Antić Announces Serbia Squad

Serbia coach Radomir Antić has named his squad for the upcoming WC qualifiers against Lithuania (Belgrade, 11. october) and Austria (Vienna, 15. october), and while there are no major surprises in the list, there are a few noteworthy details. There are four debutants in the team: Bojan Isailović (goalkeeper, FK Čukarički), a rather unknown player called to be the third goalkeeper in case of an untimely injury, Igor Đurić (centre-back, FK Vojvodina), a solid young defender thought by many to be one of the best centre-backs in the Serbian league, Dragan Mrđa (attacker, FK Vojvodina) a former U21 international and Red Star player who returned to Serbia after somewhat unsuccesfull spells in Belgium and Russia, and Miloš Ninković (midfielder, Dinamo Kyiv), a very good and talented player who was widely expected to recieve a call-up. Minor controversies in this list, besides the inclusion of Isailović and Mrđa, are the absences of Standard Liege’s in-demand striker Milan Jovanović (who Antić considers to be very close to a call-up) and a continuing expulsion of Mateja Kežman from the NT (athough that isn’t really a controversy anymore). Antić also spoke about Borussia Dortmund’s Neven Subotić, an exciting young defender of Serbian origin, a candidate to play for Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian, German and United States NT’s. Although not certain of Subotić’s availability to the NT in the future, Antić stated that negotiations are in process. Judging by the previous ‘negotiation processes’ with Bojan Krkić and Marko Marin, that doesn’t sound very encouraging at all. Anyway, the full list goes as follows:

Goalkeepers:

Attackers:
Nikola Žigić (Valencia)
Danko Lazović (PSV Eindhoven)
Marko Pantelić (Hertha Berlin)
Dragan Mrđa (Vojvodina)