Former Spanish international Fernando Llorente played with Mirko Vučinić at Juventus in the 2013/14 season. Llorente drew the balls in the Nations League C draw in Brussels yesterday and sent his former teammate, now the coach of Montenegro, to Armenia, Cyprus and Latvia or Gibraltar.
A good, solid draw for the Montenegrin national team, which will be chasing a place in the play-offs for the European Championship this fall from the third-ranked division of European football.
To do that, they need to win first place in a group with rivals of their own rank and find themselves two steps away from the Euros. Never closer - at least it seems that way without the ball having left the center yet, but we have to wait until autumn.
The first-place team from our group C2 will play a play-off with the winners of the other groups, and Albania, Finland, Slovakia, Iceland are competing for those places... One team will qualify for the European Championship in the play-offs through Division C, which will be played only in March 2018, after the qualifications scheduled from March to November 2027.
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Therefore, those teams that do not qualify for the European Championship in the qualifiers can have a "make-up" in the playoffs, provided they earn it in the fall of this year.
The new edition of the Nations League begins in September - four rounds will be played from September 24 to October 6. The remaining two rounds are scheduled for November.
VUCINIC: ABOUT THE NATIONS LEAGUE WHEN THE TIME COMES
Coach Vučinić didn't want to say too much - the draw is OK, but it's a long way until autumn. Until then, his team will have played four friendly matches and will have a chance to further prepare and get into shape.
"When the time comes for the Nations League, we will think about it, because we are not in a position to turn to it now, but to go from game to game," said Vučinić after the draw.
Montenegro will host Slovenia and Andorra in friendly matches in March, and will play two more matches in early June, with rivals still to be determined.
"And we need to use those four duels in the right way. Ever since I became the coach, we have been saying that we need to keep our heads down, work hard and all move in the same direction, because that is the only way we can progress and hopefully achieve a great result," the Montenegrin coach emphasized.
The group Montenegro won yesterday in Brussels is irresistibly reminiscent of the one they won in 2020, in the second edition of the League of Nations. The team led by Faruk Hadžibegić won first place in a group with Cyprus, Azerbaijan and Luxembourg, but was unlucky because that League of Nations preceded the World Cup and placement from Category C was not valued.
BOTH DEFEATS IN YEREVAN, WITH LATVIA HARD AT HOME
Montenegro has met all of its rivals from Group C2, and has done so multiple times - with varying results.
Armenia was our team's rival in the 2018 World Cup qualifiers. Montenegro won convincingly in Gorica - 4:1, with a hat-trick from Stevan Jovetić, and in Yerevan a painful defeat - 3:2, after leading 2:0 at half-time. The "Falcons" lost in Yerevan in March 2022 in a friendly match (1:0), while in June last year in Nikšić, also in a friendly match, there was a 2:2 draw with goals from Vasilije Adžić and Andrija Bulatović, the guys who will be the leaders of the new generation.
Montenegro has met Cyprus four times and has a good record. The two draws (2:2 in Larnaca, 1:1 in Gorica) happened a long time ago, in the first qualifiers for the 2010 World Cup, and the memories of the two victories - 2:0 away, 4:0 at home - in the 2020 Nations League are fresh. And then Jovetić shone.
The winner of the Latvia - Gibraltar duel will be our team's rival from the last hat. Latvia is the favorite and, of course, a tough rival. A tough opponent, whom our team has failed to break through under Gorica in two previous meetings (1:1 in a friendly in 2020 and 0:0 in the 2022 World Cup qualifiers), while in the only match in Riga, a victory was recorded - 2:1, with two masterstrokes by Jovetić.
Montenegro ultimately defeated Gibraltar all four times, although they conceded a goal in three matches (4:1, 2:0, 3:1, 2:1).
Group C1: Albania, Finland, Belarus, San Marino.
Group C2: Montenegro, Armenia, Cyprus, Latvia/Gibraltar.
Group C3: Kazakhstan, Slovakia, Faroe Islands, Moldova.
Group C4: Iceland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Luxembourg/Malta.
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