Blue Christmas - Dinamo Zagreb enter a winter of discontent

Occasional viewers of Croatian football will be wondering what exactly is going on in the league this season. Dinamo Zagreb sit third, seven points off top spot after a bruising autumn that has seen their biggest European defeat and a spell of form since the November international break that has seen a league run of one win in six, translating to six points from eighteen. 

Seven points back? Dinamo are thoroughly fortunate that it’s not a lot more. What has gone on this autumn to send a club that has won eighteen of the last nineteen league titles into such a tailspin?

An Injury crisis like no other

Dinamo’s treatment room has had a busy few months. To run through it:

- first choice goalkeeper Ivan Nevistic hasn’t been able to play since the end of October due to a back issue that had restricted him to Champions League only even before that. He has been able to make the bench for the last few games but Dinamo are probably quite glad he’s not had to be called upon.

- Bruno Petkovic was managing an Adductor injury through September, hasn’t been able to get beyond the bench since the start of October and was last seen before the November internationals.

- Petar Sucic has been out since the November internationals to undergo foot surgery.

- Josip Misic, similarly to Petkovic, has been managing a muscle injury and has only appeared once since the November internationals.

- Recovering during this period were Moharrami, Kacavenda, Stojkovic, Bockaj and Peric - all of whom would have needed a slow introduction back to fitness and all who have been deployed more than ideally

- Getting injured for periods have been Takuya Ogiwara, Raul Torrente, Arijan Ademi and Marko Rog, who have all had to take short breaks to recover.

To further complicate matters, Martin Baturina has clearly been run into the ground with the amount of football he’s been asked to play and his form has slowly but surely declined as the autumn has gone on. The same for Marko Pjaca, who has been susceptible to missing time with injury throughout his career. With all that, Sandro Kulenovic’s form has dipped also - his goals kept them going in October but with the creative side of Dinamo tailing off (not to mention the midfield being more injured than anywhere), his goals have fallen down with the leaves.

It’s difficult to understate how much Dinamo’s depth has been tested - their subs bench against Celtic was primarily made up of their youth side, who had played in the Youth League earlier that day. But some of this has been self-inflicted…

Exile and the Summer

While we’ll touch on the actions of the club after their final autumn game against Varazdin later, these two points are quite closely related. Since taking over at Dinamo in September, Nenad Bjelica has exiled multiple players for disciplinary reasons. Samy Mmaee, brought in over the summer, was sent away almost immediately in spite of being at the club specifically to give them a true Champions League calibre centre back. Juan Cordoba, brought in for €2.1m in August has been in and out of favour. Jan Oliveras, the Roma loanee left back (a role Dinamo don’t have depth in), hasn’t been seen at all. Ronael Pierre-Gabriel has a period in Bjelica’s bad books also.

None of these are minor players. Mmaee is their best centre back. RPG is their best full-back. Cordoba showed enough to suggest he can contribute. Put together, they form half of the first team based recruitment this summer and, therefore, it can only be seen as either an indictment of the recruitment or an indictment of the coach’s handling of personalities. It certainly must be considered peculiar that so many issues have surfaced in the space of the three months Nenad Bjelica has been at the club.

Coaching and Recruitment

The autumn, from a coaching perspective, is obviously headlined by the sacking of Sergej Jakirovic after the 9-2 Champions League loss to Bayern Munich in Germany. That had come on the back of a home loss to Hajduk and away draw vs Rijeka but results prior to that had been convincing wins and qualification for the Champions League group stage was achieved with consummate ease.

It goes without saying that that was a moment of change, one caused by Jakirovic’s long-standing lack of job security. It also goes without saying that putting a squad together for one manager then giving it straight to other one two weeks later isn’t ideal, particularly when Bjelica is a manager who, after last time at Dinamo, is one that will wield more power than your average incumbent.

On top of that, Bjelica’s football is very different to that of Jakirovic. Bjelica isn’t a naturally attacking coach - his first generation Dinamo side were compact and then exploded into life on the counter with the supreme talents of Petkovic, Olmo and Orsic available up front, Livakovic in goals and a midfield of Moro and prime Ademi with depth options of Lovro Majer, Amir Rrahmani and Mario Gavranovic. Quite simply, the squad available to him was quite a bit stronger than the one he has at his disposal now, particularly from an attacking sense. That squad cantered to titles and performed admirably in Europe and Bjelica’s reputation grew with it - a reputation that each job since has bruised. It is difficult not to think that the perception of him being hard done by leaving his first spell at Maksimir (after falling out with the board) has played into how much leeway he has been given this time.

Which neatly leads into recruitment. Marko Maric, Dinamo’s current sporting director, has been under fire for the players that came into the club this summer - while Raul Torrente is undeniably a success, the section above shows the issues some of the other players have had/caused. Maric himself has been sidelined with Bjelica taking a far more active role in recruitment for the winter than Jakirovic did (or could) in summer - already strongly linked are Mislav Orsic and Filip Benkovic, both players known to Bjelica from former roles and it seems that the manager’s contacts list will become the main recruitment document for this window rather than the work of Maric.

With both men’s jobs under scrutiny, the board held a meeting to decide their future after the final autumn game vs Varazdin yesterday. While Dinamo won that game, the main takeaway from it was a nightmare goal conceded by long-term back-up GK Zagorac. That meeting lasted ten minutes and saw both men remain in their roles with the express warning that if things get more parlous than they already are, that both their heads will be on the block.

The Saving Graces

The reality is that, unlike last season, the HNL has precisely zero in the way of outstanding sides. Dinamo’s 29 points may have them 7 from the top currently - had they only done that this time last season, they’d have been 11 points off the top. While Rijeka are, somehow, still unbeaten, their season remains coloured by the shocking manner of their European elimination and their title challenge is hamstrung by a surplus of draws and the impression that a true title challenging side would have picked up at least six more points than they have just by cutting out the silly draws to team they should be beating.

As for Hajduk, Gennaro Gattuso seems to relish being under fire - with two falling outs with players still with the club, coming close to being sacked on merit towards the end of August and the whole Perisic thing. But Hajduk sit level at the top without ever having really corrected any of their flaws from last season (namely that they just don’t put teams away - their Autumn ended scoring a 91st min winner vs 10 men which reinforces that argument!).

If either Rijeka or Hajduk were 1% better than they are, you’d be talking about the gap to Dinamo already looking close to unassailable. As for the bookies, they have Dinamo and Hajduk level at the head with Rijeka a little bit behind (2.3 vs 4 or, in old money, around 5/4 vs 3/1) and a run of Spring form similar to last season would have Dinamo as champions come what may come May.

The other saving grace is, of course, the Champions League. Dinamo still have a chance of qualifying for the next stage, particularly given their final group game vs Milan will be likely against a side with nothing to play for. With a month between games, if everyone gets back to fitness, there will very much be a “season starts here” vibe and knock-out football in Europe will very much be the sort of tonic that does kick-start a season.

What’s realistic

You don’t make money betting against Dinamo to be Croatian champions. It’s also hard to imagine that when Dinamo have everyone fit again, that they won’t be a better side no matter who comes in in January. Orsic and Benkovic aren’t especially exciting signings, nor is their recent form the sort that suggests they will be a big benefit to the club but they do know how to win the HNL and for a manager who has exiled multiple players from the squad, they will be coming for their personalities as much as their playing qualities. If Bjelica fails to guide this Dinamo side to the title, then it’s the sort of season that will ensure he never gets a job of this magnitude again and would pre-empt a massive change at the club.

(As a sidenote, who goes to accommodate Orsic? Hoxha? Spikic? Cordoba? Given Orsic’s evident decline due to lack of form and injury, is it even certain he earns a starting slot at this stage in his career?)

The problem is that, whatever happens in the run-in, Dinamo need that massive overhaul to happen. There’s nothing like a confluence of crisis to point out everything wrong with a side all at once but the problems at Dinamo are pretty similar to what they were before the summer, just more acute.

Nevistic is a fine keeper but there’s no depth in that area as Zagorac, at 37, feels more like he’s on the “Scott Carson at Man City” career arc than a viable back-up. Kevin Theophile-Catherine, at 35, isn’t up to the level Dinamo need of a starting centre back yet, save for Torrente, Dinamo have been consistently unable to recruit anyone better - Mmaee is exiled, Bernauer isn’t at that level and Perkovic can’t get fit to make a claim. Arijan Ademi has far more bad days than good now yet he’s the only depth if something happens to Sucic or Misic. Martin Baturina will be going either in winter or summer but no real succession plan has been put in place for him. Rog and Pjaca may have been helpful, but they’re injury prone and they aren’t the only ones. Bruno Petkovic is rapidly approaching the end of his prime years and consistent muscle issues will only speed that process along - striker is a position Dinamo have gone from having four players for last season to only Kulenovic now.

All of that might not be enough to cost Dinamo a title this season but, if it’s not fixed, it will cost them a title sooner or later. Arguably, it should have cost them one last season and this squad is, it seems safe to say, not as good as the one Dinamo started 2024 with.

Dinamo unquestionably have question marks hanging over them with the biggest one being “what are they doing?” It seems certain that not all of their ills can be fixed in this window. If the willingness to fix them eludes the club also, then this could be a very unexpected title going to somewhere on the Adriatic coast.