The Montenegrin youth football team, the first team to qualify for a major competition, featured players born in 2006 and younger. Mostly 2006, meaning young men who came of age last year, some of whom turned 19.
With this competition, the "class of 2006" ends their youth status, officially becoming seniors, or in "free translation" - real football players.
In countries with strong football systems, strong clubs and competitive leagues, they would still be “just” talents. In Montenegrin football, which is on the European fringe in terms of organization, league quality, intensity of play and infrastructure, players of this age - the best that Montenegro has - in addition to being talents, would also have to have serious roles in their teams.
In short - in England, Spain, Italy, a national team player aged 18-19 is a young player who has yet to prove himself in tough competition. In Montenegro, he is young only in terms of age, but he should not be so in terms of (in)experience playing senior football.
Inexplicably and beyond any football logic, the members of the most talented team that Montenegrin football has ever had and the first to qualify for a major competition in the Montenegrin first league clubs are, to put it mildly, episodic players.
The only exception is a young man who was not in Romania. Andrija Bulatović, with two years of senior football, first in Rudar and then in Buducnost, and standard appearances for the national team, as an 18-year-old achieved a transfer to the French Lens. That Lens insisted on skipping the Euro so that he could come to the preparations for the new season fresh and rested.
A year earlier, Vasilije Adžić took an even bigger step by moving to Juventus. Adžić did not play in the championship either, he is in the USA with Juventus at the Club World Championship.
And Marko Perović, after playing regularly in the second part of the 2023/24 season in Jezero from Plav, where he came from Buducnost, moved abroad, to Almeria in Spain.
Bodin Tomašević also made a serious transfer from the "class of 2006", but he left for Bologna in January with very modest minutes in the first team of Buducnost.
Of the players who were in the squad for the European Championship, besides Perović and Tomašević, Vuk Vlahović (youth team of Dinamo Zagreb), Marko Tadić (youth team of Partizan Belgrade) and Petar Jauković (youth team of Vojvodina Novi Sad) are not playing in Montenegro.
If Dinamo, Partizan, and even Vojvodina are, after all, a more serious story with more serious competition at the senior level and in the national club competition, the logic stops when the level drops to the Montenegrin club scene.
Out of 15 young national team players, young men of legal age, only one was even close to a standard place in any club in the First MeridianBet League.
Only four of them are first-team players and all of them play in the second league - Miloš Vračar in Podgorica, Filip Perović in Iskra, where Danilo Ćetković spent most of the season as a loan player for Sutjeska, for whom he made two appearances at the end of the season (a total of 17 minutes). Lazar Šekularac played regularly in Ibar, on loan from Jedinstvo.
Both goalkeepers are in the second league. The status of the first goalkeeper of the youth team, Ognjen Milović, is particularly interesting and unusual, even for Montenegrin odds.
Milović has been in goal for the second division team Koma 12 times, and his last match before the European Championship was at the end of March, in the national team jersey against Georgia when the team secured a place in the Euro. So, he has been without a second division match for two and a half months. The other goalkeeper Tomaš Đurović is in Iskra (15 second division matches, including two in the Montenegro Cup).
When it comes to first-league minutes, the youngest member of the national U19 team - 17-year-old Lazar Savović - has the most minutes. He has made 25 appearances for the first team of Buducnost, starting 10 matches and scoring three goals. His club teammates Danilo Vukanić and Andrej Camaj have each started once, and have played in a total of 10 matches.
Andrej Kostić has twice as many first league matches, but only two as a first striker. On average, these three Buducnost players were on the field for about twenty minutes.
Stefan Đukanović was loaned from Buducnost to Petrovac in January, where he was in the starting 11 for only five games. Bojan Damjanović is in Sutjeska, who played the last six matches this season as a member of the best team of the Nikšić club, and came off the bench twice until then. Dečić's Lazar Maraš has nine first league matches, four of which in the first team, Lazar Zlatičanin played six times for Mornar (once in the first line-up)...
So, when you add everything up - not counting the youth competition of Italy, Serbia, Croatia and Spain, played by five U19 national team members, it can be said that the players who played at Euro 2025 played a season without serious competition, if the 1st CFL can be called serious. And only the 2nd CFL...
Why is that? If they are not talented and promising, how did they get into the top eight in Europe? If they are, when will they play on Montenegrin courts, if not at the age of 17-18? How will they develop and catch some kind of competitive rhythm? When will they make mistakes and make mistakes, if not now, when they have time to improve, to learn from mistakes, as a normal process of sports maturation?
The paradox of Montenegrin football is that their time - despite their youth - is already passing, without actually ever coming.
The answer to the question of why these guys don't play lies with those who make the decisions. First of all, the coaches and club management. They did their part in the national team, they showed that Montenegro has talent. It's not by chance that you get into the top eight.
The time for their, and not only their, but also the generations to come, serious role in senior Montenegrin football is not tomorrow, but today. With every missed game and every match that members of the "class of 2006" and their successors watch from the bench, Montenegrin football is not only losing talent - it is losing its future.
Bonus video:
