As the previous weekend had been a cup one, we got two gameweeks in the last 7 days. One brief cup mention - there are four all lower league ties (including an all third tier one) in the last 16 so, while Celje are obvious favourites to win the whole thing, there will be small clubs going deep.

The highlight of the midweek one was Koper-Maribor and Koper handing out Maribor a 4-0 beating to give the vijolicasti their first defeat of the season. All the blame for that has, rightly, been laid at the feet of Maribor’s keeper and captain Azbe Jug for an absolutely moronic red card at 0-0 on the brink of half time and Maribor fell apart after that. Darko Milanic wasn’t mincing his words on it: “It’s hard to understand, to justify. It’s total nonsense, what the captain of a team with so much experience did.”. For what it’s worth, Jug’s excuse is that it’s normal for a keeper to do that sort of thing to make room to quickly recycle the ball and that it’s not his fault that Isaac Matondo is short and has a head at elbow height. (1) Anyway, the result of all that is that Jug has a three game ban - he’ll next be available at the end of November.

Celje-Olimpija headed the Wednesday action with a 1-1 draw as the Koper win was the only game of the midweek slate that wasn’t a draw meaning Koper’s advance to the top was the only change in the table.

Maribor then made it two losses on the bounce in the eternal derby as Olimpija squeaked to a 1-0 win at Ljudski vrt courtesy of a leaping volley from Indrit Tuci. Both sides had a goal disallowed in quick succession in the first half. Maribor were broadly on top but weak to being countered on and didn’t really create much in the way of good chances.

There was, as is traditional at the minute, a bit of a fan issue at the derby although it’s more one to keep an eye on for a couple of weeks time than one for now. Maribor’s ultras unfurled a banner directed at the NZS as Ljudski vrt will be hosting the first national team game for five years in the upcoming break - that’s a problem as the Maribor fans don’t like the NZS (2) and have indicated that either the NZS can leave the ultras area empty or the ultras will turn up and disrupt the game causing problems with UEFA. So, if you wanted a reason to watch Slovenia-Switzerland in a couple of weeks, there you go!

Aluminij demolished Radomlje 5-0 - only the 5th time the club have scored 5 in a Prva Liga game. Radomlje had a goal disallowed for a foul in the build up after 90 seconds but that was as good as it got for them as they absolutely fell apart in the final quarter hour. Coupled with Mura-Brinje finishing 0-0, things have suddenly gotten spread apart at the bottom with Radomlje now 5 behind Mura and Brinje who both sit four behind Aluminij.

The Slovenian Sunday ended with Celje battering Nafta 4-0 thanks to a double from both Kvesic and Kucys. It flattered Nafta and was clearly the best performance from Celje of the Zeljkovic era so far. Koper-Bravo is a Monday game and missing publication time but, either way, Koper will remain top.

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Croatia

As Europe made the previous game week bleed into this week, it’s time for a quick mention of those two games - Hajduk let a 2 goal lead slip as they drew against Istra. A Khalil Fayad wondergoal put them on top but, unsurprisingly, Hajduk simply ran out of steam after many a big game in a row and allowed an always lively Istra back in it.

And Dinamo took advantage on Tuesday, squeaking past Rijeka 2-1 after Luka Stojkovic played his best game of the season to score both goals for a much needed positive result in a big game - something Dinamo haven’t really had much of this term.

There was one all HNL cup game also in midweek as Robby McCrorie was the hero saving two penalties for Varazdin in their shootout win over Lokomotiva. You have to wait another 5 weeks for the round to be complete because it’s scheduled weirdly.

Before getting into the weekend’s action, condolences to the family and lvoed ones of Miso Kovac who passed away on Halloween. Kovac was one of the most popular musicians in Yugolsavia through the 70s and 80s before going through personal tragedies in the 90s. Most relevant to here is that he was tightly associated with Hajduk in particular and Croat unity as a whole, but especially in Dalmatia to the point that “Why is Miso Kovac famous” is literally a question in Croat citizenship tests. Prior to taking up his musical career and wearing one of the greatest moustaches in music, he was also a goalkeeper in Sibenik’s youth system.

The reason that had to be stated there is Kovac’s passing was announced during Hajduk’s 5-0 thrashing of Gorica. This is the first time a Hajduk game has paused due to the interruption of world events since the announcement of the death of Tito. (3) Hajduk put out a fairly rotated side and blew Gorica away, especially turning the ball over in dangerous areas, with Carlos Martin, who had been pretty anonymous this season so far, scoring two and making a bit of a statement.

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If you’ve not read last week’s piece on Dinamo then go read that, then come back…

Now, Kovacevic got an extra evening because Zvonimir Boban wasn’t at the Rudes game or even in the country - everyone had to wait for him to get back from going to watch the Milan derby. Jerko Leko will be interim boss while the club sort out attempting to bring in a new permanent name - the two named mainly are Pol Planas, who has spent the last decade climbing up the coaching ranks within La Masia, currently running Barca’s Under 19 side, and Oscar Garcia, currently at Pogon Szczezin with a big release clause. Other links are basically that someone gave Boban the free Football Manager trial and he’s spent his time with it searching Spanish youth coaches.

Skipping back to HNL Friday, we had Istra defeating Slaven 2-0 with a bit of a late show, albeit they were far the better side. Sunday saw Rijeka and Varazdin share the points at Rujevica with fans witnessing a 1-1 but both goals were exceptional - Toni Fruk’s bicycle kick to open the scoring will be up there as goal of the season. Varazdin saw Igor Vekic save a penalty before Luka Mamic got them level with an unstoppable swerving half volley from the edge of the area. The weekend rounded off with Osijek defeating Lokomotiva 3-1 - in truth, Osijek could have been three up after about 5 minutes such was their early dominance and it’s a credit to Josip Posavec in the Lokosi goal that his side were kept in it until Balelo’s 94th minute third for Osijek.

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Bosnia

Yet another cup midweek so the shocks came as Sarajevo were dumped out on penalties by Tomislavgrad, BSK by Igman Konjic the same way, Velez by Zvijezda and Siroki Brijeg by GOSK.

Credit to Abel Pascual - the Borac defender intervened to help out physios after a spectator had a medical emergency during their 4-2 win over Celik at the weekend. He also scored in the game - a very notable day for him. On Borac, Matej Deket has a call up for the national team and has interest from the Netherlands, specifically Twente - Deket is also eligible for Croatia and it’s believed he’s in the process of sorting out a Croatian passport to allow him easier transit in the EU.

Zrinjski continued to match Borac with a 4-0 win over Zeljeznicar which sounds bad but, to be fair, Zrinjski always hammer Zeljo. Velez beat Sloga to register their first win since 13 September and, more importantly, lift themselves from the bottom of the league.

Bosnia are the only side to have confirmed their squad for the international break and here it is:

Perhaps the only bone of contention is the return of Burnic to the squad but, otherwise, this is a very stable line up. (5)

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Serbia

Partizan didn’t hang about in replacing Sasa Ilic - Aleksandar Stanojevic is back at the club for a FOURTH spell in charge after he’d been sacked from his job in the Turkish second tier a couple of weeks prior. His previous spell was a three month spell at the start of 24/25 and went badly.

He had to get started straight away as midweek saw a European catch-up pair of games alongside a slate of cup fixtures. Partizan managed to actually win, defeating Radnicki Nis 3-2 putting in a good half of football before letting Radnicki back into it. It lifts Partizan out of relegation bother for the time being while, in the other league game, Zeleznicar beat Radnicki Kragujevac lifting them five points clear of fourth. Radnicki Nis’ board resigned after that set of games - they’re second bottom and very likely to see their 15 year stint in the top flight end.

Partizan made it two wins on the bounce with a 3-0 win over Zemun at the weekend. Temper the positivity, though - this is the second in a run of three games where they play the bottom three - their next game to really judge them on is probably vs Radnicki Kragujevac which is their final game of the autumn. Even in spite of form turning a corner, there have been renewed appeals for the board to quit, led by the legendary Ivan Golac and Vladimir Stojkovic.

Otherwise the weekend was pretty regular - Vojvodina and Radnicki Kragujevac both kept on winning but both still remain well off the pace set by Crvena Zvezda who had an uncomfortable 4-2 win over Macva, giving up a 2-0 lead and only getting the win in the last 6 minutes which leads us to…

As for the Cup, well, we had a pair of shocks - Teleoptik (the farm club of Partizan) KOd Mladost on penalty and Graficar beat IMT 2-0 but the headlines were made in Ruma as Slaven Ruma, currently third in their region of the third tier, beat a pretty near full strength Vojvodina side 1-0.

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You may remember the issues with the FSS elections. Well, they got postponed to mid-November and now they’ve been postponed again. UEFA have granted special dispensation to carry things over a little longer but the key problem now isn’t just that they keep on postponing the thing - it’s that literally no-one wants to replace Dragan Dzajic as head of the FSS - nominations are up already and they received no applications. UEFA is keeping tabs on this as they’re aware they may have to step in to run Serbian football given no-one else wants to run it - that process is likely to leave administrative paralysis for a few months.

And, if you want someone to give you a fun quote about the FA…

Montenegro

Really the midweek game week is the only one we can properly cover this time around and we came out of it with new leaders - Decic’s first win in two months came against previous leaders Otrant who were usurped by Buducnost at the top who defeated Mornar 3-2. As it stands, five points cover the top six so it’s tight!

The “weekend” games are mainly Monday and Tuesday affairs. It’s not a public holiday or anything so why they’re scheduling games for lunchtime on a Monday is beyond me but, whatever happens, Buducnost will end the “weekend” top after beating Bokelj.

Kosovo

Malisheva dropped points to Feronikeli on Sunday which, after both Drita and Prishtina won on Saturday has closed everything back up at the top of the Superliga as they beat the bottom two. It leaves the league looking like a bottom two and a top three and then a lot close together in-between

North Macedonia

Fans of administrative nonsense will have loved Tikves’ cup win over Vardar midweek. Vardar complained that, on the player registration system, Tikves had made an error that invalidated the registration of Wisdom Okere, who opened the scoring for Tikves. The issue? On the COMET registration system (used by a few FAs), you have to upload a medical certificate to show that the player has passed a medical. Tikves had accidentally uploaded the medical certificate for another player to Okere’s registration. Vardar’s complaint is being looked into and Tikves have updated COMET with the right document now.

Okere, for what it’s worth, has played in every game this season doing rather well so, if his registration was improper, then you’d imagine there may be a lot more that just this cup game that’s up for debate, albeit the cup is all that’s been requested.

Struga turned over Vardar 1-0 courtesy of a Marjan Radeski goal to give themselves a 5 point gap in second over the reigning champions with Shkendija a point clear at the top.

Shkendjia Haracine-Tikves ended with arrests and a point a piece but, mainly, it’s worth just seeing how many people they call the riot police out for in Skopje…

Everyone!

As it’s Ballon d’Or week, I thought it worth including the votes from the panel members from the region

Slovenia’s Ales Potocnik, Montenegro’s Danilo Mitrovic, Kosovo’s Bajram Shala and Bosnia’s Semir Mustafic all had Harry Kane as their number one. Harry Kane may have managed to find agreement between Israel and Iran in their votes, but not between Kosovo and Serbia.

Croatia’s Zdravko Reic got a bit noticed for having Kane as 6th in his list, one of very few panel members not to have him around the top 5, especially as Kane came in below Ferran Torres in his voting. He had Rodri as number one. He does have the excuse of being 85, though, and did take the time to apologise to Kane afterwards stating his votes were too heavily based on the World Cup. (6)

1 - Not even joking - “I would describe the incident more as a kind of automatic movement on my part in order to get past the player and because Isaac Matondo is shorter, I hit him in the face.”

2 - Takes a lot of explaining but it’s part grievance against past sanctions, part regional rivalry between Styria and what’s seen as the Ljubljana dominated NZS.

3 - This is just because I find it funny but the HNL have brought in the animated line-ups before games and there’s already a really entertaining one which is Alec van Horenbeck attempting and failing to show off the Hajduk badge.

4 - We’re having a footnotes edition this time - it’s the first time Dinamo have lost to Rudes since the penultimate round of the 17/18 season when Dinamo had already won the title long ago and weren’t taking it seriously. You can tell because the starting line-up included Zagorac and Ante Coric, who at the time was in the bomb squad trying to force a move from the club.

5 - Before anyone says it, Croatia also released a list but it’s a provisional one using the spy motif they like of late. Pongracic is already out of it injured though and the confirmed squad comes at the end of this week. Here it is if you’re interested…

6 - I disagree with him on apologising, actually. For a start - it’s fine to own it. For a second - the man is scoring goals for fun at Bayern. That alone doesn’t cheapen things but his scoring record isn’t that dissimilar to Mario Gomez in his pomp between 2010-12 and Gomez didn’t receive a single vote for Ballon d’Or, never mind win the thing and that was in a stronger Bundesliga in a Bayern side that made the Champions League final.

I get that now Messi and Ronaldo are out of the picture, the award is getting some lifetime achievement awards out of the way and it feels like this is that, a bit. Is Kane’s achievements in 25/26 really greater than those of Salah in 24/25 - of course they aren’t. That doesn’t diminish Kane’s achievement, but it’s fair to say that we’ll look at this award giving in a few years time like he’s Sandra Bullock winning an Oscar for The Blind Side.

The chaos at Dinamo that season saw them lose the title to Rijeka in a wonderfully chatoically messy title race and, perhaps more than anything, informs Dinamo’s thinking at this current time. Few would argue Jakkirovic was somewhat harshly done by at that time. Few would argue Jakirovic has done rather well for himself since. Few would argue that Rijeka’s title win was as much due to Dinamo’s incessant knee-jerk bad decisions.

Two seasons on, the situation is somewhat similar. Dinamo have had that bad derby result. Dinamo have had that stutter in Europe. Yet Dinamo have not pulled the trigger on replacing Mario Kovacevic and repeatedly back him. Is Dinamo’s new found patience the right call?

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Kovacevic last season

Dinamo’s reaction to losing a title was what we often see in that situation from clubs that unexpectedly didn’t win things - they threw money at it. And, as normally follows that, Dinamo cantered to the title by 18 points aided by Rijeka ‘s terrible start and Hajduk’s form dropping off in the spring.

They money they spent broadly worked - Dion Drena Beljo provided 31 goals in the league, putting up numbers not seen in the league since the days of Eduardo. Other signings such as Mateo Lisica, Moris Valincic, Sergi Dominguez and Fran Topic all overdelivered while the larger names that came in in McKenna, Zajc and Bennacer broadly delivered. It was not a perfect strike rate by any means - the £3m on Villar doesn’t look great nor does the fee on Grabiel Vidovic but, for a squad that had sold their two best midfielders in Petar Sucic and Martin Baturina in the summer, it was a good job well done to be able to say they came out the window a better side than they went into it, particularly given the growth in form in Luka Stojkovic and Arber Hoxha.

In play style, Dinamo were, and remain, relatively simple. 4-3-3 with one dedicated 6 and one big number 9. As such, they live on the form and consistency of the midfield supplying that number 9. The partnership in the middle of the defence between Scott McKenna and Sergi Dominguez worked well and gave a good mix of big man clearing things and cultured man linking things. On top of that, they were genuinely dangerous in wide areas.

Three months into 26/27, many of those things are no longer true.

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Dinamo’s One Man Band

Dion Drena Beljo, as mentioned, scored 31 goals in the league last season. This represented a third of Dinamo’s goals.

Beljo, this season, has 12 goals. In 8 games. Beljo’s contribution is more than half of Dinamo’s goals this season which means that, when he’s not available (as he missed the loss to Osijek due to illness), Dinamo are automatically in a bit of bother because he is doing it all himself this term. Even if you discount penalties, Beljo’s decisive contributions domestically for this season alone are as follows:

Both goals in the opener vs Slaven Belupo

2 Assists and a goal in the 3-1 win over Varazdin in week 3

Goal and assist in the 2-2 draw vs Istra in week 4

The only goal in the 1-0 vs Gorica the following week

2 goals in the 3-2 win over Lokomotiva the week after that.

Attributing a points number to a single player’s contribution automatically assumes that whatever replacement they’d bring in wouldn’t do any of that, but you can assume a Beljo-less Dinamo would be anything up to eleven points worse off than they are right now. That’s the difference between second and ninth. That’s a contribution worth more than a point a game.

If you do a similar exercise for the entirety of last season, Dinamo would have been nine points worse off. That’s 0.25 points per game or, more pertinently, the difference between winning the title in April or winning it in May.

That’s without mentioning that his goals were the first in the comeback in the Champions League qualifier vs Thun or the winner in the Europa League vs Anderlecht. You can literally put a monetary value on those contributions and it’s in the millions.

I’m not about to be contrary enough to say that the reliance upon Beljo is of detriment to Dinamo as a whole - but it is fair to point out that that reliance is there and is to a pretty extreme amount, albeit on a limited sample this season.

Dinamo’s Drop Off

Looking at Sofascore ratings, we can see Dinamo’s issue a little more clearly. This is the list of players rated over a 7 on their average rating per game with 50% of minutes last season:

Your 31 goal a season striker isn’t even the best player with basically the entire creative engine of the midfield in there also. Bluntly, you can see that this was a side firing on all cylinders, particularly up the spine of the side as every central player in the squad is in that list of player doing well.

This is that same list for 26/27 to date:

It looks very different. Galesic is a utility defender, Radeljic is the back-up CB. Beljo’s importance to the side is highlighted even more and, as most would agree, Josip Misic has had a noticeable drop off from last season. The midfield isn’t operating on the level of last temr and, given Galesic and Radeljic are there, we can say that Dinamo’s first choice CBs have had a pretty big drop off too (given the others’ ratings are inflated by getting time in easier games). If one expands on this by position, no forward other than Beljo is rating at a standard better than the fifth best forward from last season.

