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Sergej Barbarez falls to second home country on home debut – DW – 10/11/2024
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Sergej Barbarez falls to second home country on home debut – DW – 10/11/2024

It was always going to be an uphill battle for Bosnia’s newest coach, Sergej Barbarez, whose appointment only came last April. For the former Bundesliga star, his home debut against the country he calls his second home, Germany, was special. But he came into the job without any high-level coaching experience – a job he had been seeking since 15 years ago when he was overlooked in favor of Safet Susic.

In retrospect, it is difficult to dispute the Bosnian Football Association’s decision at the time, as although Susic led a ‘golden generation’ of the Dragons to their only major tournament, the 2014 World Cup, Bosnia failed to progress beyond group stage Their demise was the result of Edin Dzeko’s goal against Nigeria, which was wrongly disallowed for offside. It seemed like the beginning of better times, for a team that had previously done little to distinguish itself since the country declared its independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1992.

Precarious job

But things have largely gone downhill from their highest place in the FIFA rankings – 13th in 2013 – on the way to that one and only World Cup. At Friday evening’s match, Bosnia found themselves in a modest 75th place.

Since Susic’s dismissal in late 2014, the position of head coach of the Bosnian men’s football team has been one of the most precarious in the sport. Barbarez is the eighth man to attempt this work in the past decade – few of whom have lasted more than a year.

But Barbarez, on a four-year contract, will be hoping to be the exception and last month’s goalless Nations League draw in Hungary will have been encouraging.

Easy start for Bosnia

The home side, playing in the always boisterous but relatively small and tedious Bilelo Polje Stadium in Zenica in central Bosnia, started brightly and four minutes later the Dragons came close to drawing first blood when Ivan Basic’s free-kick from Op 25 meters away he sailed dangerously close to the left post of debutant goalkeeper Alexander Nübel.

For the first twenty minutes, Bosnia did well to disrupt a German side’s build-up, with coach Nagelsmann forced to improvise as several regular players were missing.

Gradually, however, Germany began to take control. Just before the half-hour mark, Florian Wirtz made a brilliant run through the Bosnian defense, receiving a long ball from Robert Andrich with his back to goal before passing it back to Deniz Undav to pass into the bottom left corner. Moments later it looked like Germany were about to leave Barbarez’s side in the dust – but it was whistled back for offside.

Ermedin Demirovic dribbles the ball
Ermedin Demirovic almost got Bosnia on the scoreboardImage: Christian Charisius/dpa/picture alliance

But five minutes later, Stuttgart’s Ermedin Demirovic – one of the hosts with strong German connections – gave the Dragons faithful another glimmer of hope. After being single-handedly passed through to his Stuttgart teammate in the German goal, Demirovic, somewhat deterred by a rushing back Andrich, knocked the ball off the crossbar.

However, those hopes would be short-lived as the man of the night, Undav would score a second home just seconds later. In fact, the man from Stuttgart could have made it a hat-trick around the hour mark, but upon VAR investigation this would also be called back for offside.

Over the next ten minutes, Barbarez, who spent most of the match urging his team on from the coaching zone, was seen occasionally taking a seat on the bench – almost as if a man was resigned to his fate.

Bosnia’s final push

But then out of nowhere Bosnia caught fire. Their 38-year-old captain, former Wolfsburg striker Edin Dzeko, had his head hit by a cross from a corner, causing a roar that would have threatened to take the roof off a more closed stadium. Suddenly the home fans were looking forward to it again – and so were the Dragons. Moments later, Dario Saric scored from long range, not far from Nübel’s left post, eliciting another roar – followed by a collective sigh from the white-and-blue clad fans.

But in the end, Germany held off Bosnia’s last-ditch attempt to level the score – no miracle would take place this evening for Barbarez’s underdogs – who are still bottom of Group A3 at the halfway point of the stage.

Indeed, it would always be an uphill battle – and probably not just this night in central Bosnia. However, a 2-1 defeat to Germany shouldn’t play much of a role in deciding how long the Dragon’s newest boss will ultimately manage to stick around.

Edited by: Louis Oelofse