs Czechs, Spain and England) is going to require at the very least one new striking face in the squad. We can already pencil in Matanovic but everything else is an unknown - Petar Musa’s goalscoring record isn’t that good at international level and Franjo Ivanovic struggled with the step up too. Arguably, the issue is that Croatia have too many similar strikers. The obvious beneficiary is Dion Drena Beljo, whose form in 25/26 is such that he should probably have gone to the US anyway, as well as the aforementioned Ivanovic who may automatically have a chance simply by being able to be a foil for another striker. Matija Frigan, if he plays at club level coming back from serious injury, also has a chance.

The Future

Obviously, looking even further out, if Bilic is able to meet demands and get to 2030, we may be talking about bringing through those in the under 19s now but it’s clear that, of the main potential retirees in the next four years (Kramaric, Modric, Perisic, Budimir, Kovacic, Mario Pasalic of the 2026 squad). Bilic, here, is being considered a fait d’accompli (4) but what’s clear to get across is that those going out do all have obvious replacements. Come 2030, no-one in the defence will be above 32 so all will still very much be in their prime, as will Dominik Livakovic hitting 35. If you swap out Modric and Kovacic for Petar Sucic and Martin Baturina, you still have two players at the very sharp end of the elite of European football.

Whether this appointment is the correct one or not (5), Croatia’s talent pool is absolutely one to be envious of and not one that shows much sign of slowing down. Maintaining a golden age is difficult and meeting the expectations of certain fans, brought up on World Cup Semis, is nigh on impossible. But Bilic takes over a side that will, barring an absolute hatchet job, be at Euro 2028.

And it’s only there where Bilic’s true worth will be tested.

Share

1 - A footnote in the first sentence is a bit decadent but I could hardly get away with not mentioning my view on the two big incidents (and there’s more on the latest Croatian Football pod ep). The penalty concession by Nikola Vlasic is as soft as they get - that’s not to say it’s not technically a foul, it’s to say that it’s the sort of contact that happens on most set piece crosses into a box and isn’t penalised. It certainly falls into the category of “if you’re giving that, you’re giving one every game”. For the ruling out of the late equaliser, my view is similar - technically, it’s an offside but the chip in the ball should not be the deciding factor because, as anyone who watches cricket knows, snicko isn’t a deciding factor in deciding an edge in and of itself because it doesn’t only pick up contact with the ball given a lot of calls see bats hit the ground or hit a pad so snicko alone can’t always be 100%. With that in mind, you surely have to meet two standards - visual deviation of trajectory AND confirmation of contact with snicko. If the latter happens but the former doesn’t you cannot then be 100% sure that the contact has happened due to, well, the laws of physics. Based on the VAR protocol, is not seeing that a ‘clear and obvious error’? No, because it’s absolutely not obvious. Nor is it even clear. On most angles, “contact” isn’t even visible. This isn’t a case of correcting error, it’s a case of re-refereeing an incident to point out an alleged infraction that no-one on the pitch could possibly have given. It is, bluntly, exactly what VAR is not meant to be and that, unlike Rugby, we can’t hear the VAR discussion while the ref is communicating with them is an opaque outlier hurting the validity of rule enforcement. Obviously, I won’t get the tinfoil hat out to claim it’s corruption, but are Croatia justified in feeling that this was an injustice and one of the most egregious screwjobs ever to happen in Canada? Yes. Yes they are.

For what it’s worth, FIFA’s own site states this.

IFAB probably need to have a look because all this is clearly a nonsense. We cannot be in a reality where we can say “If Matanovic was bald, Croatia would be in the last 16”.

2 - Not the first time I’ve pointed this out, but Croatia’s planning and their comms around it is the best in the business. That, a month before the World Cup, you could know in advance their flight plans and itinerary stands in sharp relief to the opaque nature of other nations’ planning. As someone doing things that rely on knowing what’s happening when, I adore the HNS for this.

3 - I’ll note here but there’s a non-zero chance we end up with Misic, Baturina, Sucic and Stojkovic as a midfield for Croatia - aka Dinamo 24/25.

4 - Because he is.

5 - If you’re keeping domestic, he probably is. If Sergej Jakirovic was available, the discussion may be different, but it was really between Bilic and Ivica Olic and there’s not an obvious reason to make Olic move on from the U21s at this point. The HNS have never hired a non-Croat (and Jakirovic, as a Bosnian Croat would keep that going - arguably more so than Niko Kovac did) so there’s not cause to think they’d go abroad for a manager and, to be fair, if they’re not doing it when the potential coaching talent cupboard is relatively bare (as it is now), they’re not doing it any time soon.

Slovenia

Jasmin Kurtic left Olimpija at the end of last season and has joined Brinje, promoted to the top flight for this season. They’ve also added Enej Marsetic from Bistrica.

Zan Karnicnik has left Celje at the end of his contract. His replacement is the 30yo Greek international Leonardo Koutris who joints from Pogon Szczecin and whose most famous moment in football is… err… this nugget.

Guiseppe Agyemang has joined Koper from Novara with captain Maj Mittendorfer leaving the coastal club to try his luck in Kazakhstan.

Jurgen Celhaka is leaving Olimpija - the Albanian holding midfielder is going to Turkey.

After Behar Feta and Miha Blazic, Maribor have brought in Cukaricki’s Ivan Lainovic as their new goalkeeper. Lainovic was on the cusp of breaking into the first team in Belgrade at a club that has been a goalkeeper factory in recent years.

Their big signing over the past week, however, is the return of Jan Mlakar on loan from Pisa. Mlakar hasn’t really been in the goals since leaving Hajduk for Pisa in 2023. HIs last loan saw one goal in fourteen appearances at Amiens. While taking the Pisa, Maribor have also brought in Zan Jevsenak - Jevsenak came through Bravo and left their youth system for Benfica. The lanky holding midfielder has spent the last two season on loans and is a Slovenia U21 international. And just before posting, they’ve confirmed the signing of Claude Goncalves from Poland.

Share

Croatia

Obviously, once there’s white smoke coming out of Zagreb, there’ll be a full rundown on here of what’s going on with the head coach situation at Croatia. Expect news by the end of the week.

Gabrijel Rukavina likely wanted to make a good impression on Matjaz Kek at Rijeka. Instead, afte 15 mins of their second friendly of the season vs Brinje, he got subbed off after making an attempt to dribble on the edge of his own boss with Matjaz Kek caught on the hot mic shouting “what the f**k are you doing”.