So what’s going on.

Firstly, as we’ve seen early, midfield production has cratered. Last season, Dinamo were scoring from outside the box around once every other league game. This season, nine games in at time of writing, they haven’t scored from outside the box and the proportion of shooting from distance has dropped either.

This is in spite of their shooting having actually risen in general by three shots a game. Dinamo’s production has dropped in spite of one attacking metric increasing quite well. So things may not be adding up except something about it makes sense in light of one other metric.

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Dinamo’s progression has changed - their possession stats are quite a way up, their crossing volumes have gone up by about 50% and the accuracy of them has gone up also. Dinamo are aiming for the big man and, while he’s taking chances, any analyst will tell you that crossing is not an efficient way to score goals and this is borne out - xG per shot last term was 0.12 against 0.11 this term and Dinamo’s xG overperformance was 0.47 per game last term vs 0.35 this.

Those differences are pretty subtle but they back up Dinamo’s Beljo issue - Dinamo are doing more, less effectively and being highly reliant on one player having an incredible return because, and I love it when things match up, Dinamo’s xG overperformance is almost exactly the same as Dion Drena Beljo’s xG overperformance.

The one other stat I do want to mention is Dinamo’s possession losses - on average, this has gone up by 16 losses per game. Given Dinamo’s counterattacking volume has also risen by quite a bit (38 in 36 games last term, 17 in 9 this term), we can draw the conclusion that, in general, the game state in Dinamo’s fixtures this season has been far more unstable and contested than it was last season. With long shooting dropping off, we’re likely seeing this as an effect of changing pressing behaviour and changing build-up play.

In a nutshell, the story is that in attacking phases, Dinamo still produce, but the connectivity in the side to get them to those phases looks greatly less effective than six months ago.

This Summer’s Business

To this point, I think it’s best to start this by looking at the wings and Dinamo’s summer business (and the ramifications of it). Dinamo’s big early signing was the return of Mislav Orsic to the club - Orsic is, of course, a left winger and Dinamo had done well and gotten plenty of production out of Arber Hoxha on that wing last term. Orsic, to this point, hasn’t shown his form. Hoxha, to this point, has been linked with a move away and also hasn’t been as effective. Dinamo’s business created uncertainty in a settled position and the output from there has dropped.

It’s similar on the other wing - Fran Topic came on very well last term filling in while Mateo Lisica had illness issues and his reward this term was… to get punted out of the European squad so they could fit Iker Almena into it. Again, production has dropped. Monsef Bakrar filled in there too last season and he ended up sold as he wasn’t enough of a striker so they could bring in Smail Prevljak who hasn’t done all that much and whose form at Istra last term didn’t really justify the step up.

On top of that, the Goalkeeping question went on far longer than it should have with Dominik Livakovic’s loan ending in the summer, a long courting of him from the club being rebuffed and Dominik Kotarski coming in on 31 August. Dinamo could have acted quickly and it’s perhaps fair to think some of the decline we saw above in the defensive performances is linked to not having a pre-season with a settled goalkeeping situation and not knowing who you’re building a relationship with.

Put simply, while Dinamo did not have a traditionally bad summer window, they certainly didn’t have an optimal one either as the two bets they made at the end of May - that Orsic would be good and that Livakovic could be secured - both failed to pay off. In fact, arguably all three of their big name summer signings in Orsic, Kotarski and Ivanusec are recovery jobs to some degree - certainly FCK fans don’t miss Kotarski and Ivanusec’s “Thank You” post to Feyenoord had to have comments turned off given how poor that spell was.

This does not absolve Kovacevic but it’s key to this season’s issues that if last season saw good signings and the team firing on all cylinders, one of the pistons cracked before a ball was kicked in anger this season.

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But is it Kovacevic’s head that rolls?

At the start of last season, to the surprise of many, I backed Hajduk as title winners. My justification was, I felt, reasonable - it wasn’t that Dinamo were bad, it’s just that they’d come off a punishing season, had brought in a manager untested in the level of title challenge he was about to be thrown into and that there would be a fair question to ask as to how their chin would hold up if they got smacked in the face.

Last season, through no fault of Kovacevic, that chin wasn’t tested. Hajduk briefly threatened but their fade in early Spring handed Dinamo the title as much as Dinamo’s own form punished them.

Now, that chin is being sorely tested and the doubts from last season resurface, especially when their competition is a resolute Hajduk side who have shown in Europe and in the Derby that they have the character to drag themselves through tough challenges.

Kovacevic hasn’t been helped by an illness running through the squad (albeit, Dinamo aren’t alone in that this autumn - viruses have been very prevalent in general) but his key issue is that he is a very predictable manager. His 4-3-3 has worked to this point domestically, but it is dependent on someone scoring 30 a season which is not something any manager should be banking on - due to either form, injury or simply getting bought. As the NEC Europa League game last week showed, Josip Misic’s form has dipped because sides have worked Dinamo out a bit more - they play a 6 in Mišić but the other two central players don’t necessarily have big defensive asks of them (vs NEC, this was Stojković and Ivanušec but you can say it of Zajc as well) and good teams will expose that and expose the central defence as a result - a central defence that isn’t the most mobile in the world.

Which takes us back to the start of this piece and to where Dinamo were at two years ago. Jakirovic was sacked. That had been coming - Jakirovic was never especially well backed in the corridors of power at the club and two bad results, even on the back of a broadly positive start to the 24/25 season was all the excuse that was needed to decide that Jakirovic shouldn’t have the chance to show those results were a speed bump rather than a brick wall. Dinamo of two years ago gave him no credit for the “what” he did in winning a title and no thought to the “how” he did it in creating an effective and attractive outfit that won a title that, at times, they had no right to. It’s easy, in hindsight, to say that was a bad call knowing what happened to Dinamo for the remainder of that season and how Jakirovic’s star has risen in England, but it’s important to remember that it was easy to say it was a bad call the second it happened too.

In contrast, Kovacevic is getting considerable leeway on the back of a title win and it’s clear that Zvonimir Boban heading the club’s infrastructure considers him very much someone he can work with. Many coaches aren’t. But Kovacevic’s job is increasingly on the basis of ignoring things. We shouldn’t ignore player illness - but everyone’s had it. We shouldn’t ignore the European schedule - but Hajduk have that too. We shouldn’t ignore that those in the club meant to supply Kovacevic with a stronger squad than he had in May haven’t done their jobs all that well - but that can happen anywhere at anytime

We shouldn’t ignore that the stats increasingly point to Dinamo being a less effective, more predictable and more planned against side than last season. That’s Kovacevic’s job. And there isn’t a “but” to save him.

Dinamo’s ambitions rest solely on the fitness and form of Dion Drena Beljo. That is a cul-de-sac of the club’s own making and the coach’s own choosing.

And it can only be so long before it’s untenable.

Slovenia

Nafta have added free agent Manu Vallejo to their squad. Vallejo came through at Cadiz and, at his peak, scored goals for Valencia in La Liga but this is his first club since leaving Ceuta in January. Only 29, if he gets back to fitness quickly, he’s an spectacular reinforcement at this level.

This screenshot is grabbed from Ekipa and it’s a pretty fine list of players (and, as always, any GBE needs on these should be directed to ).

Marin would be a good reinforcement for any club at this level albeit his ability to stay fit is a concern - fit, well and developing, he’s not at his ceiling in the Prva Liga. For the summer names, Josip Ivan Zorica will have no problem staying at this level whatever happens to Nafta, Zan Luk Leban could certainly play a level higher and any Bravo player is one with a decent academy heritage behind them.

Celje’s Europa League campaign may have spluttered so far, but there’s nothing like a stirring comeback to set it back on track and that’s just what they provided. RB Salzburg looked vulnerable even when 2-0 up and Blaz Kramer dragged Celje back into it - twisting his man in and out before finishing past the keeper at the near - before Armandas Kucys secured the point, set free by Dukuly and taking advantage of poor GK positioning to slide shot in off the post.

This weekend was a cup weekend which meant many a weekend off for the Prva Liga sides who, like Olimpija, fell at the first hurdle. They, Maribor and Mura were already out but the last 32 stage saw Koper knocked out by their temporary landlords Tabor Sezana 1-0, Nafta KO’d on penalties by Triglav Kranj while Radomlje, Brinje, Celje and Bravo (7-0!) managed to get through.

Game of the round was at Brezice where Aluminij went 2-0 up while down to ten men, were dragged back with two goals in two minutes then started extra time 10vs10 before Brezice pulled 4-2 clear with Aluminij down to nine - all of which means the holders are out.

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Croatia

As you’ll remember, DInamo fans weren’t happy with the proposed new design for Maksimir and, for now, that design is absolutely dead in the water. Until a legal review is completed of the tender, the architects of the design aren’t allowed to speak to the City of Zagreb.

I’ll do something fuller on Dinamo later this week so we won’t linger too long on things there at the moment. Aside from anything else, their league game isn’t till Tuesday but the important thing to mention here before that is that they lost in the Europa League 4-2 to NEC Nijmegen.

UEFA were always going to be annoyed at Hajduk but they threw the book at them after the issues at the Ajax game - Poljud will be closed for the visit of Sint Truidense. But Hajduk can take solace that, when it comes to points, they’re already playing with house money - a hard fought 1-0 win in Thun gives them 6 points after two games and, with a trip to Gibraltar next, the chance for 9 from 9 and qualification for the KO stages assured with half the campaign to go is pretty darned good.

Europe has made this gameweek weird with the definition of the word “Weekend” including the word “Tuesday”. Saturday brought two games - a poor 0-0 between Gorica and Lokomotiva and then a shocker as in spite of going down to ten, Slaven Belupo went to Varazdin and beat them 2-1. Varazdin were, perhaps not surprisingly, the better side (winning on xG 1.5-0.6) but it doesn’t count for nothing without goals. Osijek’s early season form has come to a halt going four without a win after losing 1-0 at hom to Rudes - That takes Rudes three clear of Gorica at the bottom. Osijek are in the midst of an injury crisis with Luka Vrbancic missing this game and being out for a little while and, to add to that, Domagoj Bukvic was taken off here injured.

Bosnia

11 Borac fans who were arrested in Athens before the Panathanaikos game were released on Friday - they’ll be back there for trial in February.

Those eleven missed out on a famous night in Banja Luka as Borac defeated Finns KuPS 2-0. Pressure paid off initially as a Savic shot deflected in just before the half hour before wonderkid Matej Deket doubled the lead in the second half with a cool finish. They were, by a distance, the better side.

Domestically, Borac kept pace with Zrinjski with both sides winning this weekend. The game of the weekend was the Sarajevo derby at Kosevo as Sarajevo beat Zeljeznicar 2-0 with two goals in the 11th and 23rd minute of second half injury time respectively. Those looking at those numbers and wondering wtf will be unsurprised to know that there was a massive delay due to pyro as fans celebrated FK Sarajevo’s 80th birthday in typically flammable fashion. The game was also held in ridiculously heavy rain which, while the pitch didn’t get puddles, it did cut up creating a low quality game Sarajevo were easily on top of.

You’ll excuse the double Sarajevo pic but they’re normally an Adidas club - for this game, they commissioned a one off kit from Admiral and it was incredible. It is available for sale on a limited run of under 2,000. Admiral’s site is down so I can’t tell you the price given, evidently, this retro inspired kit is only available on a site using retro inspired PHP.

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Serbia

Thoughts firstly with the loved ones of Darko Bozovic. The former Partizan keeper passed away this weekend at 47 after battling stomach cancer. He racked up caps for Montenegro and was, prior to his illness, part of the goalkeeping development set up within the Serbian national youth teams.

Demba Seck apologised so his internal suspension for punching Nikola Cumic in front of the entire side during training lasted a grand total of five days. However, Sasa Ilic did note that he wouldn’t be part of the side to face Cukaricki and he wasn’t.

Unfortunately for Partizan, the players picked didn’t really turn up either as Partizan fell to a 2-0 loss to Cukaricki at home. When Cuka did similar last season, it was the catalyst for a sacking. The issue this week was that Partizan couldn’t defend set pieces for toffee and the first half was so poor that they changed three of the attacking five at half time and, while better, were still impotent.

After the game, Sasa Ilic sent out his assistant to do media and then, for the third time this season, submitted his resignation to the board. For the third time this season, the board told him to go away and think about it. Against Cuka was about the first time the side were really booed off but, even still, Ilic doesn’t really get much in the way of flak because, presumably, the man is such a legend at the club that blaming him is beyond the pale even for the Grobari. (see also “Michael Carrick at Old Trafford”)

Anyway, it was third time lucky for Ilic as, after a night to think about it, his resignation was accepted and stuck this time (not that the club have actually announced it). Planned training for the club was cancelled on no notice. The board did request he remain at the club but, after three and a bit months of quite simply the most miserable managerial tenure in the club’s history with a squad and in a situation ill-befitting of parachuting a legend into, he decided he could no longer remain in post. Early links are Aleksandar Vukovic, recently sacked by Widzew Lodz, and Zarko Lazetic, sacked after four games by Al-Taawoun.

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Zvezda re-signed Stefan Gudelj and Matej Gashtarov to new deals to 2031. How did they repay Zvezda for that? Well, we found out in the Conference League against FC Kobenhavn - a Gashtarov own goal and a Gudelj red card in the 2-2 draw. Gashtarov’s intervention in particular was a special kind of dumb, lobbing Matheus with a back pass volley from about 5 yards. Zvezda’s goals came from a wonderful strike from Elsnik and an even better one from Kostov.

We had four games on Friday, headlined by 3rd vs 4th in IMT-Zeleznicar and it was the Pancevo side who confirmed their European credentials with a 1-0 away win thanks to an early goal from David Ankeye. No side other than Zvezda have conceded fewer this season than IMT and, watching that goal, you’ll be surprised at that because it’s simple route one stuff. Interested in what makes Zeleznicar good? Midfielder-cum-analyst Jovan Nisic has you covered.

Nenad Lalatovic got his first win in this spell as Novi Pazar boss with a 2-0 win over one of his former clubs (a phrase I can re-use a lot with him) in Radnicki Nis. Kaheim Dixon, summer signing from Charlton Athletic (1), delivered both goals as the attacking midfield plan of the not so mobile but ridiculously classy Adem Ljajic surrounded by fast, powerful runners worked a treat. Radnicki Nis remain second bottom but Zemun came closer to them with a 1-0 win over Macva while Radnicki Kragujevac defeated Radnik 1-0 to bring us closer to confirming what looks like our top four this season in them, Zeleznicar, Vojvodina and Zvezda, who beat OFK 1-0 on Sunday..

Obviously, we can’t not mention the Serbian elections which took place yesterday. For a start, there’s a direct footballing link after Nikola Dasic, mayor of Kragujevac, published a video supporting Aleksandar Vucic’s SNS that showed Radnicki Kragujevac manager Feda Dudic. Dudic had to come out and deny this as his image was used without permission: “I have not been involved in politics in my own country, and I have even less intention of being involved in another country”.

In yesterday’s election, the opposition Student List won a surprising majority after a massive uptick in turnout. In Serbia’s 250 seat parliament, while exact numbers arent confirmed, it’s going to work out with the Student List having 135-140-ish seats, Aleksandar Vucic’s SNS on 105-ish with minority regional parties taking up the remainder of seats. There was partying in the streets as the movement which grew out of tragedy in Novi Sad nearly two years ago, coalesced into a mass participation protest movement and became an opposition party democratically thrashed the authoritarian SNS regime. The closest there’s been to an adverse reaction from the state has been Ana Brnabic having a go at celebrating voters.

Obviously, there will be ramifications across many things - Milorad Dodik, head of the Republika Srpska, is likely spending a lot of time worried about how long his hold on power will last. In football, it’s reasonably likely we’ll see a change in personnel at the FA given that, as we’ve covered before, they were holding back voting on elected roles until after this election - what that means and for whom is another matter given that, as covered before, that needs done by the end of this week.

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Montenegro

First off, if you want to see CFL highlights, you can! The league has begun to put them on youtube - they started with gameweek five, rather than with anything sensible, but any coverage is good coverage, albeit the sound quality leaves a LOT to be desired.

And if you wanted a good match to start that off with, Thursday’s 3-3 between Buducnost and Arsenal would be the place to start, particularly Igor Vukcevic’s wonderful 91st minute equaliser. Otrant-Sutjeska at the top finished in a 1-1 draw that Sutjeska were on top in but kept Otrant on top of the table.

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Kosovo

Elena Sadiku has received a Ballon d’Or nomination in their best coach category. Sadiku, at Hacken, won European silverware after leaving Celtic for there last year. While born in Germany, Sadiku is Kosovan - her family left for Germany in 1990 before returning to Kosovo later in the decade and ended up in Sweden after fleeing the war as refugees.

The big game of the weekend saw Prishtina host Drita on Sunday, a day after Malisheva had eased past Drenica 2-0 to go three clear at the top. They remain that as Drita convincingly beat Prishtina 3-0 courtesy of Messrs Krasniqi, Balaj and Nguena. That brings Drita into third, three behind Prishtina in second.

North Macedonia

It was Shkendija-Vardar this weekend and it was a bitty, fouly 0-0 that saw Vardar have two disallowed for offside meaning the winners of the weekend were Struga whose three points against Skopje brings them within a point of Shkendija at the top. Arsimi-Bregalnica was the fun game of the weekend - a 4-3 win for Bregalnica decided only in second half injury time.

1 - Per the club, they’ve already had multiple enquiries for Dixon that looks something like double their record sale so you’re talking about a figure in the £2m range.

Slovenia

Stozice will be unoccupied for a little bit. After an enforced fallow weekend before the internationals and a terrible pitch during them, it took this weekend off too. The issue isn’t due to the grass, it’s due to what the grass is on and the likelihood is that it will need ripped up and completely replaced but, of course, that’s not really doable at this time of year meaning the both Bravo and Koper (whose Bonifika is recovering after replacement) are both playing home games at neutral grounds. Bravo hosted Radomlje in their 2-2 draw this weekend in Grosuplje - that’s 2 draws in 2 for Radostin Aleksandrov since being appointed at Radomlje.

At Olimpija, Jugoslav Trencovski received the dreaded vote of confidence midweek. Olimpija’s second coach of the season hasn’t turned things enough around for the fans but is fine with the board. As always with Olimpija, that statement needs the words “for now” added. For now won’t be any time soon after a Dino Kojic penalty gave them a 1-0 league win over Aluminij this weekend - although Olimpija were very much misfiring up front and should have won far more comfortably.

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Celje’s Europa League game vs Omonoia went badly. In the stands, just 4,200 turned out. On the pitch, Celje were miles off their opponents - Zeljkovic moved them to a three at the back and it simply didn’t work. 3-0 for Omonoia was about right on the night.

Niko Kasalo was stretchered off with what looks like a serious injury in Mura’s 0-0 draw in the Prekmurje derby with Nafta. Kasalo missed most of 24/25 due to a knee injury and this, unfortunately, looks like the same again.

That meant all the goals on Sunday came from Koper annihilating Brinje 5-0 still at Rajko Stolfa, Tabor Sezana’s postage stamp ground. Where Maribor failed to profit from gifts from the defence, Koper benefitted from pressing and forcing errors early, up 2-0 in the first ten minutes and just ran over their opponents. It’s Koper-Maribor next up as the top two face off.

Croatia

Hajduk-Ajax was arguably the European game of the week but it started with a police operation. 18 Ajax fans were arrested on Tuesday in Split, all carrying various weaponry. And it continued in a similarly poisonous vein up to kick off - the Torcida march to the game (which UEFA presumably won’t sanction given it was outside the stadium) was littered with far–right slogans glorifying the holocaust, given Ajax’s links to the Jewish community. An announcement was made in the ground about this behaviour to indicate a criminal investigion was already under way, albeit there were no reports of violence on the day prior to the game. There were, however, over 50 arrests the day prior as Torcida and Ajax fans fought, a figure that would presumably have been higher had the armed fans not been arrested on Tuesday.

There was one main issue during the game - a 12 minute delay due to pyro - but the displays running into the game were incredible with an incredible tifo in remembrance of Ivan Gudelj.

Obviously, Hajduk will be getting a reprimand from UEFA for that but, of more immediate import is that they got not just a result but a whole three points. Marin Soticek was on one, creating the opener for Bamba and then finishing the second a couple of minutes after after Klaasen had drawn Ajax level, both goals a result of fine Hajduk pressing. Hajduk were undoubtedly the best side on the night.

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Dinamo managed the win but in less impressive fashion, winning with a Beljo penalty at the death. Anderlecht cracked the bar twice in the space of ten seconds in the first half and drew a couple of fine saves from Kotarski. Anderlecht were, understandably, unhappy at the penalty Dinamo were given after a rough handball call after Reabciuk dove in to block a shot and Rodriguez instead played it poorly back into the box, catching the defender’s training arm sliding in. Beljo did what he always does and that was that for a 1-0 win.

What all that means in coefficient terms is that Croatia have now jumped ahead of Scotland into 19th. If Croatian clubs earn more than 1.25pts (which, in match currency, is two league phase wins and a draw), their overall coefficient will rise from this season to what is carried over to next season. Exceeding that would begin to put them in reach of at least 18th.

Lokomotiva often look far and wide for players but they’ve looked a bit further this time - they’ve signed as a free agent Erbol Atabaev, a Kyrgyzstan international midfielder. His last club was Muras United, who currently sit second in the Kyrgyz Higher League. Like any player from a surprising country, he’s automatically one to look out for.

The HNS were fined 50,000 euros for a range of issues at the Spain game in Split, most seriously, “discriminatory behaviour”. They’ve also been given a suspended partial stadium closure.

HNL Friday was Rudes-Rijeka and, again, Rudes are coming along a little bit in spite of a 2-1 defeat. Vignato put Rijeka ahead early with a deflected shot from the edge of the box on 3 minutes after a fantastic run but, otherise for the umpteenth time for Rijeka, it was the Toni Fruk show, cracking the post with an angled shot in the first half then sealing the win with a top class free kick in the second as Rudes went down to ten for a fairly harsh last man red card for Vedran Celjak.

Bad Osijek are starting to make a reappearance. While they escaped Opus Arena with a 1-1 draw against Gorica, that was in spite of Gorica having THREE goals disallowed. Unsurprisingly, Mario Carevic was sent off from the dugout as you’d expect if you’d just watched your side have three goals disallowed, two of which were tight, tight offside calls. Bad Istra did make an appearance as they lost 2-0 to Lokomotiva, failing to really create much against a side very much not in form.

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Sunday was title race day as, after European exploits, Hajduk and Dinamo took centre stage. At Poljud, Hajduk edged Varazdin 1-0 - Ivan Canjuga almost managed to score from 60 yards with ten to go but it was Hajduk who landed the killing blow with 5 to go as Acapandie ran onto a corner and bulleted a header into the back of the net.

Dinamo had a considerably easier time of it against Slaven Belupo. 5-1 and a performance from Dani Rodriguez, a summer recruit from Barca who hasn’t been fully fit yet this season, that suggests he’s a real reinforcement for Dinamo this season. Having an even easier time of it are Dinamo’s Kadet (U17) side- 8 games, 8 wins and a goals record of 41 for and 1 against - keep an eye in particular on Lovro Trupcevic, the squad’s right back.

Bosnia

Emmanuel Matuta is on trial with Zrinjski - the DM is a product of PSV and has spent the past two seasons at Lierse.

The NFSBiH was fined 40.5k Euros and given a suspended partial stadium closure due to racist behaviour in the stands amongst other things.

11 fans were arrested in Athens ahead of Borac’s game with Panathanaikos in the Conference League. And if fans were paying the penalty, so were Borac - they gave away two in the first ten minutes of their game. Mladen Jurkas saved the first but not the second. Jurkas, in general, had an exceptional game as Panathanaikos won the xG battle 3.8-0.23 but only 2-1 on the scoreboard - Jojic with Borac’s goal. Borac then had a weekend off in the league as their game was postponed vs Velez on Friday due to seven players being “ill” which, given I told you the game wasn’t happening in last week’s newsletter, probably isn’t the most convincing of reasons.

Anyway, Zrinjski took advantage, defeating Celik on Sunday to pull five clear at the top over Borac. With Zeljeznicar and Sarajevo dropping points yet again. Sarajevo, by the by, are third yet have only scored seven goals in ten games this season.

Serbia

Rade Bogdanovic, who somehow still has a job, pulled no punches when talking about Dusan Vlahovic pulling out of the national team due to injury - “he had a latent pain in the area of his testicles”. It’s hardly the first time players have been accused of not being particularly committed to the national team.

Novi Pazar sacked coach Strahinja Pandurovic. Middling form all season has cost him his job there. Speaking of Novi Pazar and because I can’t be allowed to go a week without talking about Ratko Mladic, footage came out from their game against Partizan of Grobari chanting Mladic chants at the Novi Pazar fans and held a portrait up all game.

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Anyway, Novi Pazar replaced Pandurovic with Nenad Lalatovic. Lalatovic left the club at the end of last season due to falling out over budget and because he’s Nenad Lalatovic and he’s had more jobs than Miss Rabbit from Peppa Pig.

Demba Seck has been suspended by Partizan. Seck, who has multiple accusations of revenge porn against him in the past, is training separately from the squad after an incident in training where he punched Nikola Cumic. Zubairu Ibrahim had been suspended for four games internally but returned recently though head coach Sasa Ilic had named Ibrahim and Seck as the two players who cause the most headaches but, unlike Ibrahim, Seck has refused to apologise to this point.

Thursday’s most dramatic game was, perhaps predictably, Lugano vs Crvena Zvezda. The most dramatic press conference was probably the one after it. Lugano took the lead through Ajeti after a massive error in miscontrolling from Stefan Gudelj with Elsnik equalising on the half hour. Zvezda had the chance to go ahead on the hour with a big chance for Dieng but Rade Krunic would put them in the lead five minute later with a low drive into the corner from 25 yards.

And then, much as in the EL playoff vs Plzen, things went very wrong, very quickly. With ten to go, Dieng’s last touch in the game was to fluff the ball over the bar from 10 yards out in the middle of the goal after a defensive error. Four minutes later, Lugano were level - Gashtarov (1) missing a header in the box and, while Moncada scuffed his shot, it spooned over Matheus and into the back of the net. Four more minutes later and Bajo gave away a penalty (an obvious and definite one) and Grgic stuck it in the top corner.

Riera isn’t under pressure in the strictest sense - the club are firmly behind him as he is intent on building for next summer to the point that the coaching changes mentioned last week are stretching to the younger systems of the side, including the farm team (well, the second tier farm team) Graficar moving towards more Spanish methods and personnel. They defeated Mladost 5-1 in the league but Riera wasn’t happy with the performance as a whole, perhaps exacerbated by two of the old guard in the returning Katai and Arnautovic contributing the first two. The game was also notable for the return from the bench of Mladost’s Ognjen Bondzulic after over a year out with a serious knee injury - the young winger/striker looked a level above this league at times before his injury and hopefully he’ll do the same once his shar

Radnicki Nis swapped manager last week to bring in Nikola Drincic but he couldn’t quench their thirst for points after Radnik advanced into the top six on Friday with a 3-0 win. Real sa Nisave were down to ten for most of the game after Franck Kanoute got two yellows in the first 15 minutes. Martin Novakovic was particularly active for the winners and, at 25, is quietly having the best season of his career so far and starting to capitalise on the undoubted promise he had when breaking through at Rad. Scouts - keep an eye on that one…

Vojvodina defeated Radnicki Kraguejvac 2-0 to keep pace with Zvezda at the top and Feda Dudic stated that he felt Vosa can challenge Zvezda all the way this season - he’s played both in the past week so he should know. Mozzart described Macva’s equaliser vs OFK in their 1-1 draw with the description “you will see little more beautiful in Europe this weekend” which is quite the way to describe long ball, cross, header but you can decide that for yourselves.

Novi Pazar lost 2-1 to IMT on Nenad Lalatovic’s most recent debut on their bench which means…

The weekend ended with Zeleznicar-Partizan as the two European contenders (on paper) and, suffice it to say, Partizan are still in trouble. A 1-0 win for the Pancevo side over the Belgrade giants leaves Partizan a full nine points off the European spots. This time it was Mario Jurcevic just having a mare - losing his man for the assist to Zeleznicar’s goal and then a straight red for DOGSO. Sasa Ilic remains on the bench and the board remain behind him.

Zemun haven’t had the best time in the Superliga this term and haven’t been able to play at home due to their stadium not being up to spec. This weekend, their ultras turned out at the national team’s game for Rugby League held at Zemun’s ground to protest. The rugby side lost.

Montenegro

Midweek was cup action with the headline game being Sutjeska hosting Decic 6-5 on penalties after a game described in the news report as “poor and unwatchable”

The league gameweek is a bit Monday based this week making getting it in here awkward. The main result on the Sunday was that of Buducnost defeating Decic in Tuzi. 17yo Petar Vujovic scored his third in four league games to make the difference - the attacking midfielder will not be in this league long.

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Kosovo

Agim Ademi, head of the FFK, sat down for an interview this week with Klan Kosova - of most interest is that they’re looking to snaffle four more players for the national team - Erblin Osmani has already been capped and Yll Gashi is another who has declared for Kosovo both within Bayern’s system but he suggested there’s others so if you know anyone with an Albanian-ish name, they might be turning out for Kosovo at some point, something we should acclaim given how many bigger nations (Hi, Serbia) lose talent to Germany in particular. (2)

As mentioned last week, it was a big midweek for games opening up with Ballkani-Drita, held at the spectator friendly time of 2pm on a Tuesday afternoon. Not a classic by any means but Drita were just about the better side - somehow they didn’t go ahead as Salihu struck a ball from a stramash off the inside of the post onto a defender on the line but Besnik Krasniqi scored the only goal of the game right at the death, breaking a challenge on the right, charging into the box and beating the keeper for power at the near post.

The top two shootout between Malisheva and Prishina that ended the midweek round saw honours even on 1-1 with Dzemal Ibishi the big game scorer for Malisheva a second game in a row, taking advantage of a well played advantage just before the half hour. Both sides spurned big chances before Assane Diatta made it 1-1 from the spot though there was time for Kreshnik Uka to head wide at the death for Malisheva.

North Macedonia

Shkendija Haracine are a club with drama. Martin Todorov was sent off (rightly) in their game vs Struga this weekend for DOGSO as the VAR intervened. Later in the game, the referee called Haracine captain Besir Demiri an “illiterate monkey” - Haracine published a statement calling this racist which is…well, Demiri’s not of a race where calling him a monkey is strictly racist as opposed to just moronic but Haracine’s statement calls it an “insult with a racist connotation, especially considering that two black players from the opposing team were also playing on the field.”

Ref Vlatko Ilioski has owned up to it an apologised but, unsurprisingly, it led to heated scenes post game, including where Haracine reps entered the referee’s dressing room to remonstrate with him and it’s this the the FFM are choosing to focus on, stating “such improper, uncivilized and extremely unsportsmanlike behavior, which represents a direct attack on the integrity, dignity and safety of officials. Sportsmanship, ignorance of the Rules of the Game and disrespect for basic sporting values ​​cannot and will never be a justification for insults, threats, pressure and unfounded attacks on referees and officials of the Federation, especially when it comes to correctly made decisions in accordance with the Rules of the Game and the VAR protocol.” (3). Haracine have hit the roof and met after the game to discuss how they’ll react and if it will go beyond writing a strongly worded statement, which they’ve already done.

Shkendija, the one you know (4), won to keep their league lead. They’re three ahead of Struga and Vardar.

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1 - Said it before and will say it again - Gashtarov is having a mighty rise this season since being promoted to Zvezda’s first team, but he’s reliably doing something really costly every time he’s in a big game. It’s clear Zvezda’s youth push is leaning on him a little and while he’s got the goods technically, he’s absolutely a player who should, at this point, be at OFK where he’s not, y’know, playing big games every week and could develop the mental side of his game with less pressure on him that he’ll have making mistakes in European games.

2 - For what it’s worth, here’s the top ten with second nationality Kosovo U23s on Transfermarkt.

Ibrahimovic, I believe, has already committed to Kosovo and fits the “Bayern Product” link that’s been worked on. I’d be shocked if they weren’t trying to get Hyseni. Bleon Kurtulus will be one they’re in contact with given his brother was in Kosovo’s system before declaring at senior level for Sweden. Brruti has declared for Albania. Ermir Rashica is Albanian’s U21 captain so little chance there, especially as he rejected Kosovo for them. Going a little older would bring Lorent Tolaj of Bristol City into the mix, who hasn’t been in the Swiss system since U19 level and Copenhagen GK Diant Ramaj who has met with the FFK. I’d say you also can’t have the name Vokrri and not play for Kosovo.

Expanding that to people who have Albanian as their second nationality, Arda Okan Kurtulan is eligible for basically everyone and represented North Macedonia and Albania at youth level but does have roots in Mitrovica. Nelson Weiper of Sturm Graz has a brother in the Kosovan system so would be another very logical player to bring in.

Kurtulus, as a defensive player, would be the highest priority, I’d suspect which would, by extension, make Sweden U21 Makolli a priority also. For what it’s worth, Ademi said in that interview he wouldn’t name names but it’s fun to speculate!

3 - By the by, racism absolutely is justification for insulting someone. Anyway, naming note, the club call themselves Shkendija - I’m choosing not to because that’d just be confusing for everyone. If you see them noted as Shkendija 77 or referred to as in Aracinovo rather than Haracine, it’s the same club.

4 - Though they’re two years younger than Haracine so I had to edit this after checking that because my original sobriquet for them of “The OG Shkendija” would be the worst type of incorrect for a pedant like me - factually.

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Slovenia

Slovenia defeated Scotland 2-1 at Hampden. This leaves them in second, 5 points behind the Swiss at the top and out of any relegation concerns.

The Prva Liga was excitement central on Saturday with a pair of 3-3 draws between Radomlje and Koper and then Olimpija and Mura. The former featured a red card for Divine Ikenna for the rarity of fouling someone for a yellow, seeing the ref play advantage for it then committing a second yellow card offence about three seconds later. The latter featured a pearl of a strike from distance from Niko Kasalo. Miolt Avdyli gave Celje three points against Celje but Maribor extended their lead at the top with a come from behind victory over Brinje as Bravo fell from second to third after losing to Nafta.

Maribor sit four clear at the top ahead of Koper who are a further point ahead of Bravo. Celje’s European campaign resumes this week hosting Omonoia.

Croatia

Croatia lost to World Champions Spain in Split 2-1 after Bench-on D’or Mikel Merino brought Spain back with a double. This leaves them only really with their final game vs the Czechs as of any consequence whatsoever.

Let’s just get to the big games…

Match Analysis 2 - Hajduk hosted Dinamo. Big at any time of a season but as the first edition in what’s shaping up as a straight two way title fight, it’s massive. And, boy oh boy, did they deliver.

Arguably, neither side came into this in the greatest of form after Hajduk were out-cannied by Rijeka last time out but should have taken the lead early as Bamba tore Vinlof apart and squared to Sego who plonked his shot over. Which led to the inevitable - cross, Beljo, goal. A first time ball in from deep from Vinlof saw DDB stood in the centre of the goal ten yards out and he headed into the ground and into the corner. Unstoppable but, if he has the space and time to do that, he inevitably will.

Previewing the game on Croatian footy, I’d said I felt this would be a game won in the mind and that I didn’t think either side would stage a comeback. Hajduk proved me wrong and quickly. A free-kick into the corridor of uncertainty saw Kotarski drop back, the ball bounce in the middle of the goal and the retreating Scott McKenna watching it bounce off his knee and into the back of his own net, adding to his sending off in his last competitive game - vs North Macedonia for Scotland. Back level, Hajduk looked to stretch Dinamo into half time but, during the break, Mother nature showed their hand - it started throwing it down and didn’t stop, impacting everyone.

Hajduk got their winner just before such a winner wouldn’t have been possible - pinball in midfield leading to a ball thrown into Sego, knocked back to Bamba who unleashed a 22 yard daisy cutter into the bottom corner. Ten minutes later, that daisy cutter would have been a mudskipper that likely wouldn’t have even made it to the six yard box for having whacked a puddle or two.

The last 35 minutes of the game (bearing in mind that there were 15 added on!) were defined by conditions. By the 70th minute, the ball was already not reliably running freely and really limited playing the ball on the ground. By the 85th minute, the downpour was a deluge with lots of visible puddles on the pitch rendering the floor as lava. But such things lead to drama and we got it in the 105th minute as whatever the swimming pool equivalent of pinball is led Dinamo to lump a ball in and Beljo, plenty covered this time, still got his head to the ball and floated a header off the post. Hajduk couldn’t clear due to the pitch being absolutely unplayable (altough, important to note, is fine ahead of Ajax), with one more chance for Beljo blazed wide. In a game that shouldn’t have been allowed to finish, Hajduk got a win that puts them three clear of their rivals and ramps up the pressure on Mario Kovacevic ahead of their European tie vs Anderlecht midweek.

Hajduk end the weekend top, one point clear of Varazdin in second. Dinamo are three points behind, but have a game in hand - though that’s against Rijeka who are no gimme. The top two face off this weekend.

Outside of the drama at both ends of the table, there was still plenty going on. Istra beat Osijek 3-1 thanks, in part, to Antonio Mauric scoring perhaps the best goal of the season as, to be fair, both sides put on a mini-goal of the weekend competition. Sunday was another one at the lower end of the table - a top class Pero Bockaj assist was the difference maker in Varazdin’s 1-0 win over Lokomotiva but there was a shocker in Koprivnica as Slaven Belupo demolished Rijeka 4-1 and Matjaz Kek was not happy while Ilija Nestorovski was, arguably, too happy…

Bosnia

Bosnia defeated the Poles 1-0. That leaves them 2 behind Sweden at the top and out of any relegation concern.

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Igor Stimac started talking and the former Zrinjski manager had plenty to say. Most controversially that certain people behind the scenes at Zrinjski wanted Borac to win titles so as to provide a more oppositional foe to stir up the Croat support at the club.

Also talking was Vahid Halilhodzic who wasn’t saying anything controversial but he’s one of those where, if he’s doing a long interview, you should give it a read given he has pretty much had a career at the top end of football for 55 years.

While the weekend went relatively predictably in terms of who won what, not so much in the how we got there. In the title race, Borac had a regulation 2-0 win over city rivals BSK while Zrinjski went 3-0 up, got pulled back to 3-2 and eventually won 6-2 over Sloga with a hat trick from Mario Cuze.

With both Zeljeznicar (lost) and Sarajevo (drew) dropping points, it means we can already safely call it a two horse race at the top with Borac in second already eight points clear of third. Borac miss this upcoming weekend due to the European games around it - it’s Panathanaikos first.

Serbia

If you thought you’d heard the last of Ratko Mladic news, you were wrong. At the game in Belgrade against the Dutch, a group of children made a space in the stand where a pro-Mladic banner was shown. UEFA, unsurprisingly, were not pleased - a 50,000 euro fine and the next game against Germany is behind closed doors. The FA have already announced that they’ll allow children in - hopefully not of the war crime glorifying kind. They’re also banned from having fans at the next away game too.

Nemanja Radonjic, still a free agent after Crvena Zvezda released him over the summer due to… well, being Nemanja Radonjic is on the verge of joining Cukaricki. If he’s mentally locked in, he’s an asset. If he’s mentally locked in, it’s a change.

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Those wondering how long it would take for Albert Riera to fall out with someone at Zvezda got their answer this week. Due to a reaction after being subbed off during their pre-Internationals game vs Radnicki Nis, Aleksander Katai has been internally suspended for two games, albeit the club tried to pass it off as him being injured. On top of that, Riera has been open this week about refreshing the team which, in media terms, means old players getting moved out of the side for young ones but, for those wanting to put two and two together and see what it makes, this perhaps is sign that Riera just isn’t a fan of the influence senior players hold. Either way, the result was the same - three goals and three points against Radnicki Kragujevac. He’s also been changing coaching around as well, having gotten rid of most of the fitness coaching at the club.

Partizan picked up a 1-0 win over Novi Pazar which, at least, takes them out of immediate relegation troubles albeit still a little way from the top six. Cukaricki sprinted to a 2-0 lead vs Macva but were dragged back to a 2-2 draw while Vojvodina took Radnicki Nis apart 4-1 to stay 7 clear in second but 6 back from the top. Zeleznicar’s campaign on catch up continued - a 3-0 win over Zemun took them into fourth.

Radnicki Nis reacted to that game by sacking head coach Marko Nedic - in spite of calling Nenad Lalatovic, they’ve actually brought back former midfielder Nikola Drincic. Drincic managed the club in 24/25.

Kosovo

Malisheva’s first big domestic test this season was passed with flying colours as a Dzemal Ibishi goal gave them all three points in a 1-0 away win to reigning champs Drita. That puts Malisheva top on goals scored as Prishtina dropped points for the first time this season with a 0-0 vs Dukagjini.

The upcoming midweek round is big game central - we start with Ballkani-Drita, always a competitive derby game, and end with Malisheva hosting Pristina at the top with a bit of Feronikeli-Llapi in the middle which, already, is a relegation six pointer.

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Montenegro

Ten men Montenegro couldn’t make it four wins from four as they drew vs Armenia. They’re three points ahead of Cyprus at the top.

Much of the schedule was meant to happen on Thursday but heavy rain claimed both Arsenal-Decic and Bokelj-Petrovac. Buducnost-Sutjeska’s eternal derby did take place but those who watched it probably wished it hadn’t - a miserable 0-0 draw where the closest thing to a goal came in the 4th minute.

Long standing incompetence time - Lovcen Cetinje, Montenegro’s oldest club, should be in a new stadium at this point. Actually, to be accurate, they should be in a relatively new stadium at this point given ground was broken on that stadium nine years ago and it was meant to be open in 2020. It still isn’t open and, in spite of rumours that work was complete and that it was just waiting on a safety certificate, the FA were quick to state that those rumours were nonsense and, as a cursory google maps look will tell anyone, while the stadium is there and standing, it’s not ready for actually playing football on (pic below is the satellite from this year and, believe me, that pitch has been allowed to go to ruin from where it had been).

North Macedonia

Still no goals, still no points as the Swiss won 3-0 in the final Nations League game of the break. Relegation playoff placement is already almost certain.

Due to abuse, ref Igor Stojchevski - the nation’s premier ref - has quit refereeing with immediate effect.

Shkendija vs Shkendija happened this weekend and, fittingly, it was a 1-1 draw meaning Vardar were able to draw a little closer at the top of the table after beating Skopje while Bashkimi shocked Struga to prevent them from drawing level at the top.

Slovenia - Who is the number two striker?

This window isn’t the first time that Slovenia have had to go a little while without Benjamin Sesko - his last cap came almost a year ago at this point - and yet it doesn’t feel like number two behind him has really been set. Since that last cap, two strikers have scored for Slovenia - Vipotnik with two against Montenegro and Sporar with one vs Croatia, both in friendlies and it doesn’t feel as if the queue behind Slovenia’s undisputed number nine is actually that organised.

Andraz Sporar is over the 70 cap boundary but is soon to be 33 and, ultimately, a striker that has always relied on his pace and pressing to be effective - skills which tend to age all at once. Zan Vipotnik’s importance at Swansea has only grown but is a more limited striker than Sesko and is the closest Slovenia have to a pure penalty box striker. Vipotnik has grown this window but it’s clear he requires different support around him in Sturm and Matko doing the running to stretch for him than Slovenia would pick to go around Sesko.

Behind them? Eek. Aljosa Matko has settled on the wing and remains as streaky as they come. Zan Celar has zero goals from almost 20 caps and his career seems to be following a pattern of only scoring when in Switzerland. It’s not, I think it’s fair to say, a position in which there’s lots coming through from the younger areas either. Nik Prelec also missed this break due to injury and, while uncapped, it’s perhaps fair to indicate that one of he, one-cap Ester Sokler or uncapped Leo Rimac of Koper are probably next in line for an audition in the role given Sporar isn’t a long term option and Vipotnik seems more an option to fit a role rather than a like-for-like solution. It’s clear, however, that if the long term durability of Sesko is going to be under question, plan B, or at least Plan A2, needs to be sorted sooner rather than later.

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Croatia - Who makes the step up from the Under 21s in the next window? And is one of them Ivica Olic?

If you want to change the discussion about Croatia, then getting absolutely hammered by England was probably not the ideal way to have done it. We’ve moved on from continuity, from the promise of Bilic’s lightning striking twice, from being one of the world’s best to being yesterday’s news, a generation not only past their best but past their own relevance. The honeymoon hasn’t even finished and yet you get the impression the divorce lawyers are already getting ready to be called in.

This window has an excuse in that Croatia’s U21s had important work to do to get themselves to the Euros next summer - and they did exactly that. But, unlike other national teams, the seniors didn’t call up a couple of young players halfway through the break à la Serbia and multiple other national teams this break.

So, originally, this section would have been looking at the U21s only and who could step up for them in November. Then England happened and the discussion very much changed from “what can Bilic do” to “will Bilic be allowed to do it” to “does Bilic even want to bother with it” which are three very separate types of discussion to have.

To start with the last first, Bilic has not strictly offered his resignation, he specifically stated that there is a possibility that the Spain game in Split could be such that he may choose to, well, split. He walked it back before the game and, perhaps, the much more cohesive performance in Split vs Spain bought him some breathing room. I think it’s fairly obvious already that Bilic’s idea of this job was to take over, slowly change things over and enjoy being able to utilise what was, at the World Cup, still a very useful side. Reality didn’t play ball.

Sportske Novosti polled fans on who they’d want to succeed Bilic should he resign with Ivica Olic getting 70% and Nenad Bjelica the only other person above 10%. Bearing in mind that perhaps the argument against this squad is that it was all a bit continuity Dalic, swapping him for Olic, perhaps Dalic’s most trusted lieutenant, seems like a backwards step and Bjelica is on a down run of jobs so it may well be the case that Croatia have a lack of alternatives (1). However you judge their merits, that such a discussion is being had by the press suggests how little credit he has remaining in the bank.

It’s also hard to just sweep away the England result as a one off - if nothing else, just go and look at the line-up Dalic put out in their 2018 6-0 loss to Spain. A backline of Vrsaljko-Matej Mitrovic-Vida-Pivaric and, to add context, Vrsaljko went off injured after 20 minutes and they only had Marko Rog to bring on to attempt to plug the gap. Ivan Santini started up front. While the first choice midfield was there, everything around it was not just weaker than ideal for 2018, it was a great deal weaker than the options available to Bilic here and, as such, it’s hard just to think everyone had an extremely off night (2).

The issues with this squad were, I feel, pretty self-inflicted. Gvardiol-Vuskovic as a central pairing had to be tried but the left back options were far from ideal. Ivan Perisic is great but is he “starting left back out of position vs two of the best sides in the world” great? No, of course he isn’t, especially when he is asked to play almost every minute. Now perhaps there’s a lesson already from here that Gvardiol-Vuskovic isn’t a partnership and that Gvardiol needs to play at LB, but it’s definitely not a lesson you can truly say is learned if you don’t have A N Other left-back in the squad to call upon. There were options, once Juranovic couldn’t make the squad, to call up another left back and not force a player out of ideal role. Croatia, I think it’s fair, picked a smaller squad than many this break (Hi, Jurgen Klopp) and it can’t be the case that Croatia couldn’t find someone else there, whether that’s calling up Hrgovic from the U21s or just getting someone else in.

Outwith that most obvious of picks, the next squad needs width and mobility. Adrian Segecic and Marin Soticek both offer good options wide and both are in good form. Adriano Jagusic’s exceptional hat trick in this break surely secures his spot - and even without it, he offers the sort of box-crashing midfield option Croatia lack. Luka Vrbancic is in sparkling form and Darko Nejasmic is such an obvious straight swap for Josip Misic, it’s a shock he wasn’t in this squad.

It’s easy also to pick out who should make way - Andrej Kramaric’s time looks to have come to an end for the national team and Franjo Ivanovic, at this point, is a step down from other options in every area he can play so should be first on the block to drop out to allow a specialist wide player to come in. Do we need to see Lovro Majer again, or Nikola Vlasic, or even Ante Budimir? Croatia have an abundance of players we know everything about, who have little extra progression in them at the stage of the career they’re at and who are fringy now. Croatia need to incorporate new blood into the squad but and it’s those on the fringes to make way, not a 41yo who got exposed by English kryptonite but was otherwise fine.

Croatia have had a lot of change and picked the most obvious and unimaginative option to Zlatko Dalic. Now, Slaven Bilic needs to show a great deal of imagination to win the fans back around and he needs to start with the next squad.

Bosnia - Is 4-3-3 the way forward?

If there’s one thing that’s been reliable about Sergej Barbarez in 2026, it’s been his Mike Bassett insistence of 4-4-f**king-2 and there was little reason to doubt it - Bosnia got to a World Cup and, even with Edin Dzeko retiring, Haris Tabakovic is a logical straight swap for him in the big man-Demirovic partnership up top.

So, against Romania, it was surprising to see that shape dispensed with for a 4-3-3. Perhaps what was even more surprising was just how handsomely it paid off given that, last autumn, it wasn’t that impressive.

A key part of it working now is that Alajbegovic and Bajraktarevic started further up the pitch, closer into the striker meaning they had less to do to get into positions to cross and more chances to just get the ball in - which both do extremely well. It allowed Gigovic and Basic to simply sit in the middle and have less to do than in the 4-4-2 and Mahmic ahead of them finished off the move of the night - a fabulous team goal from back to front that the Bosnia of three months ago did not look capable of.

It does provide selection dilemmas - Demirovic kind of has to fall out of the side as Tabakovic scores more and Memic is in a similar position with both having plenty to offer the team, but that’s not this break’s problem and, to be fair, it’s not as if a striking position hasn’t just opened up for someone to get involved. While, in the final game against Poland, Barbarez did revert to 4-4-2, that was a side missing Alajbegovic and with Bajraktarevic on the bench. Save this weird long window (that is getting repeated this time next year) and the fitness strains it has caused, expect 4-3-3 to be the way forward.

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Serbia - What does progress look like and does it really look like this?

Serbia went 4 for 4 this break. Unfortunately, that was four defeats.

In part, one can happily point a finger that Serbia are simply outmatched in the class of opposition they’re in - Germany and the Netherlands go without saying, but Greece showed they can hang at that level also. But this is on the back of a June window that was an unmitigated disaster. Do we really class not repeating the footballing equivalent of soiling yourself as a success? Of course we shouldn’t.

While comparing the squads from summer to now is not comparing like for like, the big squad news was hardly progressive: on return, Dusan Tadic was fine. At 38, he simply can’t last 90 minutes at this level and, against Greece, that really showed but, in the final game against the Dutch, starting and getting just over 60 minutes is about the best you can use him and keep his tank from emptying.But he is very much a short term solution whose reputation was enhanced in his and by his absence.

Where Paunovic does deserve a little credit is in taking a chance on young players. Stefan Gudelj’s audition was passed with flying colours as was Mihajlo Cvetkovic’s. Aleksandar Stankovic comes out of the break with his standing a little enhanced also.

But that doesn’t paper over the San Andreas sized cracks in this team and some of those are of Paunovic’s making/insistence. In spite of wanting to build partnerships, Paunovic didn’t really try a Tadic/Samardzic duo in behind the striker - one that seems a logical fit and might do something we’ve not really seen at international level - a Serbian side using Samardzic properly. In spite of having eyes, Paunovic continues to persist with Nemanja Maksimovic in the middle who gave him plenty of service in the U20 World Cup side a decade ago but who should not really be in the reckoning still in 2026. Left-back is a weak spot and sending Bukinac home to persist with a raggedly out of form Terzic seemed unwise.

