The Pet, The Pet, The Pet

The Pet, The Pet, The Pet. All news emanating from Serbia and Montenegro football centers on the selection of the national team for the squad’s upcoming friendly against Tunisia. The biggest of all big news, of course, is the exclusion of The Pet, the man all of Serbia and Montenegro wanted to see.

The folks over at Jadran Sport have the blues about The Blues as they continue to lament the exclusion of the Pet, with heartfelt pleas to see the overwhelming popular up-and-comer. Jadran speaks of crushed hopes and the trepidation of Serbia and Montenegro’s spot in the Group of Death (but is this really the Group of Death?). Again, an earlier Jadran poll was cited to indicate The Pet’s popularity. Perhaps this is a bit of panic? Common wisdom holds that the coaching staff is keeping The Pet in a quiet, far off kennel, for use as a deadly attacker in Germany.

A pair of subtractions have recently been made as well. For the nonce, the Famous Four has taken a hit. Goran Gavrancic of Dynamo Kiev has only just reentered training and was thus deemed inactive by coach Petkovic. While the Serbia and Montenegro defense gained a reputation as impenetrable during the qualifiers and is no more, the Tunisian side has a couple of minor surprises at striker in Troyes’ Zied Jaziri and Toulouse’s Silva Dos Santos.

Mirko Vucinic of Serie A Lecce gets a rare start at striker as well, as the roster of eighteen will include five strikers (or did, before the injury to Nikola Kigic) in what appears to be a quite obvious ploy to test the mettle of Hatem Trabelsi of Ajax Amsterdam, Karim Saidi of Lecce, and Radhi Jaidi of Bolton Wanderers. Having his strikers carry the load to cover absences in the backfield is a decent tactic by Petkovic, and the coach remains as calm, cool, collected and optimistic as ever, saying “I know what we have to do to win the game and I expect the players to perform at their highest level.”

(Thanks to Rogi32 for correcting a couple of frankly stupid errors on my part in this post.)