Dinamo have splashed the cash to bring in Dani Rodriguez from Barcelona. Rodriguez was originally linked on loan given he’s coming back from injury, but Barca wanted a deal and slashed the price by two thirds to just 600,000 euros to get it over the line. He’s primarily a right winger and joined La Masia at 15 from Sociedad.

Marko Livaja. Hajduk have offered an olive branch while also detailing further misdeeds but, all in all, Livaja is permitted to return to training, is part of the squad for the Zilina Europa League tie and the decision is now Gonzalo Garcia’s as to how to integrate him into the team or, for that matter, if.

Except, Livaja didn’t quite make things that simple. On arriving at training on Saturday, he was asked to apologise to the coaching staff and he refused so was exiled to gym work only. On Sunday, however, he seems to have swallowed his pride, apologised and returned to the squad. How long peace lasts is another matter.

Varazdin’s Conference League game has changed due to UEFA sanctions on the Czechs - they’re now plaaying Jablonec rather than Hradec Kralove.

Osijek have brought in Ivan Dolcek. Dolcek spent last season at Dundee United and started the season well before dropping into anonymity and few on Tayside are sad to see the back of him. They have, however, sold Jakov Dedic, a 16yo who was the youngest player in the league last term - he’s joined Hoffenheim who, once you add bonuses, etc are paying a little over a million for him. Dedic is a striker and his departure leaves Osijek already, before the season has started, with something approaching an injury crisis as Arnel Jakupovic is expected to miss a month with an injury picked up pre-season meaning that the club have precisely zero senior centre forwards fit.

Denis Kolinger has left Lokomotiva for the second time. He is the club’s record appearance maker and has moved to Indonesia.

Promoted Rudes have brought in Diego Zivulic - having spent the past three years in Romania, he’s transferred from midfield to centre back late in his career.

Subscribe now

Bosnia

The national team landed back in Europe on Saturday but there will be no proper reception for the history making side - many of the players, in fact, are simply going straight home rather than to Sarajevo so the local government has basically thought there’s no point. In fact, Edin Dzeko was, along with Nikola Katic and Ivan Basic, back a day earlier.

You might have heard but there’s been a bit of fallout around Falorin Balogun’s red card for his foul on Tarik Muharremovic in their R32 tie last week. Muharemovic has actually stayed in the USA and is holidaying with Dzenis Burnic in LA.

NIhad Mujakic is actually back in the country but he’s extremely unlikely to be returning to club football at Partizan. The club have made clear that his salary is too much and will be cashing in on him ASAP.

Oslobodenje gave a list of diaspora players who the FA are tracking to take citizenship and play for Bosnia - keep an eye out for Salko Hamzic, Zinedin Smajlovic, Ahmed Hadzimujovic, Malik Jakupovic, Sean Dulic, Mirza Catovic, Kenan Busuladzic, Luka Topalovic, Adam Licina and Dzenan Pejcinovic.

Anes Krdzalic has left FK Sarajevo. When fit, which hasn’t been as often as it could have been, he’s a player of quite some potential but has, at 21, already had to overcome some extended periods off the pitch. He’s already joined up with Tenerife.

Zeljeznicar have had a month. Investor Sanin Mirvic has left the club and there will be a club assembly this week about what happens next. The reasoning isn’t exactly an uncommon one in the region (See Belgrade, P) but the local government has helped to leep the club going in recent years and, unsurprisingly, they want such public money to come back their way. Mirvic, to his end, wanted to put in place administrative changes that would have gone some way to making Zeljo a properly private entity, shifting the debt from the state to banks, although some accusations indicated they were about to rely on loans to pay salaries. The government said “no”, no agreement was reached and Mirvic threw his hands up walked away. The problem is that sports director Marko Maric and head coach Ivan Prelec arranged to join with Mirvic on the basis of promises that now probably can’t be delivered and hadn’t signed contracts fully. The long and short of it is that no salaries have been paid since March and the club are around 3.5 million in the red, much of which is owed to the state. Mirvic has also come out with a statement blaming local government and general self-interest on behalf of politicians for the issues.

Dominik Simcic has joined Siroki Brijeg. The Rijeka product spent last season on loan at Karlovac.

The draw for the league games this season took place today. Borac open their defence of the title vs Velez on August 8. Yes, yes it is just on Excel.

Share

Serbia

Raca Petrovic has joined Partizan as Sporting Director. He’ll be rebuilding their recruitment team from scratch. As a player, he spent three years at Partizan before moving to Blackburn in 2011. It’s his first post after ending his playing career in Cyprus last year.

Sticking with Partizan, former player and current coach at their farm club Teleoptik was hospitalised after being attacked by three assailants. Per Jovanovic’s account, the assailants were linked with the club’s ultras group.

Partizan are also already in a state of, well, bricking it ahead of the season after two poor friendlies losing to CSKA Sofia and barely squeaking by Aluminij. Obviously, these are only friendlies but the feverish articles are already coming out.

And, finally in Partizan news, they were sanctioned by UEFA under FFP because, well, obviously. They have been fined 200,000 euros as well as a limit on the registration on A-list players in competition (aka not youth system players). To make that back, expect Ognjen Ugresic and Vanja Dragojevic to both be on their way this summer - they’re linked to Bologna and Rangers respectively. Ugresic is all but done with clubs quibbling over how the money is paid.

Stefan Lekovic has left Crvena Zvezda to join Estrella Amadora in Portugal for 750,000 euros. Bargain.

Ester Sokler, once of Aberdeen now of Radnicki Kragujevac, is likely going to Maccabi Tel Aviv for a seven figure fee.

Who wants a fluff piece about Nenad Lalatovic? Here you go as one of Serbia’s most fun coaches (in terms of moving jobs and creating drama) seeks to find yet another Superliga club to manage.

Javor have made their second seven figure sale on their relegation - this time it’s Dorde Skoko who has gone to Al Ain in the UAE.

Radnik have brought in Rafael Pontelo, who joins the club after leaving the B team of Sporting

Montenegro

Novica Erakovic has left Omonia on a free. He joined from Sutjeska in 2023 and promptly got a serious knee injury that took over a season to recover from. This past season, he’s done well and he shouldn’t be short of suitors given he’s a fine player.

Kosovo

Ardi Shala has stepped up to the top tier, joining Ferizaj. Prishtina, meanwhile, have signed U21 international Arjan Fazlija.

