The Renaissance of Serbian Football

Well, it’s been a long time since my last post on this blog, and while there aren’t many games I’ve missed writing about (just the Austria qualifer and a friendly against Bulgaria), there ceratinly are a lot of things going on with Serbian football. Now, why did I put this headline? I certainly wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that there are some almost unbelievable things going on with Serbian football and that in my entire life I’ve never seen such football optimism in this country. No, we didn’t win the World Cup, didn’t uncover some Maradona-like talent and we certainly didn’t have a club-related European success (that would be too much to ask, right?). What we do have at the moment and that we haven’t had in a long, long while are optimism, belief in our football and most importantly, a winning mentality. I’ll try to make this post as short and informative as possible:

Let’s start with the senior NT. When I’ve last written a post here, our boys had a win against The Faroese, a defeat from The French and were preparing for a crucial home fixture against high-flying Lithuania. Since that moment, our boys had some pretty impressive games, easily defeating Lithuania 3-0, hammering Austria in Vienna 3-1 (thus claiming the top spot in the group) and finally, demolishing Bulgaria 6-1 in a home friendly. Now, the results are pretty nice to see, but the manner in which these teams were defeated is even more splendid. ‘The Eagles’ played some nice, offensive and effective football, showed a winning mentality that generally all Slavic nations desperately lack and formed a truly formidable young team capable of some great things. But, who were the players that shined and lifted us to an another level? Other than the eternally reliable Vidić, a newly-reborn captain Dejan Stanković and a more and more agrresive Marko Pantelić, I really must mention CSKA Moscow’s Miloš Krasić and Standard de Liege’s Milan Jovanović as a heavenly winger duo that made us look like Spain in the last couple of games. Will this heaven last for long is something I really cannot say, but our team finally looks like a truly menacing offensive force, and that’s really something we haven’t seen in the NT for a long, long time. All of these player are relatively young and the players replacing them are even younger, and some would even say – more talented.

When speaking about the Serbian young team, a traditionally successful Serbian U21 team has qualified for the 2009 U21 European Championship in Sweden by comfortably defeating Denmark twice in the play-off. Now, I won’t be exaggerating if I said our U21 team is one of the best teams on the continent in recent years, participating 3 times in the semis and twice in the final in the last 3 editions of the competition. With the win against Denmark, this fairy tale continues and what’s particularily interesting is that each U21 generation is a more talented one then the previous. With the likes of Ajax’s Miralem Sulejmani, Hertha BSC’s Gojko Kačar, Manchester United’s newly acqiured duo of Zoran Tošić and Adem Ljajić and Vojvodina’s attacking prodigy of Danijel Aleksić, the title doesn’t look out of reach. Now, this team perhaps isn’t so strong in the defensive department like the previous one (with Chelsea duo of Ivanović and Rajković, Bremen’s Duško Tošić, Lazio’s Kolarov and Borussia Dortmund’s Rukavina), but presents a formidable offensive force with some big expectations from the country. Oh, and speaking of Chelsea’s Slobodan Rajković, he has been banned from international football for a year after his referee spitting incident at the Olympic Games, and he would’ve otherwise been included in the U21 line-up. All in all, the bright story of Serbian U21 team continues.

I’ve already mentioned Manchester United’s ‘newly acquired’ duo of Zoran Tošić and Adem Ljajić, and this tranfer deserves a section of it’s own. 21-year old Zoran Tošić and 17-years old Adem Ljajić left Partizan Belgrade for a fee believed to be 17m euros/pounds and joined the English, European and World Champions, Manchester United. If some of you thought this transfer was a surprise, I can tell you it was an even greater surprise here in Serbia. Now, while Adem Ljajić is an exceptional talent, a versatile offensive midfielder tracked by nearly all the top-clubs in Europe for some time now, Tošić is a pacy left-winger that didn’t really draw much attention and praise in the country or in the club that he’s played for. However, it looks like Alex Ferguson kept an eye on him for some time now and judged he could better realise his potential in the PL instead of a drastically inferior Serbian Superliga. Anyway, Ljajić returned to Partizan on loan to gain some invaluable first-team experience, while Tošić joined the Red Devils and has since played two games in which he, to my great satisfaction, showed why he was wanted by MU in the first place. A fine, fine, transfer to report, but only from one aspect. From the other, FK Partizan has lost two of it’s young assets (one being 17-years old) and the trend of losing all of Serbian young players to foreign clubs almost as soon as they are heard of continues.

There are just a few more transfers to write about. Serbia’s traditional goalscorer and Valencia’s most expensive spectaror Nikola Žigić, has finally left the club on loan. He returned to Racing Santander, the club he’s played for in the 2006/2007 season and from which he went to Valencia for a huge 20m transfer fee. He barely got a chance in Valencia, not fitting in their playing system (why did they buy him in the first place is beyond my understanding), but whenever he was given a rare game, he scored some goals. He joined Racing one month ago and he has already scored 4 goals in 5 games, not bad for someone who had a year and a half without regularily playing. El Santo, how he was called in Santander, is hitting his stride again. What could be better news for the NT? Other than this, there aren’t any transfers worth mentioning, but the potential ones may look interesting. Milan Jovanović and Miloš Krasić were very much sought after in this transfer window, being linked with clubs such as Manchester United (Krasić), Bayern Munich (Jovanović) and Real Madrid (both of them). They’ve stayed at their rescpective clubs, but be sure that both of them will have some important transfers in the summer. Who knows, one of them might actually win the UEFA Cup.

Oh, and, one other thing I’ve forgot to mention. Neven Subotić, a Banja-Luka born centre-back playing for Borussia Dortmund, has made the most natural choice and opted to play for Serbia. The youngster was eligible to play for the US, Bosnian, and Serbian NT’s, with the only realistic choice existing between USA, the country he’s already played for at the U21 level and that he’s lived in, and Serbia, his country by nationality. Now, if you are puzzled how can a man born in Bosnia be related to Serbia by nationality, you probably don’t know much about this region’s ethnic structure and problematics. You see, Serbian people is one of the three peoples that live in Bosnia (the others being the Croats and Bosnian Muslims – also called the Bosniaks), and two of these peoples, Serbs and Croats, also have their own countries. So, in sports, almost everyone plays for the country he ethnically relates to: Croats play for Croatia, Serbs play for Serbia and Bosniaks play for Bosnia. Anyway, Subotić is an exceptional talent, and with Vidić, Ivanović and Rajković as his centre-back coleagues, I guess that I could really say that Serbia has one of the best centre-back contigents in the world. The problem, though, is that you can’t win a game with centre-backs (with the exception of Vidić in his day, of course) and the offensive department is what will make the difference between qualifying in style and failing miserably.

There is a frienldly tournament in Cyprus coming soon, expect some posts in the next few days…