However you want to paint it, Serbia were soundly beaten in every game. Even in their best performance, the last vs the Dutch, their opponents still beat them on xG by over a goal. Against Germany, only Dorde Petrovic kept it from being a cricket score as the home side outshot the Serbs 32-1. Yet there doesn’t feel like there’s really any pressure on Paunovic, who has been brought in not for potential now but as part of establishing a process that will give results over the next 5-10 years. While it’s not arguable that Serbia are a less infuriating team for not being run by Piksi, a year on, are Serbia really any better under Paunovic than Piksi? He may have reintegrated players Piksi alienated in Sergej and Tadic but a 38yo can’t be the future nor can a 31yo CM in, let’s be honest, a retirement league in Saudi Arabia. Serbia, in this break, had a squad with under ten players in a top 5 league - it’s a stark drop in player quality from before (19 at the 22 World Cup, 12 at Euro 2024) and it’s hard not to think that players taking the petrodollar has had a significantly detrimental impact on what’s available without other players having come through to replace those players that have chosen money over relevance. Progress may not have come under Paunovic but, for now, he continues to get the benefit of the doubt that the issues are far from his own making.

Montenegro - Is Euro 2028 finally their time?

My prediction in probably 23/24 was that Montenegro would make the 26 World Cup. This was predicated on a couple of assumptions that didn’t pan out - that Vasilije Adzic would come on faster than he did, that Viktor Dukanovic would progress and a couple of others - but it kind of looks like my prediction may have been premature rather than outright nonsense.

Montenegro perhaps have only one weakness right now in terms of rating them as a side to reach the Euros which is in the goalkeeper position, a weakness of fate due to the passing of Matija Sarkic rather than anything else. Vucinic has oscillated between Balsa Popovic and Igor Nikic there and neither have really done enough but everywhere else is looking pretty handy in terms of capability to do what hasn’t been done before.

Bearing in mind this was a squad weakened by injury - Adam Marusic at RB can struggle to stay fit nowadays while Andrija Radulovic has been a long term absentee on the right of midfield - winning games has been a big bonus to the point the talk was getting through this NL campaign with a perfect record. Krstovic-Osmajic is a fun partnership up front of brain and brawn, bringing Aleksa Latkovic into the group was overdue (he missed the summer games injured) and Adzic has finally had a rocket strapped to his back. Add to that the unexpected surprise of Bulatovic’s rapid development and the several still pretty good veterans they have available and you have a squad that can do something.

There are, rightly, elements of Montenegrin football that can be clowned on (such as almost the entire club game) and, to be balanced, the depth of the side is a worry against better sides but winning the group helps with Euro 2028 qualifying (albeit, given I don’t want my brain to melt out my ears, I can’t explain how given the complexity of potential routes). This is absolutely a side on the upswing and one not far away from tournament quality.

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Kosovo - Everyone happy?

This break has gone reasonably well but was overshadowed at the start by the international “retirements” of Amir Rrahmani (potentially reversible) and Florent Hadergjonaj (nuked the bridge). Five points from the four games means Kosovo continue to edge towards their aims and the 1-1 draw in Pristina to Austria rewrote the wrongs of their 3-1 defeat in Vienna which was a miserable performance. Two and a half years into Franco Foda, we’re potentially reaching the point where, at Austria, he started losing his touch a little and annoying people. While this section is purposefully short, given the length elsewhere, that two players have walked out and that Foda has struggled to find a role for Edon Zhegrova does beg the question just how close things are to seeing progress stall for discord.

North Macedonia - How long does Sedloski have?

I get the impression, first and foremost, that there isn’t imminent pressure. It’s always difficult to get a general vibe with the smaller nations (particularly as they tend to be almost as interested if not more so in Albania) as the coverage of the game is that bit more spotty and harder to find and I think that my general take on how North Macedonia are doing is somewhat less patient than the general discussion.

The stats are bad. Their last win was over Liechtenstein in September 2025 and, in the 12 games in that time, they have scored a grand total of two goals - none of which have been in the eight games managed by Goce Sedloski. Looking purely at Sedloski’s reign, it’s 2 draws, 6 losses as the side have been outscored 18-0. One could have looked at the end of Blagoja Milevski’s reign last year in the 7-1 demolition as an aberration based on their WC qualifying campaign and drawing 0-0 vs Belgium not long before that. One looks at it now as in character for what has come after. It could have been worse - no goalkeeper made more saves than Stole Dimitrievski this window (and, to be fair, he was not at his best).

And it’s hard not to think that Sedloski has contributed to that somewhat. There have been some baffling callups across 2026. Azer Omeragikj somehow has 5 caps this year. Matej Gashtarov played every game this break yet looked like getting sent off or costing a goal in at least two of them. Sedloski has turned to the domestic league to fill his squad but the thing with the North Macedonian top flight, the big key thing about it, is that it isn’t very good. It’s one of those nations where if they pick a side without anyone from the domestic league, you don’t bat an eyelid.

But Sedloski’s issue, particularly at this part of the season, is that there are squad players missing out because they don’t have a club. There are squad players missing out because they’ve chosen to go and play halfway round the world in SE Asia.

A year ago, this squad would have parked the bus to a 0-0 vs Switzerland and left this break with points and maybe even a win. Sedloski wants to play more football than Milevski, but Milevski likely had a better gauge of where his squad were and how to work around its limitations - by being a horrific side to watch and play against. The FFM must surely be thinking that that stodge is better than what they’ve got now.

Everyone - How differently did sides approach this break?

I wanted to wrap this piece up with an appreciation that this international break has been odd. Four games in a ten day span is not brutal in the sense that we ask it a lot at club level, but you can pick your players at club level, you don’t have a similarly free hand at international level. As such, I thought it worth just showing how each nation used their squad during the break.

Serbia - 31 players available, 22 getting minutes, 18 in 2+ games

Kosovo - 28 players available, 22 got minutes, 17 in 2+ games

Montenegro - 30 players available, 24 got minutes, 19 in 2+ games

Bosnia - 26 players available, 22 got minutes, 16 in 2+ games

Croatia - 27 available, 23 with minutes, 19 in 2+ games

North Macedonia - 26 available, 24 with minutes, 21 in 2+ games

Slovenia - 25 available, 18 with minutes, 16 in 2+ games

Slovenia, interestingly, are the only outlier in terms of how many players were used. Serbia are similar to Slovenia in terms of a percentage basis but, to be fair, they did swap out three players in the middle of the break. I’m not sure anything of this actually shows how successful any approach is over another given it’s only taking rotation into consideration but it’s worth noting nonetheless. We see this four game break again this time next year and it may be an interesting comparison at that point.

1 - I don’t seriously believe the HNS would go out of the names within a small and very predictable circle but I’ve seen one suggestion online of Vladimir Petkovic which seems a very sensible idea given his experience, his very Dalic-y persona and his fine record at tournaments. The HNS aren’t about to push the boat out to get, say, Conte in, fun though that would be.

2 - To be fair, I think England are a uniquely bad match for Croatia. Other sides don’t have a Bellingham who wants to play just behind a Modric. Other sides aren’t so harum-scarum physically that expose the lack of pace. Other sides would get to three and take their foot off the accelerator while England have something to prove and the English mentality is that much more unwilling to accept a 45 minute performance when a 90 minute one is possible.

Slovenia

An easy win against North Macedonia started Slovenia’s set of games this week. Given certain Macedonian players were stating before the game that Slovenia were much better than them, the 2-0 home win at Stozice was very much to be expected.

In spite of taking the lead against Switzeland early through Zan Vipotnik, Slovenia lost 2-1 away to Switzerland in an encouraging performance. The Swiss came back quickly after a Janza own goal and went in at half time ahead but Slovenia were likely the better side in the second half, albeit without really creating all that much.

Koper’s Leo Rimac has missed time with a hamstring issue and it seems that he might be done until 2027 already, according to the club.

Ivan Vukomanovic has left bottom club Radomlje - the sacking was announced yesterday which does make you wonder why it was left to the end of the international break rather than missing two weeks to get a new coach embedded but that particular matter is the problem of new recruit Radostin Aleksandrov who steps up after a pair of decent spells in the second tier, most recently at Rudar Velenje.

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Croatia

How badly did the new Maksimir go down? Well, it’s been confirmed that the original tender for the contract has now been rescinded and it’s, if not back to the drawing board, back to the other bids. You can view, and rate, all of them online and the theme is that voters like big bowls - this is number one at time of writing…

Martin Slogar has joined Rudes on a free, bolstering their attacking options.

World Champions gonna World Champion as Spain beat Croatia 4-1 in Seville. In positives, first start for Beljo, first goal for Beljo and Spain loves them some Modric. In negatives, the four goals and, in general, continuing to be poor at the back.

On Saturday, there was a rugby score. But enough about me going to the Super League Final, Croatia got hammered 7-0 by England in front of a crowd made up only of children in Rijeka due to UEFA forcing it behind closed doors. Croatia’s defence essentially was solely this…

Unsurprisingly, Slaven Bilic’s honeymoon period, if such a thing really exists any more, is well and truly over. Squad selection was already a little under scrutiny given this was very much a continuation Dalic squad in feel but the slow, disorganised and knackered version of Croatia that turned up at Rujevica has already seen calls for Bilic to be sacked and that Bilic, post-game, indicated it was less an issue of tactics and more one of application did not go down well. Passing grades to players didn’t really get handed out at all although, it’s fair to say, Livakovic did admirably under the barrage and Kovacic was, at least, less awful than the rest of the outfield players.

Ivan Smolcic left the squad after that game - he’s been dealing with a bug that’s gone round came and kept Baturina out of the first Spain game.

In pre-match comments for the Spain game tomorrow in Split, a city Bilic is well associated with and a city that’s never shy in making its feelings known, Bilic has indicated that a similarly eviscerative performance against the Spanish would result in him resigning.

The big game this week is, of course, the eternal derby as Dinamo travel to face Hajduk. They may well be without Luka Stojkovic who is awaiting more news on an ankle injury in Dinamo’s cup win (sort of more used as a bounce game) vs Vukovar this past weekend.

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Bosnia

FK Sarajevo have released their new kits which are lovely. I’m not sure I have the sway that if I talk nicely about it they’ll send me one but the home strip is a belter.

Game one of the week was away to Romania and Bosnia thrashed them 4-2 as Sergej Barbarez switched tactics and it paid off handsomely with the pick of the night a wonderful team goal finished off by Mahmic.

Game two was the one, however, we’d all been waiting for - the final Bosnia appearance of the legend Edin Dzeko. Bilino Polje was packed to welcome Sweden as Dzeko started the game and was given a guard of honour on being substituted just after the hour mark. As his career ended, another started with Salko Hamzic debuting for the national team in goals as Martin Zlomislic was a late drop out due to what sounds like a crick in his neck. The match ended 1-1 which is pretty secondary to the pyro and ballyhoo around Dzeko.

Dzeko’s in game contribution was curtailed by the referee as he had a goal disallowed in first half stoppage time due to the ball going out of play earlier in the move.

After the game, there was a drone show above the stadium with various displays. As Dzeko took his final lap of honour, the pitch was bombarded with soft toys which will be donated to charity in Dzeko’s name

Perhaps more intriguingly, Vico Zeljkovic indicated that, once Dzeko has fully retired, he would be welcomed as part of the FA hierarchy. Dzeko would be an interesting candidate given that he’s one of the few unifying figures in Bosnian football (unlike Zeljkovic) and, off the field, is one of the more demanding players when it comes to the standards he’d expect.

Just as it’s always worth keeping a toe dipped in the world of politics, this weekend saw Bosnia go to the polls. While it’s rare to ever come out of a Bosnian election thinking things are good and, being fair, nothing about this one is especially bad, the results can be best described as entrenching nationalist divisions further.

Fun Fact - The newest member of Bosnia’s rotating presidency arrangement is Darijana Filipovic, who won the Croatian vote. Of more direct relevance here is that Filipovic is the cousin of Bosnian international centre back Nikola Katic.

Serbia

Crvena Zvezda have released Brazilian defender Rodrigao. He was a big reinforcement at the start of 25/26 but never really did very well in Belgrade and was a squad player by the end of that season.

The week started with many a change in the national team squad - Sergej had to go home injured and Strahinja Pavlovic stayed in camp but needed a replacement called up. Lazar Nikolic, Jovan Milosevic and Stefan Bukinac were both sent home as not being used (1) while Ognjen Mimovic, Stefan Gudelj and Dragan Rosic came in.

First up was a trip to Munich to face Germany and, in a bad break, this was the worst of the lot. Serbia were out shot 32-1 (England only had 19 shots vs Croatia for comparison), losing 2-0 and 3.81-0.01 on the xG. Suffice it to say that man of the match was Dorde Petrovic in goals and, after the game, Veljko Paunovic wrote off the game in Eindhoven vs the Dutch that followed this as the squad already mentally prepped for November (and were apparently far more knackered than expected).

Petrovic left camp after that game to be with his wife as they welcome a new arrival to the family so Vanja slotted back in between the posts in what was Serbia’s most creditable loss of the window. 2-1 was the score but, from a performance perspective, Mihajlo Cvetkovic’s audition up front was unquestionably the best starting effort from a striker this set of games and Stefan Gudelj’s audition in the back-line was similarly impressive - with him stopping a certain goal on a last minute block on Summerville. That leaves Serbia detached at the bottom of their group, five points away from avoiding relegation.

Montenegro

Personal note - the Montenegrin away strip is a great kit. Doesn’t look much as a design but, on players, it’s very Ajax-y

Montenegro gutted it out in Armenia taking the lead twice and getting pulled back twice before Aleksa Latkovic scored in the final minute to give Mirko Vucinic’s side the win in Yerevan - perhaps their most difficult assignment of this Nations League campaign.

Then it was Latvia in Riga and what felt like the proper arrival of Vasilije Adzic at this level as his double led the side to a 2-1 away win. While Latvia did pressure them in the first half, hitting the woodwork, it was the old master and the young one that opened them up for the first as Jovetic started the move and Adzic finished it. Adzic would tap in for 2-0 and Montenegro had multiple good chances to extend their lead before they settled back in for the last ten minutes after being brought back to 2-1.

Book fans may be intrigued to know there is a new release coming out on the history of Buducnost. “Ponosna prošlost - jedna je Budućnost” (Loosely ‘Proud Past, one future’) was launched at the Podgorica book fair this weekend - if you’re hanging around Podgorica any time soon, you can pick it up at the club shop as they don’t appear to be selling it online.

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Kosovo

Kosovo played a stodgy 0-0 against Israel. We’ll leave that at that.

They played a less stodgy 1-1 draw against Austria on Sunday that Kosovo were perhaps unfortunate not to win with two good chances to make it 2-0 before Christoph Lang was left unmarked to knock a header in. All in, it leaves Kosovo three points behind Austria in their Nations League group and three clear of Israel in the relegation slot.

North Macedonia

North Macedonia hosted Scotland in their second home game of this break, losing 2-0 against ten men and putting in a performance that Elif Elmas described as “very, very bad” after the game. I’m writing up a proper international break round up which, to be fair, England battering Croatia has made me had to rewrite a bit, but yet again I’ve no idea what Sedloski is playing at - prior to the game, Alioski was going to be fit but then wasn’t even on the bench meaning Djekov had to come on. Maleski made an appearance which is no indictment of… I’ll go on in the other piece so keep an eye out for that hitting inboxes. Their international schedule wraps up this time with a trip to Switzerland - a game they’ll need to be a great deal better than very, very bad to get anything from.

1 - Which, in Bukinac’s case, is maddening. Terzic had terrible games in the first two Serbian games so you send home the other main left back?

Slovenia

Zlatko Zahovic was talking, which is rarely a good sign, but he revealed that it’s Aleksandar Ceferin who convinced him to go back to Maribor. Zahovic and Ceferin have a tempestuous relationship which, per Zahovic, he himself apologised for which, given that Zahovic once told Ceferin that he was going to “f**k your mother” at a NZS event, is kind of the least you’d expect.

Slovenia’s International break opened up with a 0-0 draw against Scotland at Stozice. In spite of the pitch getting a week off last week due to the Ljubljanski derby getting moved, it still cut up quickly. Slovenia dominated the first half, Scotland dominated more the second and I’d do a match analysis but it would mean having to talk about Scotland which, to be honest, is rarely good for my sanity.

Slovenia’s U21s host Israel this week and it’s not popular in Ptuj.

After the collapse of Domzale earlier in 2026, ND Gorica have hit the wall - they were unable to field a senior team this season and are now in bankruptcy proceedings. Gorica were four time Prva Liga winners, peaking with three in a row under Pavel Pinni in the 2000s but had hit serious financial trouble after their last relegation in 2023, stiffing creditors and even seeing Tim Matavz’s house being rumoured to be sold as a result of himusing it as collateral for a club loan.

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Croatia

The design for the new Maksimir was announced and… everyone hates it.

I wholeheartedly agree with the takes of “it looks like an opened cardboard box” because it does. From viewing more images, I think it’s fair to say it looks better side on than the overhead shot. The BBB, Dinamo’s Ultras, have come out against it but club head Zvonimir Boban is fence sitting with a press release that can be TLDRed as “Who am I to ignore the fans, but any decision we make will be with the city and the state and other stakeholders”.

Sticking with club matters for one moment, three people were hospitalised after a friendly between a Rijeka side and Union Berlin, held at Kantrida to celebrate the retirement of Damir Kreilach. With around 8,000 in attendance, celebrations at the close of the game saw an incident with pyro that went off in the stand with six injured as a result.

The second Slaven Bilic era began with a fairly routine win in Prague as Croatia prevailed 2-1 over Czechia. Headlines on Saturday were from a pair of midfield geniuses - this generation’s one in Luka Modric, with his fantastic opener his 30th goal for the national team in his 203rd cap - which puts him clearly third as the most capped player of all time.

The other headline was from the U21s who secured their spot at next year’s Euros after a 3-1 win over Hungary led by a hat trick from Adriano Jagusic of really quite absurd quality. Given the U21s this time have clearly been picked with an eye on securing qualification, expect the next window to incorporate some of them.