Albion Rrahmani has left Sparta Prague to join Venezia in Serie A. The Venice club have reported spent close to ten million euros on him.

Bleart Tolaj had jumped the gun a bit in announcing he’d signed for Gjilani when he was still entirely under contract at Ballkani who announced he’d signed a new 2 year deal with the club after he’d said he’d left. Tolaj will remain with Ballkani for their first European tie against Connah’s Quay Nomads (who, once more, play a side I’d like to go and watch in Europe and then promptly switch the game to a day I can’t make and a ground on the opposite side of Wales from me) and then join his new club afterwards. Agon Xhaka is another inter-league transfer going from Malisheva to Llapi.

Share

Bosnia

Bosnia were eliminated from the World Cup by hosts USA 2-0 in San Francisco. Unsurprisingly, lots of talk about that albeit the main talking point after the game was Falorin Balogun’s red card for violent conduct which US fans feel shouldn’t have counted and are wrong.

Thousands turned out in the streets of Sarajevo to watch the game together and to see what may be Edin Dzeko’s final game, particularly afer leaving the field on 50 minutes with a knee injury.

Dzeko: “We gave it our all, in the end unfortunately we’re going home, but regardless of everything we should be proud of everything we’ve done.” He wouldn’t be moved on questions about his future but, from my own opinion, I do believe this is it for him. I’m unsure how you could write a better script than what this season brought with promotion to the Bundesliga and burying the ghosts of 2014 at the World Cup. It’s also worth noting his family were at the game and he spent time in the stands consoling his upset children after the final whistle.

Barbarez: “When you don’t win, something is always missing. Unfortunately, in a game where we had control, we conceded a goal at an awkward moment due to our mistake. Unfortunately, in the second half, we tried everything, the young guys deserve compliments, I really like them. The expression on my face says how happy I am, although it’s a sad day that we didn’t make history once again, but we move on”

Nikola Vasilj, sporting a black eye: “When you consider the bigger picture, I think we really achieved a historic result that we should really be proud of. I’m really proud of this team. And what’s perhaps hard to see at this moment is that we really have a future and we really have to keep our heads up and keep going”

Nikola Katic: “This championship has shown that we can play equally against serious teams. Throughout the tournament, we have proven that we have quality, character and togetherness, and I believe that we presented ourselves in a good light. Although it remains a regret that we did not go a step further, this experience should be an incentive for what is to come.”

The success of the team has earned $23.5 million for the FA of which around $2.5m went towards preparations. Some will, of course, go to players and staff, but much will remain in the FA’s bank account to hopefully be used well.

Barbarez: “I received a message from my mother. I thought she was sleeping, and if she is awake, then everyone is awake. I am glad because it gives me the right to hope that what we are doing is good. This symbiosis of all our citizens, wherever in the world and especially in BiH, works. These people trust us, they want to be with us and to be part of this story… …You have the privilege of playing tournaments like this against teams like this, that people come to the stadium for you, that the entire country is still awake at 4:00 in the morning. It evokes emotions and I want everyone to feel that we are wholeheartedly in this story. It’s a job, but it’s not a job. You play with your heart, you play for the coat of arms that was given to you.”

As if it was in doubt, Barbarez will carry on in post. He was pressed on it post game and gave a fairly jokey reply that he’ll be speaking to Vico Zeljkovic (head of the FA) about it, suggesting he’s not especially concerned about it. Can’t blame him there, to be fair.

Kerim Alajbegovic was being scouted by Milan during the game, per the Italian media. Tarik Muharemovic’s future will very likely be at Juventus as well.

The future never stops for a second as Bosnia’s wooing of young keeper Amil Siljevic has seen him be granted Bosnian citizenship. The Eintracht keeper has impressed in their youth ranks and is likely to commit to Bosnia fully.

Subscribe now

Croatia

Oh boy, where the hell do you start with this one? Croatia were eliminated from the World Cup 2-1 by Portugal in one of the more wild second halves of football of the tournament and, eventually, with easily the single most controversial moment of the World Cup so far after VAR struck off an injury time equaliser. Croatia are on their way home - they’ll be back in Zagreb on July 4.

While these updates haven’t done much in terms of offering opinion, it’s worth noting that the term “BS” is prominent in my thoughts around that crucial VAR decision but that doesn’t change the reality. Croatia are on their way home…

Zlatko Dalic initially wouldn’t be drawn on his future, no comment-ing any question on it which, generally, is enough of a comment for you to draw your own conclusions. “We didn’t deserve to be eliminated. In past World Cups, we had a lot of luck, this time we didn’t. VAR made the decisions it made. The refereeing was bad and all the questionable decisions went against us, but I won’t comment too much. Let’s move on.”

However, a little later, his tune had changed a bit: “We’ve had wonderful moments, but I think the end of an era has come and it’s time for new beginnings. Who knows what will happen next, we’ll talk about all that in Croatia.”

Luka Modric similarly wouldn’t be drawn on his future but wasn’t happy one bit… “He says Matanović touched the ball, but we watched the footage, there’s no evidence that he touched the ball. If he doesn’t touch the ball, it’s not offside… …Some things didn’t go our way. That penalty... If it were the other way around, VAR would never have been involved. I said about VAR in the beginning, when it was first introduced, that I didn’t like it. Later, over time, it’s good for some things, but they use it incorrectly or use it selectively, or depending on the size of the team. VAR should intervene if it’s 200 percent a mistake, but if it’s not, if it’s in the gray zone, you have no say in it. There’s no point in calling VAR. This is no penalty. Both teams are replying, pushing, Vlašić didn’t pull his man, he held it and both of them fell. That’s why you can’t judge a penalty like that in a game like this. That’s why I say, it has to be used if the mistake is 200 percent. If you can treat something this way or that, you have no say in it. That annoys me and always works to our detriment.”

Share

Baturina: “We were undeservedly eliminated, luck was on their side. And I don’t know what happened at the end, I asked the referee what he saw, he told me nothing, but the sensor in the ball told him that Matanović had touched the ball.”

Petar Sucic: “I would like someone to explain some of the referee’s decisions to me. There were too many situations that were questionable and went against us.”

Stanisic: “I saw the goal we scored to make it 2:2 and it was disallowed. OK, I get it, if the ball has a chip in it and the sensor says Matanović touched the ball, but I don’t understand why he went to [the monitor to] check if it was offside at all, if the chip definitely told him it was offside. That seems strange to me.”

