Bosnia’s national coach Sergej Barbarez: From shooting king to player’s eye interpreter

There are dreams that you wait for, sometimes for years. For Sergej Barbarez, 53, one thing is now coming true. Last April he agreed to take over as national coach of Bosnia-Herzegovina, knowing that half the world would think he was crazy. “Starting with games in England, Italy and the Netherlands – no normal person would have done that,” he claims. And didn’t the results prove those who had smiled pityingly at Barbarez right? In England he lost 3-0 on his coaching debut, lost 1-0 in another test match in Italy, before further disillusionment followed in the Nations League against the Dutch: 2-5. Afterwards we managed a 0-0 draw against Hungary, at least. But now: the dream. Because Barbarez’s home debut is coming up in Zenica on Friday evening. Because it’s against Germany – a country he calls home. And because the DFB entourage is led by Rudi Völler, who once guided Barbarez to Leverkusen as Bayer manager, where he ended his career in 2008 after scoring 95 goals in 330 Bundesliga games, most of them for his beloved Hamburger SV.

Even back then, Barbarez seemed predestined for the job that he has only now taken on. The fact that it didn’t work at the time was due to political intrigues that had always disgusted him, he says. The fact that he never took over as coach of a club team was due to other types of dishonesty; football is no longer what it used to be. And bending over backwards for a job was never an option for him. He was able to afford the time as a private citizen (and TV commentator) – and enjoyed it: “I’m not a yes man, I go my own way,” says Barbarez on the phone.

This path meant taking a change of direction as the new Bosnia coach and rejuvenating the team. His eleven-member coaching staff has around 300 international matches. The entire squad that he called up for the games against the DFB team and against Hungary (Monday), however, ends up with almost 400 international matches only because striker Edin Dzeko, now 38 and active for Fenerbahce in Turkey, has already played 136 times for Bosnia was deployed. The rest? Almost without exception rookies.

Barbarez believes that a break with the past was necessary: ​​“The last few years have not been easy, not to say catastrophic.” From January 2023, former defensive man Faruk Hadzibegic and offensive legends Meho Kodro and Savo Milosevic tried their hand at it Bosnia’s team. When the 2014 World Cup participant lost qualification for the 2024 European Championship and fell to 74th place in the FIFA world rankings, Barbarez came. “It was surprising, very surprising” for him.

Many of his players are active in Germany – but not all of them in the first league

He himself noticed enthusiasm when the association asked – but instinctively “pushed the handbrake” and hesitated before saying yes: “I had to be sure.” It was him in the end. He now spends more time in Bosnia than before, sometimes to watch league games. However, the current squad only includes one player who plays in Bosnia, backup goalkeeper Osman Hadzikic from Velez Mostar. The rest are employed in Turkey, Croatia, Italy, the Netherlands – or quite numerously, like Barbarez himself, in Germany.

Not all of the current Germany legionnaires play first-class, only goalkeeper Nikola Vasilj (St. Pauli), midfielder Armin Gigovic (Kiel) and the strikers Haris Tabakovic (Hoffenheim) and Ermedin Demirovic (Stuttgart). Barbarez also has second division players with him in Ermin Bicakcic (Braunschweig), Dzenis Burnic (Karlsruhe) and Denis Huseinbasic (Cologne). They are still a long way from being as successful as Barbarez once was. In 2001, he became top scorer in the Bundesliga together with Schalke’s Ebbe Sand, and for a while there was even debate about naturalizing him. However, playing for the DFB was out of the question for him. It was his country of birth, Bosnia, that only played its first international match in 1996. “When you ask me about the best moments of my career,” says Barbarez, “I always say: every single one of my 47 international matches.”

He now demands exactly this identification from his players. Almost everyone could also choose between at least two countries; either because of their ancestors like Barbarez once (“in my blood is everything you can imagine: Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Slovenia”), or because they are part of the war diaspora and are entitled to another citizenship. “I look them in the eye and whether I appoint them depends above all on How “They say ‘yes,'” explains Barbarez.

When asked to what extent his team is representative of today’s Bosnia, he hesitates with his answer. Corruption, difficult living conditions and politics permeate too many areas of difficult daily life. But when you ask him what kind of character his team displays, he says with certainty that “you just have to look the boys in the eye when the anthem plays.”

What does that mean? His team will play against Germany with emotion – in a stadium in Zenica that still looks the same as it did during his playing days, when – in pre-war times – it was considered the most beautiful arena in Yugoslavia. “The Germans will be surprised,” believes Barbarez. Also from the atmosphere. “The Balkans are emotional,” he explains, but he tries to incorporate rationality and a sense of reality in equal measure. “Here, even more than anywhere else, it’s true that you’re either king – or you’re dead last,” he says – and that suits him: “I love this challenge.” The main aim is to be competitive soon – and to qualify for the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 European Championship.