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Bosnia

Looking forward to the one piece of club football during the break? Tough - the Super Cup between Borac and Zrinjski was scheduled for October 3 but it’s now been postponed. No new date has been set.

Nikola Vasilj missed this window injured but Martin Zlomislic proved himself a fine back-up against Poland. While the Poles were not at their best, they were on top for much of the game and Zlomislic pulled off four fine saves to keep them out and secure a decent 0-0 away point. They play Romania after this comes out - that’s behind closed doors as UEFA’s sanction from the Kosovo match that was abandoned two years ago only applies now.

Serbia

Partizan revealed their debt levels and, if we’re ranking it on how scary it is, it’s progressing from Evil Dead 1 to Evil Dead 2 (Still a horror, but a bit less so!) - 32 million Euros is still a massive amount but, given that the current regime picked up the club with something approaching double that, it’s an improving outlook. Somewhere around 4 million of that (depending on how you want to judge tax liabilities) are owed to former players and other clubs while somewhere in the region of 20 million of that is owed to the state in tax/loan repayments. Partizan also took the time to indicate the FSS need to let them in on the decision making which… yeah, that’s not so likely.

Oh, and that FSS meeting to avert football shutting down that was meant to take place on 17 October? It’s been cancelled until after the parliamentary elections on 25 October. A reminder that, if it gets to 1 November and it’s not happened, domestic football in Serbia can’t happen. Cutting things a bit tight!

Paunovic or Pain-ovic? Serbia’s Nations League campaign began with a 2-1 loss in Belgrade to Greec in front of just over 5,000 fans (1). Things were good after four minutes when the “we hate Piksi” club of Sergej Milinkovic-Savic and the returning Dusan Tadic combined to set up Andrija Zivkovic. Then it went downhill from about 30 seconds later as Karetsas hit the post. Greece kept it late for a come back, waiting to the 74th minute to equalise through Tziolis. While Serbia could have won it at the death after hitting the post, Greece won it in the last minute of added time through Douvikas. Greece were much the better side throughout, making around double the xG of the hosts as Serbia were poor defensively - lacking the physicality to press, lacking the responsiveness to sit back and relying on Dusan Tadic at 38 who simply couldn’t last the 87 minutes he was forced to. And THAT was the easiest game of the group stage on paper.

As expected, Serbia then lost again - this time 2-1 to the Netherlands in Belgrade. More people turned up - over 10k this time - but Serbia were agains reasonably easily dealt with and the result flattered the hosts a little as Paunovic put out a defensive line-up. Four losses on the spin is Serbia’s worst run since 2003 and it got worse as both Sergej Milinkovic-Savic and Strahinja Pavlovic had to leave the game injured. Just the small task of a trip to Germany next!

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Montenegro

Montenegro defeated Cyprus 2-1 on Friday in spite of Cyprus taking the lead. Krstovic equalised from the spot shortly after with Milutin Osmajic securing the win with 5 minutes to go. Montenegro were much the better side and dominated on xG with Cyprus’ goal coming on the back of their only real pressure of the game. They play Armenia… well, in a couple of minutes. I’m actually early posting this for once!

Kosovo

2.74 to 0.25 on the xG but only 1-0 on the pitch - Kosovo stuttered against Ireland but eventually got the result they deserved. Muriqi, the new captain, was the man to scramble the winner home in the 83rd minute but that was after Ireland had been forced to clear from their own line twice in the first half as they failed to cope with Dion Gallapeni rampaging down the left.

In war crimes news, as you may know, several Kosovan leaders were convicted of some last week which has gone down badly in Kosovo. On scoring the winner, Muriqi (and others) held up a T shirt in support of the convicted and, in his post match comments, dedicated the win to the Kosovo Liberation Army.

At time of writing, UEFA haven’t done anything about this which, given the swift turnaround in games this break seems an issue, but it’s fair to think it’s the sort of thing UEFA will do something about.

If Ireland was dominant in Kosovo’s favour, Austria was the exact opposite. Albion Hajdari was ruled out with injury just before the game forcing a defensive change to bring Rron Raci into the side while Aro Muric had to be subbed off injured during the game. The 3-1 loss saw the 1 come from a Zhegrova penalty which fluffed the xG up quite a bit - Adamu’s goal at the end of the first half is worth seeking out as it was genuinely farcical. Next up is a trip to Hungary to face Israel.

North Macedonia

Only one game before send time which was a very expected 3-0 home loss to Switzerland.

The side were weakened by the withdrawal of Darko Churlinov from the squad - he had moved to Poland in the summer but, for whatever reason, his visa wasn’t properly sorted out and, as a result, he’s unable to leave the EU. Given this break contains games against Scotland (not in the EU), Switzerland (not in the EU) or in Skopje (not in the EU), he was, for want of a better term, up a creek without a paddle on this one.

1 - Which, to note, was papered by them giving around 2k tickets to local children. Who didn’t turn up. Even for free, people don’t want the pain of having to follow Serbia.

Slovenia

Maribor followed Olimpija out of the cup due to a lost to a third tier side as Korotan Prevalje beat a rotated side 2-1. This is entirely deserved as Maribor are keeping on using AI slop on their social media.

Celje’s Europa League opened with an expected defeat to Bayer Leverkusen on Zoran Zeljkovic’s debut on the bench. Zan-Luk Leban did his part in having a fine game in goals but was beaten twice - once by an own goal from Svit Seslar and once by Medina from a corner, both set piece related goals. Not a disaster and not a fair starting game to judge Zeljkovic on.

Honestly, not a fan of how the NZS format their national team announcements yet they carry on doing it in this format and there’s no surprises in the squad - Nik Prelec is the only newcomer having started his time at Jagiellonia on fire.

Koper keeper Luka Bas really should sort his timing out - he started their 2-0 win over Nafta after getting married in the morning. Congratulations but, y’know, there’s two free weekends from internationals coming up you could have arranged that for.

Maribor left it late vs Aluminij - a 97th minute penalty securing a 2-2 draw at a game that saw fans back in Ljudski vrt for the first time this season. Speaking of stadiums - Sunday started with the Ljubljanski Derby… held in Domzale. Due to prep works on Stozice ahead of the Nations League, it was decided the ground couldn’t be used for league duty - that was the only abnormality, though, as Bravo won their sixth derby against Olimpija in a row, this time 2-1 in spite of being down to ten.

Mura-Celje was held in rather warm conditions which… made broadcasting it interesting. It was hotter in the stand than on the pitch as it went 0-0, albeit Zoran Zeljkovic got himself sent off after getting into a fight with a member of Mura’s coaching staff - he stated that a comment was made about Zeljkovic’s family. Brinje rounded out the weekend with a 2-1 win over Radomlje - that leaves Radomlje four points detached at the bottom as we enter the international break.

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Croatia

News coming in just before release - the HNS have been raided by police today! The HNS don’t characterise it as a raid, just that they turned up with a letter and asked for some documents related to an investigation and those documents were given which sounds like a very polite raid, to be honest. The investigation is related to potential issues with the handling of sponsorship deals, specifically on the commissions on those.

A few personnel changes in the NT - Juranovic and Erlic both out with injury, Pongracic, Jakic and Lovro Majer all in.

Slaven Belupo will be without Alen Grgic for the rest of 2026 after rupturing ligaments in his wrist during their game with Hajduk.

Dinamo’s Europa League campaign began in Bucharest against Hapoel Beer’Sheva due to Hapoel being unable to play at home due to the obvious. Dinamo were without multiple players due to illness, most notably Dion Drena Beljo, meaning they lined up without a striker on the pitch and, as a result, spent most of the game on the back foot and a dull 0-0 draw pleased no-one, with Dinamo racking up the lowest xG of the round. Arber Hoxha started that game as (debatably) the striker and, after the game, arranged to leave the club - he’s going to Al Wahda in the UAE - Hoxha has done well in his career overcoming a career-threatening injury when at Ballkani so there can be little ill will at him getting a big payday.

HNL Fridays are always either silly or soul-numbing without an in-between. Rudes-Slaven definitely delivered the former. HNL Saturdays… less so - we got only one goal from the two games - Varazdin-Osijek a 0-0 and Gorica getting their first win of the season against Istra after an all-timer of a performance from Renato Josipovic in goals. That one also featured a floodlight failure, which is always fun.

HNL Sundays, though? Two big games as Hajduk failed their first really big test of the season as they travelled to Rujevica and were picked off by a ruthless Rijeka 3-0. Rijeka, who had been so-so all season so far looked like a proper team for the first time and game them a proper Matjaz Kek-ing - they sat back, they soaked up and they struck to great effect. Hajduk weren’t bad and did have plenty of the game but were done by Dantas and Dan Adu-Adjei (one goal, two assists for the striker).

And Dinamo capitalised vs Lokomotiva straight after - but barely! They won the Zagreb derby 3-2 but a big talking point was the sending off of Josip Misic for dissent (which would get more coverage here if it wasn’t for what happens a little further down this newsletter!) which changed the momentum and left Dinamo just about hanging on.

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Bosnia

Charges were brought against an offender from last season who entered the dressing room of the referee at half time in November’s game between Posusje and Sarajevo and threatened to set the referee on fire.

Swapsies in the National team - Amar Dedic is out injured as is Kenan Busuladzic (who was announced a while back) - Benjamin Tahirovic, Ajdin Hasic, Arjan Malic and Luka Djuric all in. Kerim Alajbegovic is joining the squad late so perhaps don’t expect him in the first game in Poland.

It’s a bad season to be in the Mirvic family. After Sanin walked out of Zeljeznicar, Ismir has met the ire of FK Sarajevo’s support. Losses in the last two games have turned the Hordes of Evil (unquestionably, the best ultras group name in football) against the owner with multiple banners demanding he resign.

It was Zeljeznicar’s 105th birthday this weekend and their fans celebrated it in typical fashion. They then followed it in typical fashion for this season - a middling 1-1 draw vs Celik.

Innthe other part of Sarajevo, Vedad Leto became the youngest player ever to play for the club, coming on in second half injury time vs Sloga - he’s 16 years and 9 days old. Even with their win, though, they sit 6 points back from Borac in second, who beat Siroki Brijeg 3-2, and a further two back from Zrinjski at the top (who beat Velez 2-0 in the Mostar derby).

BSK-Radnik finished 4-4 and I’d give it more words if it wasn’t for the other Radnik 4-4 that happened this weekend. Fans of really bad goalkeeping will love this version though.

Also, I’ve mentioned before the little squad list animations Bosnian TV produce - have sad Ateef Konate. He did, at least, score so TV did get some happy Ateef Konate too. Not covered on that pre-match squad list is sub Antoine Desouza who is a 21 year old Nigerian forward and, let me tell you, the natural successor to Ade Akinfenwa - he is massive. Whatever the GBE equation (cc ) is, that kid is turning up at someone like Colchester sooner rather than later because he’s got “League Two cult hero” writ large on his future.

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Serbia

We have disciplinary outcomes for clubs about Mladic - Crvena Zvezda received a 8,500 euros fine for organisation issues at the Eternal Derby (but no sanction for the Mladic tifo). Partizan received a minor fine for pyro while Novi Pazar received a 3,400 euro fine for 30 people entering the stadium and performing a religious ceremony durign the half–time break of their game against Zeleznicar. All three clubs received a suspended sentence of a year where other infractions will mean a game without fans. On the back of it, the Srebrenica Memorial Centre have reported the Serbian FA to UEFA for failing to process disciplinary measures properly. On the FA, we now have a date for them sorting out the potential lock-out - barring postponement/nonsense - October 17.

You’ll remember that, pre European playoff draws, Partizan’s board said that if Partizan didn’t reach the groups, they’d quit. After a brave defeat against Getafe in which the board received public support, they announced “Nah”. Well, after a month where Partizan’s form has been bad, the fans have done a switcheroo and now want the board to quit again with the Appeal to Save Partizan group publishing a letter. No-one, however, is coming forward to challenge Rasim Ljajic as president.

Sticking with Europe, you’ll have seen that Serbia have been awarded the 2029 Europa League final - it’s due to be held at the new National Stadium in Surcin. Originally due to open next year, it’s more likely to open in 2028 now.

We have a national team - notable is the return of Dusan Tadic, who was no Piksi fan, and some new faces - Lazar Nikolic and Petar Sukacev of Vojvodina and Stefan Dzodic of Almeria. Dzodic’s dad is, of course, Nikola Dzodic, the former FR Yugoslavia international. Vladimir Lucic has since been added to the list and that is a straight add, not a replacement - Stefan Bukinac is also added after Aleksa Terzic was injured.

Lazar Markovic, formerly of Liverpool, is now of Cukaricki. He’s joined on a free after rejecting Maribor. IMT have brought in Guinean Francois Kamano after he left Sochi - previously, he’s been in Ligue 1 at Bordeaux when that club was still a thing.

On the pitch, Zvezda caught up on a game in hand and barely squeaked by Zeleznicar 2-1 - the hosts were better over the 90 than the champions but lost out to a wonderful late strike from Loizou.

Odd Riera Quote of the Week - Anyone wondering how long it’d take Riera to properly fall out with the Serbian media got their answer after the Zeleznicar game - “We’re not struggling, we’re just not winning easily. Those are two different things. I have the feeling that you see everything in a negative way,”

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Shall we have a little insanity? Go on then…

Riera will be happy that Zvezda actually won well vs Radnicki Nis at the weekend while Zeleznicar advanced into the top six after closing the weekend with a win over Cukaricki. With ten man Vojvodina only drawing against IMT, it leaves Zvezda six clear of Vojvodina who are a further five clear of Radnicki Kragujevac - arguably the form side of the league.

Montenegro

Buducnost’s backroom plight continued in the political sphere this week with a lot going on in Podgorica’s local assembly. I’d recommend checking the whole thing as there’s too much to put down here but the big question (“Where’s the money gone”) hasn’t really been answered.

Otrant go into the break on top after a 4-1 win over Jezero put them ahead of Decic. Buducnost and Sutjeska also won to close the break and go in with a little momentum.

The FSCG didn’t bother to do a nicely shareable graphic for their squad. There’s only one domestic player - Jonathan Dresaj - but it’s a squad that sees quite a few younger players brought in, not least Bodin Tomasevic.

Kosovo

Leaving the national team on better terms than Amir Rrahmani are Valon Berisha and Fidan Aliti. Florent Hadergjonaj also quit the national team, blaming the current technical staff. Unlike Rrahmani, who had a long chat with Franco Foda prior to announcing his departure from the national team, Hadergjonaj did not inform anyone before releasing that on social media - suffice it to say, the difference is noticeable in how those departures are being considered internally.

Coming along for the ride are the below:

New and notable are Milot Avdyli of Celje, Dion Kacuri of Austria Lustenau and Bayern Munich’s Erblin Osmani.

Prishtina are six for six in the league while Vushtrria are pointless after seven. Champs Drita are fifth with a game in hand against Prishtina so it may shake down to be rather close which, if you’ve followed Kosovan football for any time, is standard title race in the Superliga.

North Macedonia

Your national squad include, similarly to Sedloski’s other squads, some really random domestic call-ups - Gjorge Djekov of Sileks, Anes Meliqi of Shkendija as well as Struga’s Hristijan Maleski. Matej Gashtarov of Crvena Zvezda (who, and I hadn’t mentioned this before, was part of a tug of war between the FFM and the FSS) is also in line for a debut.

Shkendija go into the break top, two points ahead of Struga with Vardar a further three back. At the bottom, Skopje remain winless but, unlike Bashkimi, aren’t conceding more than three a game so it’s an interesting formula at the bottom.

Slovenia

The last set of transfers of the summer window came out just after the last edition was sent. Omar Rekik departed Maribor, joining Ludogorets - not a surprise given he’ll have been one of the higher salaries of the squad. The Bulgarian side have also brought in Amir Hadziahmetovic, the Bosnian international who has left Hull. Aluminij have brought in Marko Mladenovic from Vojvodina - the attacking midfielder came through the youth system of Eintracht. Finally, Olimpija brought in Robert Miskovic from Opatija having been a bit of a journeyman in Croatia.

You may remember that the Koper-Radomlje game a few weeks ago ended with the backroom teams of the clubs fighting each other and throwing accusations of who assaulted who in the media. We got an outcome to all of that this week and the outcome was… a big load of nothing. The FA stated they had no basis to bring a charge against anyone because no-one from the FA witnessed it and no-one from the clubs filed a report on it and that, as it was outside the stadium, the FA might not have had jurisdiction anyway. The clubs have spoken privately and both consider the matter closed and the FA are happy to leave it at that.

The promoted sides started the weekend as Brinje were deteaded 2-1 at home by Nafta with the winner being Josip Ivan Zorica’s 5th goal of what is swiftly becoming a breakout season.

Celje’s very indifferent domestic form continued and rumours abound that all is not well in the dressing room. With one win in their last four, pressure is ramping up on Vitor Campelos, exacerbated after 1-0 up turned to 2-1 defeat against Bravo at the weekend. Per Ekipa, the understanding is that the money thrown at the team this summer to try to make the Champions League has created a very financially divided dressing room where long-serving senior players are on far less than newer recruits so it seems the perfect game to go into a little more depth in…

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If the pressure is building in Celje, it’s relieving in Olimpija with a 3-1 win over Koper. Koper, playing in Tabor Sezana due to Bonifika’s pitch being terrible, played most of the game with ten after Brown Irabor was sent off after a long VAR intervention due to an extremely high boot. Olimpija turned up the press and turned on the style with the best of the goals being a 25 yard rocket from Dimitar Mitrovski.