Ivan Perisic won’t be leaving the national setup: “I hope I’m still available. I’m not at a certain age where I can say 100 percent that I’ll continue, but as long as there are no injuries, as long as I’m healthy and as long as I can make a difference on the field, like I did again in this tournament, I think I’ll be in the national team.”

Pundits, now, and we’ll start with Bruno Maric, Croatia’s ref expert: “Two situations are particularly controversial. I would start with Gvardiol’s goal for 2:2. It wasn’t just VAR that decided the game for us, but also the chip technology built into the ball. This technology is at the highest possible level at the World Cup. It was the chip that revealed that Matanović had headed the ball and that’s why Mario Pašalić was in the offside zone. If it weren’t for that chip, no one in the world would have been able to prove that Matanović had headed the ball and Guardiola’s goal would have been recognized. The referee went to look at that situation only to explain to the whole world why the goal wasn’t recognized… …The referee had a clear view of the game in front of him at that corner, he could see the duel between our Vlašić and the Portuguese player Veiga perfectly. He could clearly see that Vlašić only put both hands on his opponent when both were down, until then it was just the usual pulling and pulling, which there are a lot of at corner kicks. Therefore, in that situation, the penalty is very questionable, and that should not have been a VAR situation, VAR should not have been activated… …I think that the referee’s performance was subjective, all borderline decisions went in favor of Portugal.”

Drazen Antolic, SN: “Portugal is strong, they were better for most of the match, but we also had periods of dominance and great chances to win when leading 1:0 and 1:1. We killed ourselves, and the refereeing team set a noose for us. Everything was decided against us.”

Zoran Vulic, Germanijak: “I feel the most sorry for Luka Modrić in this defeat, because he played his last game for Croatia at the World Cup in Toronto. He really deserved to go one step further this time. When you compare Modrić with his peer Ronaldo, you can see how much Luka is ahead of the famous Portuguese player in terms of play and energy. Ronaldo was a little noticeable in the match. True, he scored from the penalty spot, and had a goal disallowed, but he’s not even close to the Ronaldo from previous editions.”

Amar Osim, Tportal: “’If this were boxing, Croatia would have won on points. If it were basketball, they would probably have won by ten points. If it were handball, the same. But this is football. And that’s the only bad luck in the whole story.”

Share

Bosnia

Bosnia landed in California earlier today having travelled in the early morning from Utah. They’re training in the San Francisco Stadium tonight before the big game in the early hours of 2 July.

Barbarez on Dedic: “It’s always normal that in a tournament like this we need individual players one or two days of rehabilitation, that is, for me to decide if I want to take a risk with him. Or at all to heal the injury. It was the same with Amar, then we concluded that we would need him for the next competition, so we decided to spare him. Basically, all 26 players are ready, these are matches where everything is forgotten”

Unlike the other games, with the SF stadium being only loosely in San Francisco itself, fans travelling will be in fanzones quite far away from the stadium with the Fanaticos (Bosnia’s ultras) events being based around these rather than around the ground.

Brazil’s Raphael Claus is the referee for the game. Presumably not named after the Ninja Turtle, he took charge of the 2024 Copa America final.

Tyler Adams: “I think when you’re an underdog, you carry a certain burden and you have to deal with a lot of challenges. We’ve been in that role a lot, so we know what it’s like. So we have to bring the same energy that we had in the first two games.”

Sergej Barbarez, for Bild: “We have never experienced such enthusiasm for our national team. Now even people from politics who have nothing to do with football are interested in us. It is an incredible feeling. It makes the whole country proud, it unites it even more – regardless of how the World Cup ends for us. Sometimes I think: “This is all unreal.””

Dzeko: “I watched the statements of their players and they don’t underestimate us. I believe they won’t underestimate us regardless of what the so-called experts say, because if they understood football they certainly wouldn’t make such statements. That’s what the Germans said about Paraguay and they were eliminated.”

Croatia

Croatia face Portugal on Thursday going into Friday and, oddly enough, the discourse pre-game domestically hasn’t been about it due to Marko Livaja’s indiscretions at Hajduk.

Croatia left for Toronto on Tuesday, presenting a signed, framed Modric jersey to staff at their camp.

The main chat out of training has been who Dalic has chosen to speak to, both of which we can take as slight hints as to who won’t be playing. Specifically, Duje Caleta-Car and Josko Gvardiol.

Matanovic: “Ronaldo is my idol, he’s not the best footballer, now we’ve seen that it’s Messi, but for me he was always the one whose videos I watched and he’s very good and now, we have to protect him, it’s an honor to play against him. We have to be patient, they know how to play. Last time I tried pressing at Vitinha and it was very difficult, but we have to do it.”

On the move is Ivor Pandur who is now a Pandur Bear, having joined the blue side of Glasgow.

Vlasic: “It makes it a lot easier for us to return to Toronto, we will play in a familiar environment and feel like we are playing at home because of the large number of our fans. It is sweeter to go to the second round with a victory. It would have been difficult, we would have been in trouble until the end, in case we accidentally conceded a goal. This way, that winning goal brought calm and meant a lot to the team”

Share

Slovenia

Nafta are, of course, back in the top flight but after a season in which their Hungarian revenue streams have been changeable due to political reasons. They’ve resolved that now by linking up with Hungarian side ZTE (aka Zalaegerszeg) who themselves are under Argentine ownership. Nafta’s new head coach, and the first to benefit from this link, is Spaniard Gonzalo Escudero. This is Escudero’s first job as a head coach - he’s previously been a coach for Vitoria Setubal and led ZTE’s reserves last term.

Maribor’s first reinforcement under Zahovic is a returner - Behar Feta rejoined from Aluminij while the club are open to offers for Benjamin Tetteh. They’ve also welcomed back Miha Blazic who returns to Slovenia after 9 seasons away. They won’t be signing Bede Osuji, who trained with the club but has signed for Aluminij. Also leaving the club is Marcos Tavares, who was part of the recruitment set-up - he’ll be part of the coaching set up at second tier Ilirija.

Koper have brought in Stefano Surdanovic from Zrinjski Mostar as well as Bangaly Diawara from Flamurtari and Filip Backulja from Novi Pazar.

Juanjo Nieto has left Celje to return to Spain - he’ll be playing for Castellon going forward. Celje have signed goalkeeper Ziga Frelih, who returns after five years playing outside the country after leaving Olimpija due to serious disciplinary allegations resulting in his contract being terminated.

Olimpija announced the signing of new striker Xande last week aaaaaannd his season’s over after being brought off injured in his first pre-season game after a ruptured achilles tendon. He’s already been operated on but from a fitness perspective it’s likely to be towards a 9+ month recovery time. Davit Kobouri has joined from Ujpest in the defence and Luis Perea has come in from Arka Gdynia, who is a direct replacement for Agustin Doffo.

Croatia

Huge news coming out of Hajduk as this was getting ready for release - Marko Livaja has been ordered to go and find a new club due to a disciplinary infraction in their pre-season camp in Slovenia. Livaja and a small group of players stayed up after the Croatia-Ghana game drinking, which went down badly, and were requested to do extra training on the Sunday as punishment and Livaja refused, which went down even worse. His five and a hlaf year spell at Poljud will come to an end under a cloud.

Someone presumably not happy about that is Luka Vuskovic who posted on Instagram his views…

Borna Barisic won’t be staying at Osijek - he’s looking for a new club - while the club are in talks to keep Anton Matkovic around. They’ve announced the signings of Bosnian U21 international Senad Mustafic and Hungarian U21 international Balasz Bakti.

Let’s try and explain crypto, shall we! Hajduk announced the deal mentioned a couple of weeks ago for investment from the company WhiteBIT, who have signed a two million euro a season deal for five years with the club as a sponsor, similar to their deal with Barcelona, it’s a flat fee per year but with incentives. As far as I can work out, the more you use WhiteBIT from a Hajduk association (I imagine you basically put them as a referral link) then the more Hajduk will get a slice of the pie and the club reckon this could be worth up to ten million a season. If that sounds fanciful, well, that’s the bedrock of late stage capitalism for you.

Hajduk did sign something hopefully more reliable than crypto in defender Alec van Hoorenbeeck, who joins from Twente. Whether he’s being paid in Dogecoin is currently unknown. On top of that, they’ve announced Mathieu Acapandie and are close to bringing in Dallison from Cordoba and Alberto del Moral from Oviedo.

After a year in the Middle East, Feta Fetai has returned to Lokomotiva - it’s fair to say that his time at Sharjah was a bit of a lost year but he’s back to run about and foul people all over again.

Subscribe now

Bosnia

Haris Mujanic has joined FK Sarajevo on loan from Koper. Sarajevo are, not for the first time, shopping for keepers in Slovenia. Sarajevo’s pre-season opened up with a 7-1 demolition of Velez over 120 minutes.

Fewer referees are on the list to run games this upcoming season with four dropping off the A-list and six from the B-list. There’s other technical changes as well to the leagues such as how many balls the home side must provide (seven), who is in the top flight for licensing and an important rule clarification around U21 players which I’ll state here:

Each team has to have three U21 players on the teamsheet with at least one on the pitch at any one time. These players must be Bosnian. If a U21 player leaves the field (injured or sent off) a U21 player must come off the bench to replace them. If a side is unable to use a U21 player (eg if they’ve used all subs and then the one U21 player gets injured), they would have to continue the game a man down.

Zeljeznicar have appointed Ivan Prelec as their new head coach. Prelec has managed in Denmark on and off with varying success at Vejle since 2022. They’ve also allowed a few players to leave, most notably Hamza Jaganjac.

Serbia

After Vojvodina brought in Dejan Zukic, Partizan shopped at Wolfsberger as well bringing in Erik Kojzek to play up front. Rather oddly, the Wolfsberger coach has backed up what most eyes would say - Zukic is hard for them to replace, Kojzek isn’t.

While most of Zeleznicar’s stars are off, Marko Milikic has extended his deal with the club to 2028.

Uros Kabic has left OFK for Slovakia for 400,000 euros.

Olympiacos are shopping in the region - Serbia’s Petar Stanic is going there for 8 million while Balsa Popovic joins from Zvezda for 1. million

Montenegro

We’ve mentioned Buducnost’s ongoing financial fun previously - well, they’ve cleared a 1.5 million euro debt albeit through a bit of creative state financing which allows them to meet UEFA rules. Some of this is in loans so it’s, in part, a case of kicking the can a bit so that UEFA can be happy kicking the wheels of the club. It has allowed them to find money for a new contract for Matija Jovanovic, who is one plenty of scouts (inluding me) will have their eyes on across this season.

North Macedonia

Owe the FA money and get kicked out of the league - that’s the new edict from the FFM, presumably to earn themselves some cash

Until 2026. Until a chance to set the record straight.

Share

One Night In November

It’s hard to truly grasp what THAT win over Denmark meant to the Scottish fan. 28 years in the doldrums doesn’t really sum it up due to what those 28 years were. The Euros are one thing but the nature of how small the Euros field was meant that Scotland’s history there spans precisely four appearances as opposed to nine at the World Cup. It’s, quite simply, the place to be.

There are, of course, plenty of Scotland games which are historic, many of which were eventually futile such as Scotland 3 Netherlands 2 in 1978 or France 0 Scotland 1 in 2007 which tend to, in part, be memorable because of the standard of goal. Much as you still regularly see the goals from Messrs Gemmill and McFadden, so too will future generations see McTominay in the air or McLean from halfway. Scotland didn’t expect that night yet came out of it with three goals of such quality that they entered the national pantheon straight away. McTominay muralled and Scotland marvelled.

It was a night that brought hope in buckets and why not. They had held ther nerve, shown their class and the names of 2026 are every bit the standard of 1998. Which of the 1998 squad would have even been on the plane to the US had they been around nowadays? (1) If it’s the hope that kills you, Scotland defeating Denmark 4-2 was a preloaded cyanide pill timed to come active only in Summer 2026.

A group draw against Haiti, Morocco and Brazil didn’t dampen spirits. Exorbitant travel costs didn’t dampen spirits or drive down the bar tabs. War on Iran merely meant a trip to the USA would be relief from reality. Hydration break is, as the bars and hostelries of Boston can attest, apparently Scottish for “a holiday in which we drink a city dry”.

All that had to happen was for Scotland not to do what they’ve done so many times before - get to the big dance and be the first to leave.

Subscribe now

Scotland do what they’ve done so many times before

Was there really any doubt?

The path through the group was meant to be, if not simple, at least obvious - make the most of beating Haiti on the first day and then ride the percentages against Morocco and Brazil to, at worst, make it through as a third placed side. As it was, Senegal got the lowest placed spot as a third placed side and needed +2 goal difference to do it. Scotland would have needed an extra six goals from somewhere to have surpassed them in that ranking, a figure notable that they’d need six because five would have them tied on GD with Senegal holding literally every other possible tiebreak over Scotland.

