BH Telecom Premier League, Cup & European Qualification General Discussion

Good to see Tatar might actually be worth something to the NT, hopefully not a Zakaric 2.0

 

Hopefully, someone posts the full game somewhere. But it looks like in terms of the result itself, it was competitive against the kind of club we want to be competitive against. Makes me wonder if it would have been a bit different had Rahmanovic been available.

The goal looked a bit easy. But the toxic fans calling for Kovacevic to go are complete idiots. Clearly, to build a squad that can do well in European-qualifiers, we need to build on what we already have, the same squad core, and the same coach.

 

FK Sarajevo has made huge progress in a recent years. It’s great to see our domestic football progressing. Even Zrinjski was a penalty shoot-out away from EL Play-Offs.

 

Ahmetovic
Tatar ----- Susic ----- Fanimo
Djokanovic Pejovic
Pidro Milicevic Dupovac Oremus
Kovacevic
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The boys can be proud. Unless I missed it, no concrete chance for the patient Celtic club all game long other than goal itself.

In the 2nd half, the players were more and more exhausted, but it was more true with regard to offensive play and it isn't surprising. Ahmetovic is 35. Fanimo and Tatar had serious defensive duties. Susic is not ready to play more than, maybe, a half. Those are all the players primarily tasked with creating and/or scoring a goal for us.

Ahmetovic - Did not play full game and did not seem to offer anything special with the few chances he had with the ball. 5.5/10

Tatar - Too many defensive duties kept him from having very many chances to push forward and create a goal. 7/10

Susic - Good at holding the ball in the middle but offered very little going forward. FKS need him to gain form and become the club's best player. 6/10

Fanimo - Defensive duties kept him from having serious bite in the 2nd half. 6.5/10

Djokanovic - Perhaps I should have paid more attention because I did not see too much of him. Maybe it was because Pejovic was stepping up first. This big game is great experience for the 19 year old. 6/10

Pejovic - Was responsible for set-pieces, many of which were good. Seems good at intercepting the ball. One of the few players who played the 2nd half almost as well as the 1st half. 7/10

Pidro - God-awful passing and crossing. Needs form because he missed 2019 and much of 2020 due to injury. Good experience to be playing in this kind of game for the 22 year old. 5/10

Milicevic - I don't know if it's fair to criticize him too much for not covering even more the player that had the shot on goal that ultimately ended up bouncing off Kovacevic and leading to a tap-in goal. Otherwise, I didn't see too many problems. 7/10

Dupovac - I didn't see very many mistakes. 7/10

Oremus - Great defensively and showed some hustle when on offense. 7/10

Kovacevic - Did not need to make too many saves but the Celtic goal was the kind of mistake that a goalkeeper will think about for weeks or months afterwards. Good experience for him both because he'll learn from his mistake and that he got to play a big club as a 22 year old. 5/10

 

Any chance we can get this Fanimo kid to play for BiH

 

He'd have no reason to turn us down. I could be mistaken, but I think he'd have to live in Bosnia for 5 years before he'd be eligible to play for us. If that's the case, then it ain't happening.

 

Sarajevo continues their unbeaten run with a 5-1 win against Mladost DK. Sarajevo is now 10-2-0 in the league. They have by far the best goal difference with +20 in 12 games. I can’t remember a team dominating the Bosnian league like this before.

 

I think you might’ve mentioned this young zmaj but it definitely looks like they’re becoming the Zvezda or Dinamo of this league. If they can sneak into a euro group stage it’ll seal it. A raising tide lifts all boats and Bosnia has been missing it.

 

They have a great chance at Europe this year with Europa Conference League starting up in 2021. If Sarajevo is seeded in CL Qualifying first round, I’d say there’s a great chance they play in Europe next year. That would make the gap much bigger with the amount of money they’d get.

 

I like Sarajevo’s strategy of pooling together Bosnian youth internationals. Mustedanagić, Kanurić and now Varešanović were all signed this year. Worst case, I can see them being good BiHPL players that they bought for cheap. Best case they ended up developing well and are sold for a nice amount of money in a couple years.

This is also allows them to continue having their amazing depth (by BiHPL standards). So I think this strategy is very good for Sarajevo.

 

Sarajevo becoming the Dinamo Zagreb of this league.

No doubt they will qualify for Europe eventually. Most likely Europa Conference league either next season or the season after next.

 

Yes, on paper, the Conference League seems to be a game changer, making qualifying for a European competition a fairly realistic (but far from guaranteed, of course) possibility, but only (it seems / we'll have to see) for the club that starts in the Champions League qualifying. That makes winning the league super important for the upcoming seasons.

There's a couple of ways of looking at the Conference League. One is that if the club makes it to the Europa League playoffs, then qualifying for the Conference League is guaranteed. Another way is to use FKS as an example. If FKS makes it to the 2nd round of the Champions League qualifying (like last season / seeded), then FKS would have to lose to 3 clubs in a row (Champions League 2nd qualifying round, Europa League 3rd qualifying round, and Conference League playoffs) in order to not qualify for a European competition.

Hopefully, the Conference League offers decent money to the qualifying clubs. Potential for exciting times ahead.

 

FK Sarajevo takes a major hit--losing their 2 best players in Tatar and Rahmanovic--but it was inevitable and just a matter of selling now or letting them go for free in the summer when their contracts expire. All things considered, the transfer fees (290k + 300k) were fair.

The only significant signing is the Montenegrin Boris Cmiljanic, who can play CF, LW, and RW. He comes from Slovakia's best club, Slo. Bratislava, and arguably was not given a real chance there. With Handzic scoring only 5 in 18 games and with our 2 best scorers lost to transfers, we could be feeling a little desperate for this lad to shine in the 2nd half of the season.

On the topic of the 2nd half of the season, I think we'll be looking/hoping for certain players to get into killer form, namely Susic and Pidro. It's also a season where we could see some of our younger players get a serious chance. I'm thinking mainly Jukic and Mustedanagic.

With Tatar out, Jukic is the most natural replacement in that LW position. However, the widespread impression is that Jukic is not necessarily the quality we want and we do have at least one way of keeping him on bench (e.g., Cmiljanic playing as a LWer). We'll just have to cross our fingers.

The unique aspect of Mustedanagic is that we paid 100k for him. I suspect that it was done because he had impressive stats in the Slovakian league when he was loaned out by Sparta Prague. For example, in the first of half of 2019, he had 2 goals and 5 assists in 10 games. Susic will likely be moved from DM to AM and, if so, this is going to be the main obstacle to Mustedanagic getting playing time. But if, for whatever reason, one of Susic, Pejovic, or Djokanovic can't play, we may see Mustedanagic play AM.

 

I'd expect Mesanovic to play CF, his ideal position, and that's going to be bad news for Cmiljanic and Jukic who would be left competing for the LW position (unless we go for some out of the ordinary creative solution).

I have a hard time seeing Mustedanagic at any other position other than AM for us. The CF position is now settled and we are plenty covered in the CM/DM department with Pejovic, Djokanovic, Susic, Oremus, and even Adukor. With Varesanovic, unless he has distinguished himself in training, I'd expect he'd be behind Mustedanagic. Perhaps in Cup games or if FKS wins the league and secures it several games ahead of the finish of the season, we see him get a chance.

Hopefully, Vinko is able to keep everyone happy with the playing time.