Fazanerija saw a thumping as Aluminij went to Mura and came away with an incredible 6-1 win - the fourth, by Vito Tezak, is a particular treat. Maribor rounded the weekend off with a 3-0 win over Radomlje meaning that, a quarter of the season down, Maribor sit four points clear at the top with Bravo and Koper leading the charge to catch them.

After the weekend, things got to changing. Vitor Campelos has just had the announcement of his sacking by Celje given they have paid Koper 250,000 euros for Zoran Zeljkovic who have already moved to try to appoint Milan Andjelkovic, previously in the Prva Liga at Primorje.

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Croatia

A quick round up of the last transfers in Croatia - Dinamo have brought in 18yo Egor Molcan from Dinamo Minsk who’ll be part of the reserves for the time being, as with Saula Tejeda, a Mexican winger. Jay Kruiver, a right back, joined up with Osijek from Roda - Osijek also did a few swaparounds of players with Nafta in Slovenia, which is just Magyar bros helping each other out. Gorica have brought in Portuguese LB Goncalo Costa from Estoril on loan.

On transfers, a bit has been said about how the HNL hasn’t sold all that much this summer. This interview with agent Matej Skegro gives an indication as to why - the HNL is seen as technically fine but physically deficient and players moving from the league simply don’t seem fit enough to make an impact straight away. I’ll also add this interview with Marko Vesovic with a good anecdote about getting tracked in the sea by Matjaz Kek.

It was cup week in Croatia which saw the first upset of the season as Segesta beat Osijek 3-1. Osijek did, however, bounce back a bit…

Match Analysis - Title challengers having bad weeks can be the theme of this newsletter as Osijek swept Dinamo aside in a spectacular 4-2 victory. Dinamo have a potential excuse in that Dion Drena Beljo had to drop out of the starting line up due to illness. It’s doubtful, however, he’d have done too much to help because the theme of the game was Osijek’s pressing and counter-attacking. Dinamo had an early warning from Leon but didn’t heed it as, after 11 minutes, Osijek broke down the right, a cross went in and he powered a header down into the ground past Kotarski. Leon, for a pick up from Andorra, has looked decent - to be a big striker, you have to occupy a space and Leon carries a lot of gravitational field around him, carrying two markers with him and still getting up for the header.

He doubled Osijek’s lead on 34 minutes after Dinamo went close from a free kick and Osijek simply bolted up the other end and scored as a decent Kotarski save from Ljatifi landed straight at Leon’s feet. Dinamo simply failed to cope consistently with Osijek’s press but, on top, their speed of turning press into shot - on that goal, Leon ran more or less through a blatant pull and foul to get to the box but him occupying the centre allowed runners off him to get space every time.

Luka Vrbancic made it 3-0 on the hour with another rapid break after pinball outside Osijek’s box landed to Leon who played a straight ball up to the already running Vrbancic who was, 60 yards out, already in a 1v1 vs Kotarski and he duly obliged with the finish. Dinamo got one back almost straight away from Zajc after a half clearance and would try to push to get more, making it 3-2 but only after gifting Osijek another couple of big chances and having a header cleared off the line. It’d be Prevljak that gave them hope in the 92nd minute from the spot after pinball saw Malenica foul Galesic - even then, Malenica got a big hand to it and it barely trundled over the line. Dinamo pressed to equalise and got caught… again pressed passing around the back then giving the ball away after a mix up between keeper and Perez Vinlof 45 yards out and Bukvic was clinical lofting home from 30 yards out.

Dinamo were not especially competent and, while Osijek executed their game plan ruthlessly on the back of getting hammered by Rijeka, any time you see a side exposed four times the same way in 90 minutes, that’s a wider problem and indicative of a game plan the rest of the league will have watched and will aim to replicate.

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Not surprisingly, there’s been lots of chatter around whether or not Mario Kovacevic has a future on the bench at Dinamo. The indications are that he’s backed by the board, perhaps in reaction to what happened last time they took one bad European result and one bad domestic one and fired a coach over it. Osijek followed that game by singing the Spanish winger Alex, most recently of Huesca.

Rijeka went back to a bit borning in their 1-1 draw vs Lokomotiva while Hajduk went TOP after defeating ten man Slaven Belupo 1-0 courtesy of a Dalisson goal, who celebrated Doggy Style.

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Emil Frederiksen’s very good season continued for Istra scoring a hat trick in their win against Rudes while Varazdin and Gorica played a 2-2 draw on Monday that’s not got highlights yet so no link for that one.

Bosnia

Midweek saw the Sarajevo version of the Eternal Derby take place, after it haad initially been postponed due to a firestarter, twisted firestarter. It started with anti-Mladic words in the stands and ended with bragging rights for Zeljeznicar in a 2-0 win. Agon Elezi missed a golden chance in a first half Sarajevo had the best of and they paid for it as Piloto put Zeljo in front within 2 minutes of the restart. Sarajevo dominated again until Zeljo’s next chance - a simple Huskovic header to make it 2-0 and kill the game.

I’ll be glad to not write the words “Ratko Mladic” when I get the chance. The Bosnian FA have given their punishment to Borac for Mladic chanting and not only has the book not been thrown at them, it’s barely a leaflet. A ban on fans from one away game (which they’ve already served) and a fine that works out at around £1300. It’s worth nothing that, in the same tranche of fines, Zeljeznicar were fined double that for the use of pyro. Unsurprisingly, people are annoyed - from Kenan Magoda, a Sarajevo politician “The biggest problem of NS BiH is not only those who openly carry out their politics. The biggest problem is ‘ours’ who sit there for years, keep silent, nod their heads and with their voice or silence enable others to manage BiH football as they wish.” As others have noted, Sarajevo once received a two game behind closed doors sanction for their fans singing Ljilani, which is sort of the unofficial national anthem which is rather less inflammatory than anything Borac have done.

Ermin Mahmic made his move from Slovan Liberec to Turkey over the summer but it’s fair to say that the club weren’t overly impressed with how it all went down. Per Liberec, they had the most in depth discussions with Celtic but then would keep finding out that people claiming to represent Mahmic were sorting out deals with other clubs, creating a confusing situation where different people were organising with different clubs while the player himself didn’t seem to know too much about what was going on.

Kenan Busuladzic was called up for Bosnia but the 19yo midfielder is out for the season after a cruciate injury. Kerim Alajbegovic was a concern after leaving his last league game in discomfort - but it was related to his contact lenses.

Celik’s Anes Masic has his second hat trick of the season already - after scoring all three vs Velez at the end of August, he scored all three of Celik’s goals in their 3-2 downing of Radnik. The big game of the weekend wasn’t the most entertaining as Borac beat Zrinjski 1-0

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Serbia

Perhaps the big news of the week is administrative - the FA hosted a board meeting on Friday which was meant to arrange the more formal Electoral Assembly to pick the people running football in Serbia. That, after being delayed twice over the summer, has been delayed again with no announcement. Here’s the problem - after October 31, everyone’s mandate ends all at once. That means no disciplinary commission which means no-one could be sanctioned for anything on the pitch. It would, quite simply, mean domestic football in Serbia is unable to take place unless someone steps in and does something - FIFA do have the power to do so (and have done so elsewhere in the past) but it would mean an interruption which, given 31 October is in the middle of a gameweek, would mean an absolute mess. The alternative (which would get FIFA taking action against Serbia) would be the state stepping in but, given the deadline here is only six days after the parliamentary elections, they’re likely busy. Pull your finger out, FSS.

Violence in the lower tiers - the local derby in the Zrenjanin region in the 5th tier between Red Star and Buducnost was abandoned at 3-2 after the away side received four red cards and a player attacked the referee leaving him unable to complete the game due to injury.

Cukaricki have brought in the latest in the list of “random Bournemouth starlet turning up in the Balkans”. Remy Rees-Dottin. The winger had one Premier League appearance vs Newcaastle. Nikola Maras will be joining up with OFK while Marko Kerkez (brother of Liverpool’s Milos) has joined Mladost.

Ognjen Cancarevic scored comedy own goal of the season in OFK-IMT, slicing a backpass over his own head and into the net. OFK, like Crvena Zvezda, also hosted a minute’s silence for Ratko Mladic during their game last Monday and, like Zvezda, there was a rather pointed element to it given that Mo Besic - Muslim and Bosnian international - was on the bench. To be clear, OFK and Zvezda share ownership and the Serbian FA are expected to raise charges against both OFK and Zvezda for hosting minute silences without any permission and, potentially, against IMT and Partizan for participating in them (which would, of course, be insane - what are they meant to do except just stand there?).

Crvena Zvezda dropped their first points of the season midweek in a 0-0 draw against Radnik. Anyway, given I’ve had requests…

Odd Riera Quote of the Week (said to this tune) - On the dressing room: “We can compare it to the relationship between husband and wife. There are moments when you have to talk, argue, when everything is not nice. Because sometimes you have to tell the player the truth, which is that something is not working well. Of course, it is much nicer to tell him: ‘You are a good player’, but I am a direct person. I do not like to deceive the players or the team. I like to be direct with them, to tell them the truth, what I see. But on the other hand, as in the relationship with a woman, you have to give tenderness, love and understanding…”

Zvezda did recover to retake the lead of the league in beating IMT 1-0 which followed…

Other big results around the league was Radnicki Kragujevac’s fine form continuing with a 5-0 thrashing of Mladost and Radnicki Nis beating OFK 3-1 which tightens things at the bottom up some.

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Montenegro

We start with condolences to the family of Zeljko Tomasevic. Tomasevic, 48, was serving as head coach of OFK Grbalj in the second tier, returning to Montenegro after years in Qatar but passed away suddenly yesterday.

Fatos Beciraj is the new sporting director at Buducnost. First job - sort a new coach out.

In general, clubs in Montenegro are semi-public entities and the state publishes how much money goes where. Of the around 25 million euros in total given in this form of aid, the biggest single beneficiary was… Decic Tuzi! While the biggest amount went to the film industry (1.3m), Decic were the biggest single entity getting a hand-out - 600,000 euros. It didn’t help them this weekend as a 2-0 loss to Sutjeska left Decic still top but with everyone close.

Kosovo

Franco Foda’s clown car rides again! Yes, the seemingly never-ending amount of random players getting a call up continues with Erblin Osmani, a 17yo in Bayern Munich’s academy who has received an invite to the next squad.

Getting out of the car, however, is Amir Rrahmani, who has made himself unavailable for selection due to falling out with the FA. Usually, there’s quite a bit of gossip around the why of this sort of thing but, to be honest, everyone seems to be a bit confused about what exactly has happened. Rrahmani has missed quite a bit of time injured but, reading between the lines, it partly seems to be down to how things went down around Arber Zeneli’s brother, Besfort, choosing to play for Sweden over Kosovo and things bubbling under since then. Also likely missing this time will be Elvis Rexhbecaj who is undergoing further tests on a leg injury. In the league, it’s remaining Llapi, Feronikeli and Vushtrria detached and everyone else a reasonable way ahead of them.

While it’s not about Mladic, Kosovo has its own stuff at The Hague at the minute - four former leaders of the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) are up in the dock on suspicion of war crimes and we’ve seen support on the pitch for the KLA. The outcome of the trial is expected this week and thousands turned out in Prishtina to show their support for the defendants.

Give occasional international striker Shkelqim Vladi the Puskas already. What. A. Hit.

North Macedonia

The FA met with clubs last week and have advised they will assist on some funding on infrastructure - they’ve basically been told they can have money to improve pitches or money for floodlights. On top of this, for the first time, clubs will be represented on the FA’s board.

Shkupi were relegated without a win last season and the pain goes on for them in the second tier.

Shkendija Haracine (the one also known as “No, not that Shkendija”) were the only team to pick up a win this weekend - every other game finished either 2-2 or 3-3.

Since Mladic’s death, arguments that have been undercurrents for the past thirty years have suddenly become very current once more due to the outpouring of plaudits directed at Mladic, a man who was convicted as arguably Europe’s worst post WW2 war criminal. But are the plaudits for Mladic simply noise? Are they reflective of Serbia as it is in 2026?

How, quite simply, does a nation more than a generation on from infamy cope.

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Mladic in Football

Firstly, let’s retell just how we got to this point. Even before Mladic’s death, his name was coming back up on the terraces - in Crvena Zvezda’s home game last month against Novi Pazar, home fans brought out a Mladic tifo for no reason other than the fact that Novi Pazar is the ethnically Muslim/Bosniak area of Serbia and, if you’re putting together an ethnic map of Serbia, it’s the only region of Serbia where that predominance of that ethnicity exists. It was, as has become ever clearer, designed to shock. One could go back two years to 2024 and Delije travelling to Visegrad in Republika Srpska to chant Mladic’s name

And then Mladic died. This, with him being a man in his eighties who had suffered multiple strokes in 2026 and was in poor health, was not a surprising development. The volume of outpouring of emotions in the aftermath of his death, however, was. Mladic was commemorated on the day with a banner at the Viktoria Plzen-Crvena Zvezda game stating “General, eternal glory and thanks” which saw Zvezda slapped with a fine from UEFA and a ban on away fans on their next trip in Europe - to Lugano in Switzerland, a nation who Serbia have quite the rivalry with.

The actions at that game, however, paled in comparison to what happened at last Sunday’s Veciti Derbi against Partizan. While one outlet has tried and failed to explain this one let’s take a quick detour to understand why fans are so darned nationalistically militant…

The Veciti Derbi, also known as the Eternal Derby, is Serbia’s showpiece domestic game with (usually) three league editions each year. It is, unlike any other derby I know of, one where it is tracked not just by its name but by which edition it is - this one was number 180 and perhaps the one with the most threads coming out of it in quite some time. Crvena Zvezda’s Delije unveiled a huge banner of Mladic’s face with the phrase “Direction: Potocari” under it, which refers to something said by Mladic just prior to the overrunning of, and eventual massacre at, Srebrenica.

It is important to divide the banner at Plzen from the banner here and the banner against Novi Pazar - a quickly whipped together relatively vague banner of condolences against Plzen is a world apart from the more specific and ethnically targetted fan banners in those other two games. While UEFA’s consistent treatment of any Mladic honouring as racially motivated unacceptable fan behaviour applied against Plzen, it does not apply to the Serbian FA in spite of the actions in both league games far more fitting the bill than what we saw vs Plzen.

As the teams came into the pitch, there was also a minute’s silence held in Mladic’s memory. This is where things become even more controversial. If you as a club want to hold a minute’s silence for anything, be it a former player or, in this instance, a national figure, you have to clear it with both the FA (who look after the refereeing team) and with your opponents (who have to, well, stand there looking respectful). Per the reports from the game, Crvena Zvezda did neither of those things - a fact exacerbated by the fact that Partizan’s president, Rasim Ljajic was at the game.

While this all shouldn’t be brought down to the levels of a single person’s reactions, given how many were affected by Mladic’s actions in life, it’s important to point out Ljajic walked out of the box during the minute’s silence and did not participate in it - something some have criticised him for. Rasim Ljajic is not only Bosniak and from Novi Pazar, he was also a long time cabinet minister during the 2000s. One of his roles in government was co-ordinating Serbia’s responses to the court in The Hague and he was the first politician in government to break cover and publicly say Serbia needed to bring war criminals to justice even, in 2003, leading the “Together For Tolerance” coalition of minority ethnicity parties that supported integration or minorities into Serbia - a politician who not only actively work against the sort of actions Mladic committed, but to work against those on his own side whose rhetoric played into the hands of extreme nationalism.

Following the game, images gradually went around the world without really adding understanding to the why of the thing, instead provoking extreme reactions against Serbs in general - my own post on it drew multiple responses indicating that Serbia being bombed by NATO in the Kosovan War was really funny. We’ll get onto that later but I think it’s important to point out that, in general, anyone whose reaction was anything other than a sigh probably wasn’t delivering an opinion that was any help to anyone. It also has to be mentioned that, since Mladic’s death, Crvena Zvezda have been at pains to hitch their wagon to his memory - posting the Plzen banner, footage of the Marakana Tifo and, on Monday, a graffiti picture of Mladic’s general hat to mark his funeral. If you hadn’t got the message, Mladic memorialising is club policy.

Away from the Marakana, only one other game in Serbia saw a minute’s silence - Monday’s game between OFK and IMT. Having had 24 hours to think about the situation, the refereeing team stood further back than at the Marakana to make very clear that this was not a pre-arranged deal. Also like at the Marakana, there was the pointed action that a former Bosnian international in Mo Besic, whose family fled Bosnia for Germany and who was, while in the UK, a spokesperson for Amnesty International’s “Football Welcomes…” refugee initiative, was sat on the bench. OFK, it must be noted at this point, are Crvena Zvezda’s farm team and, while some there are at pains to say they run at arms length from Crvena Zvezda, the Romanticari clearly took instructions on protocol from their parent club on this one and the wafer thin difference between an OFK side that was historically one of Serbia’s great clubs and Crvena Zvezda’s reserve side should be considered more risible by the day.

As covered in the weekly updates, Zvezda are hardly the only club to mention Mladic of late. Borac Banja Luka in Bosnia (well, Republika Srpska) were pro-Mladic in their European tie vs Vikingur and in league games while Partizan’s ultras revealed a banner in the league game after Europe did similar. We’ve also seen pro-Mladic stuff from Sparta Prague while anti-Mladic sentiment came from Novi Pazar as well as Hajduk Split and Zeljeznicar Sarajevo. While these examples pale in prominence compared to what we have seen from Crvena Zvezda, it’s important to say that his name has been a hot enough topic to appear at most of the well supported clubs in the region.