Scotland came into the tournament on the back of a pair of friendly wins over Bolivia and Curacao, scoring four in both. But while little can be marked down for Scotland for that Bolivia performance, the Curacao game was not so good - yes, it ended 4-1 but that was after Curacao had taken the lead, looked by far the most dangerous side for much of the first half and, of course, went down to ten men for the majority of the game. McKenna was exposed by the pace of the islanders as Scotland and, while Scotalnd would be exposed by the loss of Billy Gilmour to injury, the real exposure was one that we saw plenty in the Croatia vs England game - there’s space between the central lines of Scotland’s midfield and defence and the defence don’t like players running at it.

So, Haiti. Scotland were… bad. For the first game at a World Cup in 28 years, of course, I stayed up for it which, as a 40yo with two children, is not something I’m especially conditioned to do because games that finish at 4am are around 2 hours before the time I’m meant to be waking up. We had seen, from Qatar nabbing a point against Switzerland a day prior to the game that this was not, and has remained not, a World Cup that favours sides who get a narrow lead and try to do little else but hold onto it. So what did Scotland do?

It was one of the worse games of the World Cup in that Haiti looked short organisationally and in a lot of their attacking and Scotland didn’t have much interest it doing anything other than getting the three points which, when you’re awake at 3:40am on the back of 22 hours awake thinking “God, we might actually bottle this”, really is the sort of thing that makes you consider your life choices. After the scruffy McGinn goal, most of the intent was Haiti’s and it was a 90 minutes game that had less than 90 seconds of highlights and finished completely even on xG. I’d have had a dark night of the soul having watched it were it not already light at full time.

But hey, job done, onto Morocco. It was a game where, on seeing the Scotland line-up and tactic, I was so inspired and excited that I went to sleep and resolved to watch the highlights in the morning. Even semi-conscious, I was likely more awake than Scotland were upon conceding in the second minute of the game as Saibari easily beat an poor offside trap and rattled it in from a tight angle having had time to take a fairly poor touch and recover it such was the lack of pressure on him. The post-match bargaining that somehow Scotland ran them close and if it hadn’t been for two penalty shouts not being given, they’d have gotten more is mad and unjustifiable. Again, a game so poor that the highlights actually includes the essential footage of a routine backpass and one where Scotland were blunter than a pillow.

And so, Brazil. The maths at that point were still along the lines of “don’t completely botch it and you should be OK”. So, of course, Scotland botched it. It took seven minutes for Scott McKenna to dawdle under a press turning inside to find no passing lanes, for James McFadden to go “Oh my god” on comms and for Vinicius Jr to slide Brazil ahead. Jack Hendry would get caught out soon after and bailed out by VAR from the softest of fouls from Vini. Both Vini finishes, counting or not, were indicative of one thing, a lack of options passing out from the back. Vini’s second legitimate goal was a similar story of playing between lines, Scotland failing to clear and then a brain fart to allow a 5ft 9in player the freedom of the far post to nod home. Rayan could have made it three before half time with, again, a run between defence and midfield that dragged his marker in and exploited a channel.

Vinin could have had a third with… well, just look here and ask yourself how much space Scotland want to give top class players as there’s the freedom of the centre circle to hold and make the pass through to Vini, whose shot was well saved.

3-0 came with more out to in runs, more shambolic midfielding and more punishment. Scotland’s riposte? Slow build up play, stick it out wide and try to hit McTominay in the middle (2).

That Scotland had to then wait from Wednesday for 72 hours and Croatia’s win over Ghana before their fate was mathematically confirmed classes perhaps as cruel and unusual punishment. To be a Scottish fan is to be a master of dealing with heroic failures, ones where the failure is written in effort, in endeavour, in class and inthe gods conspiring to create unlikely scenarios in which failure is achieved.

This time, it was just an honest, normal, miserable failure.

Share

Why?

Lots of reasons but we can round them up into a few buckets that all go into one big bucket at the end of it.

Scotland don’t score

Scotland have appeared at three major tournaments this decade, scoring four goals. Here they are. Notice a theme.

Callum McGregor versus Croatia is a ball half cleared struck from outside the box. Vs Germany in 2024, it was an own goal after already being battered. Vs Switzerland, it’s a quick break, a lay back to the edge of the box with a shot deflected massively into the roof of the net. From McGinn vs Haiti, it’s a combo - cross half cleared to the edge of the box and McGinn from the edge of the box with a scruffy goal. Combined xG across the four goals? 0.3.

The general theme is that these aren’t good chances and aren’t coming from sustain ed pressure or creativity and the numbers bear that out. 2.6 total xG in the three games at this World Cup. 0.95 xG (!!!) total from the three games at the 2024 Euros. 3.9 xG total across the three games at the 2020 Euros. So, at major tournaments, Scotland have four goals from around 7.5 xG with, 7.2 of that total being essentially pointless. xGA across the three? 14.22 (3).

Scotland can’t build

As seen in the Brazil pic above, one thing Scotland really aren’t good at is building play. In general, it’s too slow and midfielders aren’t dropping into gaps to receive the ball. If there’s no receivers, a press on the defence is going to be effective as it’s easy to force defenders into making riskier passes which means that, when Scotland turn the ball over, they have less time to get set to defend and are in danger more quickly. Quite aside from all that, the 2020-26 generation of Scotland are well provided when it comes to good central midfielders but, if they aren’t in space, they can’t be found and if they can’t be found, they can’t produce.

Just go and watch Croatia, for example. Much like Scotland in Ferguson, McGinn and McTominay, their central three this tournament are all in top five leagues and at the sharp end of them, but the cadence of the passing and the movement of the midfields are miles apart. Luka Modric may be 40 but he moves about the pitch more than the Scotland midfield and goes to collect the ball from the back which no Scotland player really does. The result is that gaps don’t appear in an opposition midfield because there’s little for them to move for - the basic principle of midfielding is that if you move, someone moves with you and you create a gap somewhere else. Instead, Scotland’s passing lanes are about as static as the path of the M8 meaning gaps don’t open up further up the park meaning Scotland either have to go a) long or b) wide which means aiming for the large bonce of Scott McTominay.

