Bosnia and Herzegovina: Neither spotlight nor will
And while the clubs from Serbia have a guaranteed place in the group stage of the Champions League, and the clubs from Croatia are close to that, the teams from Bosnia and Herzegovina are still waiting for their first and historic appearance in the group stage of any competition. This is a sufficient indicator of how far the Bosnian clubs are from the surrounding teams.
In recent years, the Premier League of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been dominated by Mostar's Zrinjski, the only one that acts as a team that could make the aforementioned historic breakthrough. But such Zrinjski is still far in terms of quality from clubs from Serbia and Croatia. The information about the difference between the clubs from BiH and Croatia was best confirmed by Sergej Jakirović, the current head of Rijeka's coaching staff. At the beginning of this year, he was appointed as the new coach of Rijeka, which at that moment in the First Croatian Football League was closer to the relegation zone than to the top of the table, and he left Zrinjski, which was in first place in the Premier League table, and was moving towards to the new title. Therefore, for Jakirović, the bigger challenge was to "save" Rijeka, rather than conquering the BiH league once again with Zrinjski. Jakirović won a place in Europe with Rijeka, even though it seemed impossible, and for him it was a bigger challenge than staying in Bosnia and Herzegovina and competing in local competitions. So he gave the opportunity to win the crown in BiH to his friend Krunoslav Rendulić.
All the above data speak volumes about the quality of football in BiH, Croatia and Serbia. Another problem of Bosnian football is the weak infrastructure. Although a little more has been done in the last year regarding the field and reflectors in stadiums in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is still weak compared to the region. So, in everything, football in Bosnia and Herzegovina lags behind Serbia and Croatia, and mostly in the sports part. Often, players from Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region choose to play for the fifth or sixth ranked team from these two mentioned countries, rather than for a club from the very top in Bosnia and Herzegovina. For the clubs from Bosnia and Herzegovina, the regional league would be an even bigger blow to the quality, which is already weakening year by year. Apart from sports and infrastructural matters, when it comes to regional competition, there is always the problem of the fans.
The fact that Bosnia and Herzegovina and the other countries of the former Yugoslavia are not ready for the regional competition is best illustrated by the fact that recently in Banja Luka, Borc fans and Crvena zvezda fans from Banja Luka fought. Apart from the fact that the clubs in Bosnia and Herzegovina have their own fan groups, almost every one of the strongest clubs from the region has its own fan base in the cities of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Therefore, the security aspect is also a big problem for the organization of the regional competition. And many will say: how do you play basketball? Well, it's not the same. We all know it isn't.
Montenegro - a benefit, but also a sea of open questions
The new gloomy summer of Montenegrin clubs in European competitions brought the story of the regional league up to date again.
From the sports aspect - that idea would be the right move for the Football Association of Montenegro (FSCG). However, launching such a large project would raise a number of other serious issues.
"When it comes to the sports factor, I don't think anyone can be against it. The league would be strong, interesting, the best teams from the former Yugoslavia would participate in it, and it would certainly bring quality football, and young players would be able to progress", believes Momir Đurđevac, general secretary of FSCG.
However, as he states, after that "a sea of other" questions opens up.
"First of all, who are the participants, then who will manage the competition and it is very important what happens with the domestic leagues, because, for example, in our country, the league without Budućnosti and Sutjeska would lose its appeal. It would be the same in Serbia without Zvezda and Partizan, in Croatia without Dinamo and Hajduk," Đurđevac pointed out.
The next very important question is what happens to the league if it does not have UEFA verification, continues the general secretary of the FSCG.
"Any such project must have the approval of UEFA. Because the question is what happens to the clubs that would win certain places through that league, whether they are included in UEFA competitions, whether they receive certain financial benefits".
Đurđevac explains the importance of UEFA and going to Europe through Montenegrin clubs.
"A Montenegrin club that goes to Europe and is eliminated in the first round receives 250.000 euros, the champion receives a minimum of 800-850 thousand, and in total every year our clubs receive from one and a half to two million euros from UEFA. Could that future league give them that kind of satisfaction. Not to mention, for example, Zvezda, which in previous years earned 25 million from Uefa. In addition to all that, UEFA formed the League Conference for smaller associations and less successful clubs in the European qualifiers," explained Đurđevac.
What is very important, he states, is that the regional league should not be just the wish of the federation.
"It should also be a project of countries from the territory of the former Yugoslavia. Without the help of the state, the idea itself is unsustainable. All clubs have very large fan groups, there are good groups, but also militant ones, so in order to control the situation in the stands, the support of the state is needed. In any case, you need to do a good study, take all the reasons for and against and be aligned with UEFA, because without it, the league would hardly be sustainable, especially financially," Đurđevac is clear.
He concluded that the FSCG does not have an official position on this issue, because an official initiative has never been on the agenda - neither for the Montenegrin Federation, nor for others.
The famous Montenegrin football player and now coach Željko Petrović believes that the organization of the regional league would be difficult.
"I think that - because of the rivalry, the fan groups, the logistics, the police who have to secure the games - it would be very difficult. The level would be raised more because of the television rights, the viewership would be at a higher level. But I think it would be very difficult to organize it these days," Petrović said.
Similar to Đurđevac and Petrović, he emphasizes that there are many open questions.
"The question is whether we from Montenegro would be able to cope financially with the other clubs. The question is also how many teams there would be - 10, 12 or 18. If it is 18, then you have a better chance, because more teams from other countries would enter, which are not as strong as Zvezda, Dinamo, Partizan, Hajduk, Osijek, Vojvodina, Rijeka. .. If the league is smaller, I don't think that the clubs from Montenegro would have any chance, they would immediately be relegated to the eventual second rank. It is also a question of who is relegated, where will he go - to his region or to the Second League?"
And the former footballer of Budućnost, Dinamo Zagreb, Sevilla and PSV, believes that UEFA should also play an important role.
"It's a huge project and I don't think it can be done without UEFA's help. First, help to build stadiums, because safety is the most important thing. Will all countries accept it? Will Serbia and Croatia? Perhaps it would be a success for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Slovenia. It is a process that should last a long time. There should also be a change in people's consciousness, for sport to be sport, and not to be a place where people will call each other names and fight. One incident can ruin an entire league."
It is clear that Montenegrin teams would be the weakest in such a league.
"We need to understand that we are the smallest country in the region. You cannot bring a good foreigner for three, four or five thousand euros. The league is at such a level that a serious player can hardly come. Maybe a younger one, who would assert himself, and then leave," concluded Petrović.
Serbia: Football is not basketball
Let's be clear at the outset - a regional football competition in our area based on the ABA basketball league is not possible because the umbrella organizations are organized on different foundations. The basketball championship, which is optionally called the Adriatic League, and is run by the Adriatic Basketball Association, is a joint-stock company closely related to the Union of European Basketball Leagues (ULEB).
The idea of the Union simmered for almost a full ten years, and when the leading clubs and leagues of Europe really created it in the XNUMXs, a finger was poked in the eye of the World Basketball Federation (FIBA), the former supreme leader for all club basketball on the Old Continent.
The rest is history, and it says that the younger one overcame the older one and that his prominent Euroleague and Eurocup competitions rose to the main stage.
Such a coup did not happen in football. There is every chance that it won't in the near future, because the European Football Union (UEFA) firmly keeps the diggins in its scope. Occasional announcements by the spokespersons of some of the most important European clubs about the establishment of their own league in a closed format bounce off the solid walls in the Swiss town of Nyon, and there is no agreement about it even among the greats themselves. They continue to chase the intoxicating lure of the Champions League, which is the brainchild of UEFA.
Under its roof are also the football associations of the former Yugoslav republics, which provide representatives for the European Cups through the national leagues. That cog has been turning continuously since the mid-XNUMXs, when the Champions Cup was launched as UEFA's first club competition. She lubricates it with occasional variations, but the meaning of the mechanism remains the same.
The Union formally gives every national champion an equal opportunity to become the ruler of Europe, and the others, from the lower order, who gain the right to its ticket to take the other two trophies. On the field, it is known that dry quality is the deciding factor.
Here, in the post-Yugoslav era, football quality was blown up by the Balkan powder keg. They have already qualified for the Eurocups of everyone from the Julian Alps to Đevđelia in their modest place, and then next year Jovo again and so indefinitely, with rare examples of more notable ranges.
Would Nion recognize the football Adriatic League as a concentration of such and such quality for the benefit of football from Vardar to Triglav? Of course he wouldn't. And there will be an end to hypothesizing about the regional football competition for a long time to come.
No one is preventing us from meeting among ourselves again, for our own money. Pelzer can be taken from, in truth, the failed Royal League of Scandinavia with teams from three monarchies from the north of Europe (Denmark, Sweden, Norway).
The competition was held for only three years (2004-07). It was played from mid-autumn to early spring, when the Swedes and Norwegians have a break between two seasons, so it was the hardest for the Danes, whose championship is limited like in most European countries.
Prolonged mediocrity and below average play against atomic football in the leading championships, witnessed through the inflation of television broadcasts, revive even more strongly the romanticism of the Yugoslav league of the past era. Through memories of the departures of Zvezda to Sarajevo and Partizan to Ljubljana, of the arrivals of Dinamo to Niš and Hajduk to Skopje, a path to salvation is sought.
The majority of football fans from this side and from the other side will say that the restoration of old rivalries and the establishment of new rivalries is the only way for the benefit to be general, and the competitiveness with the West to be greater - as in those days.
However, are we a mature society to accept Zvezda at Maksimir, Dinamo at Marakana and Partizan at Poljud after war and post-war traumas? After all, it doesn't even have to be in a league format. Traditional tournaments used to be played during summer and winter preparations: Marjanov in Split, Veležov in Mostar, tournaments in Igman and in Titograd, the Upper Adriatic tournament in Rijeka, the Champions League with the Yugoslav champions... They died out.
And what if some unwavering football fanatics brought them back to life? Would we be afraid of the risk of a repeat of the unfortunate scenes from Athens these days that shook soccer Europe? Would the security structures be dedicated to tackling fan groups that identify with chauvinism? How to prevent violence at sporting events in countries whose political elites are parasitic on digging old wounds instead of healing them?
Uefa knows all that, so why is it picking on the bear. Let's remember that the problem from our yard moved to hers when there was a riot at the match between Zrinjski and Partizan in Mostar in 2007 in the qualifiers for the UEFA Cup.
The meetings between our national team and the Croatian national team in the 1999 and 2013 qualifiers were peaceful, but clubbing carries a more pronounced charge.
Adjusting to the new community in basketball, and especially in water polo, was painless, and the regional league was beneficial. This primarily refers to the basketball competition that produced many excellent players, as well as NBA aces.
Football has a different socio-political role and is a mirror of the situation. There are also ultras that are acceptable, even desirable decor, until they exceed all measures and go beyond the scope of sports chivalry, but their latest intentions should not discourage sincere advocates of joint competitions in football.
In the past, for example, the Mitropa (Central European) Cup and the Balkan Cup were played with teams that were not at the top of their leagues, but had the will to compete with those outside their court. Why, in this sense, should we not first send Radnička to Tuzla, and her Sloboda to Subotica, that is, organize a competition between those who do not have autumn commitments in Europe, and the majority do. They would be cautious harbingers of the inverted pyramid principle compared to the ABA league, which started with the best and got its second tier later.
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