Kosovo

Of course this had to be mentioned. I’ve covered football in the region for a decade and a half and, if there’s one constant on the terraces, it’s the shout of “Kosovo je Srbije” (Kosovo is Serbia). You regularly see flags or banners in stands and, from personal experience, it’s chanted at pretty much every European away day Crvena Zvezda go on - having sat in a bemused Etihad Stadium as away fans chanted about Kosovo during a VAR check, I can confirm it is loud and it is unambiguous.

Kosovo is not central to Serbia itself, of course - through the vagaries and vilayets of Ottoman rule, Serb administration of Kosovo has probably only ever lasted about 100 of the last 700 years (2). It is, however, central to the great Serbian national mythology due to that one battle in 1389 and due to Vidovdan being a generally important date as Serbia progressed into the modern era - war of independence? Declared on Vidovdan 1876. Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand? Vidovdan 1914. Etc, etc. If there’s one thing Serbia knows how to do, it’s create its own mythology and fate has given a helping hand on that one.

One also can’t ignore the role of the War in Kosovo that closed off the Yugoslav Wars in the attitude of Serbs towards others, something we’ll touch on more next. The NATO intervention in that conflict was contentious then and remains contentious in the region (albeit was swiftly overshadowed by events a couple of years later in much of the West) and if one looks upon Mladic commemoration as driven not by ethnic hatred but of national defence, then one has to look at a conflict like Kosovo where Serbia would see it purely as a defensive conflict protecting their land in which they ended up in a conflict against a decent portion of the entire world.

Kosovo feeds into Serbian nationalism and, with the military link already established, clearly feeds onto the terraces. One key thing to understand about Serbia is that, even as you read about protests or opposition to the ruling regime, no-one on any side is going to be talking about giving up on Kosovo nor, for that matter, is there a great deal of opposition that would look at things with an avowedly pro-EU standpoint. It is something we see, something we shall continue to see and something which shall have to be thought about.

Serbian Demographics

For what’s ostensibly a football site, it’s important to know why this sort of thing matters. It’s important to understand that you simply cannot hope to understand football in the Balkans, particularly Serbia, without the word “context” writ large. Serbia was a nation of 7.9m in 1990 and has shed around 1.4m of those people in the intervening 35 years. Not only are consistently more people leaving the country than coming in but, on top of that, the natural changes of life and death also sees Serbian population decline - the birth rate has been relatively static since the early 2000s, the death rate has climbed.

Life expectancy has continued to rise save for the 2020s (which is heavily skewed by Covid) in a nation that is one of the oldest in the world and that shows in Serbia’s demographics - in the 2011 census, 17.4% of the population were over 65, in 2022 that had jumped by almost 5% with the difference almost entirely coming out of the working age population - the amount of U18s was pretty much static as part of the overall declining population. And, obviously, what that means is that Serbia’s voting bloc is increasingly gerontocratic, something enhanced by Serbia’s passive voting laws which means that you automatically get added to the electoral roll on majority but don’t automatically get taken off - this is why the electoral roll in the 2022 elections had 6.5 million potential voters listed which is, give or take 100,000, about the same amount of people that live in Serbia in the first place because about the only way to get off the electoral roll is to die while in Serbia so it definitely gets recorded (3) - the electoral roll is about 1m larger than the voting age population. Further to this, like everywhere, the voting turnout skews towards the old end of things which means that the generation post-war are underrepresented.

Rapidly increasing is the education level of the nation. In 2002, 11% of serbs had attended university - within 20 years that number had doubled which means that, akin to much of the western Balkans, Serbia’s emigration tends to be of educated young people who have got their degrees and found that the employment prospects don’t match their educational realities (4). This generation has a key issue because this generation is the one that is forced to deal with Serbia’s past.

And that dealing process will no doubt be delayed because, in the aftermath of Mladic’s death, snap elections have been called. These were due in 2027 but have been brought forward to the end of October as Aleksandar Vucic, term limited to two terms as President, seeks to take advantage of nationalist fervor to smooth his path to becoming Prime Minister and to smooth the path of a chosed successor in the Presidential election that would imminently follow. The new protest party (or, at least, party stemming from the protests), the Students List (or the Blockade List, depending on your views) polls well but has also been caught on the hop a little bit in terms of organisation - from a policy perspective, beyond “Less corruption, more freedom”, they aren’t that dissimilar from the ruling party and, on top of that, many figures in the party are rabidly anti-EU and fall into similar nationalist tropes as the party they oppose. They aim to drain the swamp, but retain many of its swamp-like qualities. Polymarket (ugh) ranks Vucic as an around 72% chance to be the next PM - a chance that’s jumped since the snap election was called. One can say plenty about Aleksandar Vucic, but calling an election during a period of peak nationalistic fervor looks to be a very adroit move.

What should Serbia do next?

As part of writing this one, I’ve been doing a lot of reading of Serbian news. This is difficult given that the media isn’t entirely free yet is also extremely messy. But in amongst the mess, there are occasional pearls of wisdom, even from Republika, the most state leaning and tabloid of the lot. On Mladic’s funeral:

“What Brussels, Zagreb or Sarajevo will never understand is that the people who gathered in such numbers did not come to defy for the sake of defiance, but to defend their own right to memory.”

They aren’t wrong. Serbs do have the right to memory except that, unlike other defeated states post-war, those memories are not ones they have come to terms with or, at least not in the way people think they should. If one goes back to post-WW2 Japan and the Humanity declaration, it is not a statement merely about ending a divine right of emperor, it contains this passage:

“The ties between Us and Our people have always stood upon mutual trust and affection. They do not depend upon mere legends and myths.”

The replacement of government by myth with government by trust is not something that has happened in Serbia - perhaps due most of all to the Kosovan War so swiftly following the Bosnian one and giving those who sought to claim property over protecting Serbia’s national myth the credibility that they may otherwise have been denied if they simply just fell from prominence in a normal manner. Serbs have a right to memory – it’s simply that no-one ever really cared enough to think how that right would be used. Serbs remember Mladic as a defender of their rights because trust has never replaced myth - the honest argument of fact, the argument saying simply what Mladic and Serb forces did and that that is not forgivable does not have an advocate in Serbian politics. Thirty years on, it can be no wonder that Serbia is how it is and why the world acts with a mix of concern, horror and mockery when this sort of thing happens but with little notice paid when there’s chanting about Kosovo week in, week out, when Serbia the nation doesn’t run as it should, when the Republika Srpska gets meddled with. Serbia is not some economic success story. It is not some grand technological marvel. It takes advice from international bodies, plays nice and then blames them when it needs some positive domestic headlines.

What Serbia should do next is simply accept their past. In footballing terms, that means setting a day zero - Mladic’s name will obviously disappear with time, but Kosovo will not without effort. It should go without saying that it should not be tolerable for fans to be on the terraces chanting ownership over the territory of another nation - disputed or otherwise, historic or otherwise, part of your national myth or otherwise. To start going after clubs for that will hurt and it will take a lot of guts and receive a lot of negative domestic press but if the English FA can ban “Ten German Bombers”, then the Serbian FA can make a push on Kosovan chanting because pushing that further out of the game and further into the history books can only serve to clear the terraces of more occasional yet more odious offences - take care of the Suhareka and the Srebrenica will take care of itself.

This, of course, won’t happen. Which brings us back to the younger population of Serbia - the post-war generation. A generation who cares more about Serbia being run properly than it does about whether or not Srbija should have the word Velika before it or not. A generation that avoids talking about the likes of Kosovo in a combination of not wanting to step on a conversational landmine and simply being tired of seeing their nation tie itself in knots over something that is, ultimately, a distraction whose sovereignty, much like the Republika Srpska in Bosnia, is not up for debate and certainly not up for transference to Serbia. They are sick of the debate, sick of pariah status and sick of Vucic. But he’ll still win - for now. The views of the last generation will still prevail - for now. But not forever.

Serbia has the right to memory. The next generation have the duty to decide what that memory looks like.

1 - Fun fact: it appears the visit from Shavkat Mirziyoyev was actually rather hastily arranged after it became clear Mladic’s funeral would be on what was an empty day for Vucic. “I’m sorry, the President of Uzbekistan is round to visit” is a new excuse to avoid attending any awkward event that might otherwise wind up the European Union.

2 - Quick Kosovan history lesson - most of you reading will know of the Battle of Kosovo Field in the 14th Century but what happened after isn’t so known beyond the general “Ottomans Rule” line. Not only did the Ottomans essentially wipe out the entire ruling class of Serbia, almost all Serb presence in Kosovo was gone too. What happened instead was the swift replacement of Serbs with Albanian emigres while the Serbs moved away.

3 - I may be the only person to find this fascinating but go and read this and be infuriated that no-one in Serbia has really bothered to go root and branch into their electoral system and make it make sense.

4 - This is common and, to be honest, only going to increase. Intriguingly, if we go back 45 years to ask the question “why did Kosovo become an issue in the first place”, you’ll find similar educational trends being the issue.

Slovenia

Vid Koderman has returned to Maribor from Aluminij. Koderman was, at a time, a Maribor prospect but one who has made his name elsewhere in Slovenia. They’ve also (finally) confirmed the return, on loan, of Petar Stojanovic to the club - the national team full back broke through at Maribor before joining Dinamo in 2016 but joins injured and we likely won’t see him till after the international break. They’ve also brought back Eric Taylor but David Pejicic, who was on loan there last season, is spending this season on loan at Koper.

Luka Vesner Ticic has joined Celje. He had been in Russia after leaving Koper but, in the last year of his deal, he’s returned to Slovenia and is a big midfield reinforcement on his best form. Zan Zuzek has also joined as a reinforcement for the backline. Matej Poplatnik has left the club to join Triglav in the second tier.

Winning the window are Bravo who confirmed the return Milan Tucic to strengthen them up front and followed that up by bringing in Matej Malensek on loan from Jablonec (on the back of 5 G/A game!) who was so impressive at Radomlje.

Matevz Dajcar has joined Mura on loan from Olimpija - the reserve keeper there will fill in for the injured Adnan Golubovic, who is out for a long time after injury vs Bravo.

Joining Olimpija as being dumped out of the Cup by lower league opposition are Mura, who were beaten 1-0 by Beltinci.

In league action, Nafta opened the weekend beating Radomlje 3-1 with the reasonably familiar combo now of Marosa and Zorica scoring or assisting on each goal. Saturday’s games saw Aluminij and Bravo play out a 0-0 - Aluminij played the last half hour with ten after Ante Bekavac was sent off for a wild, lte sliding tackle on a pitch that could only be in Slovenian football (1). Meanwhile, Olimpija had scored only three in seven before meeting Brinje and doubled their season tally with a 3-0 win at Stozice. Koper rounded off the weekend with a win over Celje.

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Croatia

Dejan Lovren has joined Rudes. I doubt you need any context of who he is but, at 37, he wanted to be playing at a less pressured environment closer to home before retirement and Rudes offer just that.

Rijeka have added the loan of Calixte Paul Ligue who joins from Venezia. The left back joined them from Zurich for 2.5 million in the winter.

Varazdin-Istra saw two of the most exciting sides of the season so far face off on Friday so, inevitably, it was a very meh 0-0 draw. The league’s dullest side prior to this weekend were Rijeka so, obviously, they then put four past Osijek as Osijek’s early season form came to a sudden halt as it seems they’re a clear step below the cream of the division. Hajduk put four past Rudes also with a double from Michele Sego, continuing to advance his national team charge. That means we end the weekend with Hajduk, Varazdin and Dinamo, who beat Gorica 1-0 all tied on 13 points at the top. With Slaven ending the weekend by beating Lokomotiva, it means we’ve already had a little gap form between Rudes and Gorica and the rest.

We have a first national team from Slaven Bilic which…

…looks remarkably like the last one. Dion Drena Beljo and Josip Misc are the only real new inclusions as Josip Juranovic returns having started the season fit and in form, but will be there as a left back. Luka Modric is there and is continuing in the national team for the foreseeable future.

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Bosnia

Borac have been sanctioned by UEFA after various Mladic based infractions against Vikingur. They’ve been fined 30,000 euros and then have a probationary partial stadium closure suspended for two seasons. They also lost their first league game of the season, dropping a tight 1-0 to Sarajevo while Zrinjski are six from six after a win over Siroki Brijeg.

We also have a national team and…

…this one is quite a bit different from the World Cup. Salko Hamzic comes in as third keeper as Nikola Vasilj’s spot is safe. Benjamin Tahirovic dropped out to give a first call up to Kenan Busuladzic and the long courting of Zinedin Smajlovic ends with him included in his first squad. While not the big news of the squad, the big event of this international break will be the final Bosnia appearance of Edin Dzeko - the home game against Sweden on 2 October is the planned end of an era.

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Serbia

Crvena Zvezda received their punishment for the various infractions in the second leg against Viktoria Plzen. Osman Bukari’s red card suspension was upped to three games, meaning he’ll miss the first half of the League Phase campaign. For the Ratko Mladic issues covered at length in the last edition, they received three fines totalling just under 100,000 euros and ban on away fans being allowed to attend the game in Lugano

Novi Pazar opened the weekend with a 2-0 home win over Zeleznicar while Cukaricki’s miserable form continues as they lost 3-1 to ten man Radnik - that’s 12 goals conceded in their last three games. Radnicki Nis’ 1-0 loss to Mladost means they may already be getting close to being detached in 13th. Vojvodina’s 2-1 win over Zemun means they stay level with Zvezda at the top after the weekend while Zemun remain rooted to the bottom four points behind 13th.

Game of the weekend time? Well, before the analysis, one has to mention what happened right before the game. Specifically, the minute’s silence held for Ratko Mladic and the unveiling of a huge tifo from the Zvezda fans. Zvezda also announced that Veljko Vucetic, the Sarajevo keeper sacked by the club after his agent/father posted support for Mladic, has been hired by the club. (2)

It’s worth noting that, much like the Mladic banner that got the club punished as above, this was swiftly put out through all the club’s official socials. The banner states “Direction: Potocari” which was a quote from Mladic made on entering Srebrenica ahead of the massacre which is a considerably worse and more… direct message than the reasonably generic “thank you” style banners we’d seen prior to this point. UEFA would tend not to really involve themselves too much in a domestic game but it’s quite difficult to imagine they won’t be in some sort of contact about this, particularly given that this will annoy a lot of people - Srebrenica victim associations have already come out to condemn it as a message of hatred and a glorification of a generational atrocity, because it is. Also annoted about it were Partizan because they weren’t informed that there would be one - Rasim Ljajic, the Partizan President, walked out of his box during the silence.

The match was also disrupted for a short period due to flares in the 63rd minute as fans bid the Marakana a happy birthday.

Match Analysis - On the pitch, this weekend saw the latest Eternal derby as Crvena Zvezda hosted Partizan in Veciti Derbi 180. How reflective it is of where either side are is another matter because it’s hard to be all that representative when you get the first goal scored in under a minute as Ze benefitted from a spilled cross to bundle the ball home. And then the expected began to happen.

Not surprisingly, Mirko Ivaanic is benefitting from Riera and his assist to Dieng for the equaliser was the second devilish inswinging delivery from the left in the space of a couple of minutes and while Partizan weren’t punished first time, the second plopped straight to Dieng’s feet in the centre of the box six yards out and it was beyond simple for him to slot home. 1-1 became 2-1 through Ivanic himself after Partizan were penalised for a foul in the box on Gashtarov after allowing him to run at the centre of the defence for 20 yards - low and to the keeper’s right and that was that for the scoring. Partizan pushed but huffed and puffed and arguably the best chances of the second half came via Bukari breaking on Partizan committing too much forward whereas, in spite of cracking the bar, Partizan were mainly limited to half chances from distance.

Second half Zvezda were pretty poor given that Partizan’s level this season has been generally pretty low. When one compares them to Vojvodina, then it stands out how much more they created vs Zemun in spite of having to show character to come from behind after conceding from a defensive error early. It’s easy to contrast the two at the moment when Zvezda look so chaotic in trying to control game states.

Montenegro

Next to wade into the Buducnost governance crisis are the European Union which, it’s really important to mention here, is the name of the pro-European bloc in Montenegrin politics (3). They are the latest to throw mud at the situation as, while Buducnost are a) third from bottom and b) coachless and are demanding details around how much everyone at the club were paid, who was responsible for player recruitment. There’s a large political edge to it given one of the queries is “do you think that you (Sasa Mujovic) have the legitimacy to continue being mayor”.

Sutjeska have their own headlines this weekend also - their coach, Denis Coric, had to be hospitalised after being hit by an object thrown from the stands during their game at Petrovac.

Kosovo

Malisheve’a good start continued apace as has hat trick from Vusal Isgandarli let them to all three points over Gjilani while Prishtina remain with a perfect record after a 1-0 win over Vushtrria.

North Macedonia

Having said last time that it looked like Bashkimi were in trouble while Shkendija were running away with it… Bashkimi got their first win of the season while Shkendija were defeated.

1 - For those unaware of what I mean by that, Slovenia has a considerably more lax interpretation of “waterlogged” than the rest of the world. Bekavac’s tackle was half reckless and half caused by the surface resembling the sort of slippy usually associated with “It’s a Knockout”.

2 - We’re at the point where I am going to write a separate article on all this as, to be honest, some of the responses I got on posting the news of the Mladic banner on social media were equally poisonous in advancing an anti-Serb argument and, I think it’s fair to say, there is a general lack of understanding of the wider Serb perspective on this specific point, along with a general lack of understanding of Serbia in general.

3 - Yeah, there’s a lot of articles just calling them the European Union so that’s an important clarification given that it may seem rather fanciful for Ursula von der Leyen to be wading into the running of a club that’s not even in the EU.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.”

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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…

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.