Share

Scotland lack a top class central defender

No-one wil argue here but this is arguably the bit that can’t be compensated for whereas the lack of it up front can be. McKenna, Hendry, Hyam and even Hanley are, whisper it, fine but they’re all one thing - big, not that pacy and designed to head things far away. Scotland conceded every goal this World Cup by goals that didn’t play to their strengths. Arguably, save for Haiti, each opponent played in a manner that suggested that those strengths and how to nullify them were well scouted. And, to the point above, if what you need to do is point opponents to the outside, then if your midfield isn’t operating extremely fiercely in the centre, you can’t do that and you end up with your defence being exposed.

The Big Bucket

All which leads into one key problem - you can’t describe Scotland’s footballing identity.

If we talk for a moment about the similar sides who have made it out of the groups. Were I to ask someone to watch Bosnia’s three group games, you’d be able to make a coherent statement of how they like to play - 4-4-2, force opponents to cross and then physically dominate them while using the crossing ability on the wings to threaten going forward. Were I to ask the same for Cape Verde, you’d say it’s classic counter-attacking football built on a solid defence.

What’s Scotland’s? Based on Brazil, you’d say lots of crossing, but the target man is…err…the attacking midfielder and there’s no-one playing off him. You’d say they want to pass from the back, but then the midfield don’t support it. They don’t have the pace to play a counter-attacking game. Steve Clarke is an arch pragmatist and, to be fair, it’s rare he outright gets his set-up wrong - Scotland did what they needed vs Haiti, Scotland did limit Morocco to one goal, Scotland did lose to Brazil primarily through individual errors not a set-up problem - but it often feels disconnected.

Subscribe now

The Tom English-Neil McCann argument goes some way to summing this up. After three decades of not being at world football’s top table, we tend to have a great line in excusing players for not performing at major tournaments when they are, in most circumstances, fine players but if it’s an acceptable view to walk into a World Cup game against Morocco or Brazil and say Scotland can’t win, then Scotland won’t win. It’s also entirely acceptable to say Scotland’s top players are generally technically sound and can, as seen vs Denmark, pull off some truly magical things but whacking in an overhead kick is not a standard technical ability - being able to be in the right areas to receive a pass and being able to bounce that pass off one touch to create quick passing play is and it’s that that wasn’t on show much during the tournament and if you can’t manage that sort of fundamental each and every time you play, you don’t win many games.

Equally, we can’t just criticise what we don’t have. Any member of Scotland’s back four would probably walk into Cape Verde’s - they’re still in, Scotland are not. International management isn’t about fixing limitations, it’s about playing around them. Scotland, I’d argue, didn’t do that. Lawrence Shankland is a fabulous finisher, but he needs service but if he’s on with only McTominay up near him trying to win things in the air and being a target, what service can he possibly get? He’s not big enough to be a target on his own, after all, but if you’re the defence that isn’t as technically good and being asked to play up to a midfielder to find a gap, if you’ve not got size up top, then you’ve not got a get out of jail free card in case you are closed down.

To talk Bosnia again, their defence is also limited - Muharemovic is rapidly improving but Nikola Katic was hardly a success in Scotland and likely wouldn’t get in the Scottish squad. Yet he’s a fine player for Bosnia because, unlike Scotland, they play so his weaknesses aren’t exposed - he’s bulky and wants to throw his head at everything, so they force things out wide so opponents have to play in low probability balls at a player whose strength is battering them away.

You can’t even just use the “players aren’t talented” excuse because they are. Michael Cox argued that Scotland didn’t play starters like Charlie Adam, etc and started dreck like …*checks article*...Scott Brown or Callum McGregor instead, a take that shows utter ignorance of Scottish football (4). I’ve had to watch Lee McCulloch start for Scotland such was the dearth of talent available. Gary Kenneth, Kevin Kyle, Chris Iwelumo, Nigel Quashie, Michael Stewart (5) as multi cap men, Steven Saunders, Ian Black, Paul Caddis and the list can go on, mainly with people Berti Vogts called up - solid pros who peaked all well below the ability of anyone in the current squad.

Clarke on his way

Steve Clarke leaves post with a weird legacy. Some will note his win record puts him in the top echelon of Scots managers, but he never got anyone to believe. He went to three major tournaments and Scotland were, bluntly, crap at them all.

Yes, getting there is an achievement, albeit slightly less of one than it used to be and, in isolation, there have been some cracking results that hold up a little less once you look under the bonnet (see 2020 in Belgrade), but 5 points from 9 games at major tournaments is relegation form. Clarke does, yes, leave Scotland in a better place than he found it albeit that’s unlikely down to him, really - clubs have gotten more financially healthy, have started recruiting more intelligently and are producing a Scottish domestic product that is more attractive than it was when it was truly in the doldrums 10-15 years ago. Getting £10m+ from getting to a World Cup helps that but it doesn’t fix the other issues in the Scottish game - specifically that it’s still woefully inept at getting players to transfer from youth football to first team football well.

Players either end up coming through the English system (Ben Gannon-Doak, James Wilson) or are so good that their claims are inescapable from an early age (Lennon Millar, Findlay Curtis). Scotland has still not got the memo from Croatian football that a rising tide lifts all ships and that the best way to get better players is to improve the standard of play of all 42 league clubs by ensuring a healthy loan system throughout the league to make sure that a player released from Celtic or elsewhere at 18 ends up playing somewhere rather than leaving football altogether. To focus purely on elite pathways is to ensure only that the truly elite talents end up moving along to larger leagues more quickly and, dare we say it, maybe it should be worth pointing out that the wonderful Hearts story was hardly based on domestic talent alone and that, perhaps, we should be thinking about remedying that. Maybe we should be noting that, if 28 years is a while to miss tournaments, that the U21s haven’t been to the Euros since 1996 and the U19s since 2006 (6).

Scotland’s Identity

I saw a post on reddit asking what’s the difference between Scottish Football and Scottish Rugby and I think it’s actually got a pertinent point. If you ask “what is Scottish Rugby” (and, as a Borderer, this was hammered into me growing up) then the answer is swashbuckling back play, the answer is idolising a Hastings or a Russell or any player with a turn of pace, a bit of magic in their hands and committed to playing attractive open rugby and, when that’s strayed from, as it was in the noughties, the side tends to be unwatchable.

Scottish football doesn’t have that clarity of identity. We set football up to be entertainers at Queen’s Park yet, historically, have valued the grafters more and more. We’re a nation of Dalglish and Souness, of the brilliant and the bastard. And we have to pick.

The muddled identity of the last few years has been enough to get Scotland to the dance but to get Scotland going home with a skip in their step, an identity needs to be found (7). It’s not the only problem, but we have to move our chips all in, to decide what we want, how we want it and then to bend the will of our game until we get it.

We’ve known all of that for a long time. We’ve had Project Brave, we’ve had the McLeish review, we’ve had talking and plans and thinking from respected people.

It’s not done a great deal of good. Now, the SFA will be judged not on talking and reports, it’ll be on the doing of the thing. Scotland’s performances have surely increased their coffers enough to allow them to act upon that and to force things through.

Now, they’ve just got to do it.

1 - Honestly, of the midfield, Paul Lambert would be about the only one. The keeping ranks aren’t a great deal better than now albeit 1998s keepers did at least play at club level regularly. At least Hendry, Dailly and utility man Tom Boyd would be in from the back line. Up front, you’d certainly have a couple but, even then, would Gallacher and Durie be starters?

2 - At this point, it should be said, I’m feeling my mood drop just recalling it all through the highlights. It’s shorn far more of redeeming features than my thoughts when I watched it live. I’d also add it’s helped to watch the ACFC video first which goes into a bit more depth on the Jack Hendry example.

3 - Euro 2020, for what it’s worth, sees Scotland be reasonably OK when it comes to xCompetency, albeit conceding from the halfway line never helps.

4 - “In the 21st century, when standards have been somewhat lower, the likes of Charlie Adam, James McArthur and Matt Ritchie have been genuinely good Premier League midfielders, capable of dictating or deciding games. They won only 26, 32 and 16 caps respectively. These are surely not worse players than the likes of — with respect — Scott Brown (55), Kenny McLean (61) or Callum McGregor (63). Sometimes you wonder precisely what the Scotland national side is all about; what they are actually trying to achieve.” Brown was technically limited, yes, but made up for that in leadership and workrate, McLean is a sub and reliable while Callum McGregor is Brown, but more technically capable. Charlie Adam was not especially morbile, James McArthur quit international football early due to injury and Matt Ritchie a) wasn’t a central midfielder and b) switch to Scotland aged 26, was repeatedly injured and then just stopped answering calls. Most of these also all played at the same time so took caps from each other.

5 - Included purely because, if he manages to ever read this, I’d like to see his reaction.

6 - Only 6 of those ever were fully capped, 1 of which was for NZ. 6 of the Spanish side that beat Scotland in the final were capped also - two of those being Senor J Mata and Senor G Pique.

7 - Hence I’m fully behind Ange Postecoglou - he commands respect in Scotland, he is dogmatic and he is, unlike others, comparatively affordable. Say what you like about him, he wouldn’t tolerate those three group games we’ve just witnessed.

Bosnia-USA kicks off at 1am UK time, 2am Sarajevo time on Thursday 2 July with Croatia-Portugal coming 23 hours later

Share

Bosnia

Shall we mention the moron? There’s been a bit of tempting fate about some things said out of the US since the game was confirmed, although at least Abigail Velez has had the good grace to apologise. Your cheapest available ticket to see the USA’s uppance potentially come is at $2500.

One curio about the US game is, of course, that Esmir Bajraktarevic hails from Wisconsin. Born in Appleton, just south of Green Bay, Bajraktarevic’s family emigrated to the US having fled the war in Bosnia. Originally from Sase, the family spent much of the war in Srebrenica - his uncles were killed trying to reach Tuzla during the wider massacre of Srebrenica in a victim list which, amongst the 8372 names, contains seventeen killed with the surname Bajraktarevic. After time spent displaced in Switzerland, his mother and father moved to the USA in 2001 working around the clock to attempt to make ends meet, saving their money to travel back to Bosnia on holidays to meet their also displaced friends.

Bajraktarevic’s formative footballing years would be paid for by friends of the family who saw his talent and decided they would be the ones to help him meet his potential, helping out his family who were unable to take him to practices or go through the paperwork, etc needed to help him start in youth football in Milwaukee - three hours away from Appleton. He would move to New England Revolution’s academy at 16 and switched nationality to Bosnia from the US in 2024. His is the modern American dream built out of the Bosniak nightmare.

Amar Dedic didn’t return with the team to camp - he missed the game with a slight muscle issue and remained in Seattle to rehab for some extra time and took some time to attend Friday prayers with the local community. Saturday was the first training since the Qatar game and everyone participated fully.

Tim Howard: “They’d (Bosnia) better not even get on the plane to San Francisco, because the US team will do everything they can to properly crush them”

Subscribe now

Croatia

Croatia defeated Ghana 2-1 in their best performance of the tournament so far. What could have been a sterile 0-0 that safely took both sides through became something plenty more entertaining after Petar Sucic rifled in from 25 yards.

Petar Sucic: “We waited in the block for their mistakes, created a lot of positive situations up front and scored two goals. We conceded again from a set piece, but I think, the way we prepared for the game, we did what we needed to do. We knew that we couldn’t give them too much depth behind us, and where their weaknesses were. We played well and deservedly won.”

Croatia’s game vs Portugal takes place in Toronto which has more or less been Little Balkans this tournament having hosted Bosnia and Croatia once already. That $2500 price for going to the Bosnia game? Add another $1000 on and you’d get a ticket for Croatia

Luka Modric set a record in the game against Ghana in becoming the oldest player ever to get an assist at a World Cup. Cristiano Ronaldo is, of course, older than Modric but ineligible because he doesn’t pass.

Modric was a consensus man of the match in the domestic player ratings, albeit Sucic was the Superior Player of the Match. Teams after an interesting free agent may note that his contract with Milan ends before the Portugal game so he may be about to be the World Cup’s most impactful free agent.

Share

Dalic: “I think everyone gave their best, and Luka was truly fantastic. In the last minutes, he presses, runs and fights. I’m glad it turned out that way, mostly because of him. That’s his character and his energy.”

Dalic, on defence: “We were a little different on the pitch than in the first two games, where there were perhaps mistakes in my setup. Perišić played left-back, and we all know that’s not his natural position. But he currently has more confidence than Guardiola, and that’s why I decided to go for that option.”

Surprise pick Nikola Vlasic: “The match was expectedly difficult, the opponent is very compact in defense and we had great control when we took the ball in the center, except for those 10 minutes when we conceded a goal, there was a little nervousness, but we played a real man’s game. The goal disturbed us a little, but we are all aware that this team can do a lot. It’s nice to score a goal, but honestly, we are a group, we pray together, God is very important to us and I feel the unity.”