If Qatar wasn’t all the evidence one needed that Dragan Stojkovic wasn’t necessarily the man to take Serbia forward on the international stage, Euro 2024 has provided a bit extra evidence - be that a qualifying campaign that was one of struggle to put it mildly or a relatively farcical group stage campaign where Serbia did just about enough to save face but barely before swiftly falling flat on it.
The tournament started promisingly enough - Stojkovic accidentally found out in the final friendly that 3-5-2 would probably work quite well for the squad he’d picked and a brave performance was put in against England. As such, Piksi went same again against Slovenia and saw his charges escape with a point they were lucky to get over a side they were expected to breeze past. It finished in farce against Denmark as a bizarre team selection seemingly not told to players in advance of being announced to the media and a performance that reflected this seeming lack of plan.
Serbia’s campaign was one of discovering flaws as they went - discovering that a season in Saudi Arabia may be great for your wallet, but not so much for match sharpness on this stage; discovering that full backs aren’t a thing that’s optional; discovering that structure will always overwhelm freedom and; discovering that their manager hasn’t learned his lesson.
No matter what happens next (and it seems plenty is about to), one can walk through the errors of judgement in this Euros already to locate the glaring issues that caused Serbia’s disappointment.
1 - The selection
It perhaps goes without saying that, if you take 26 players to a tournament, there should be balance there and enough spots for two of everything. With Serbia not carrying players that were due to miss the tournament due to injury (only Aleksa Terzic could reasonably be thought of as an injury loss), there was really no excuse not to.
With that in mind, let’s look at some of the players left behind:
Strahinja Erakovic, in my opinion one of Serbia’s best defenders and certainly better that Spajic and Stojic picked ahead of him. Erhan Masovic can also rightly be miffed about who went ahead of him in that role.
Mile Svilar, Roma’s Goalkeeper on the back of a very good season
Darko Lazovic, Kosta Nedeljkovic - Serbia’s entire cohort of top class right backs, with Andrija Zivkovic the only recognised right sided player who could play RWB/RM, albeit as a converted one.
What better illustration of Serbia’s issues could there be than the fact that Serbia spent the entire Euros one dodgy Bratwurst away from not having a right side to their defence. Even with Zivkovic staying fit, Serbia decided to drop the only fit left back in Mladenovic, force Zivkovic onto the left and play Srdan Mijailovic, who isn’t a wing back.
2 - Saudi Arabia
Serbia, more than any side at the Euros, were reliant upon players who moved to Saudi Arabia being sharp at this level. Sergej Milinkovic-Savic at his best is a vital box to box cog for Serbia. Aleksandar Mitrovic at his best is an irrepressible physical presence to dominate opponents with.
Both players looked like they were running through treacle. Mitrovic was pocketed by lesser players. Sergej looked like he had trouble with getting up to the speed of games.
Intriguingly, Sergej’s attacking stats were actually BETTER at the Euros than in 2022 - more passes/90, more xG/90 - his defensive stats were well down. Mitrovic’s involvement statistically hasn’t changed much, his success rates have declined, however.
3 - Piksi
Oh, here goes…
I understand the basic concept of why you hire Dragan Stojkovic as manager way back when - Serbia didn’t just need a manager, they needed a figure of hope. Piksi was that - with two previous managerial roles in which he had, at times, shown plenty of aptitude and, as a player, he was one of the greatest footballing artists Serbia has ever produced. Why shouldn’t such a figure provide some unity to a nation that was coming off the back of a Euro 2020 playoff which failed with a hopeless performance against Scotland.
Three and a bit years down the line, is Serbia not just in the same position as then?
The answer, depressingly enough, is yes.
A positive World Cup qualifying campaign for Qatar was immediately followed by a performance in Qatar that was dismal, albeit with excuses. The national team camp was the source of tabloid gossip but, on the pitch, they came in plagued with important injuries. While there was plenty of evidence growing that problems with tactics, etc already existed at that time, particularly with Serbia’s defensive performance, that Serbia were running with 60% fit strikers gave both Stojkovic and the FSS the outs that they needed to avoid making changes.
Moving into Euro 2024, Serbia, during qualifying, were abysmal. In a group where Serbia were the best side on paper by a distance, they scraped through in the final game and skirted with disaster. Confidence in the side from fans was at rock bottom coming into the training camp and, while the Sweden game did give a shred of hope for many, that lack of confidence was absolutely justified.
As a whole statistical picture, Serbia in 2024 vs 2022 were doing more but less effectively - their duels/90 in 2024 is at 190 with a 46% success rate with 511 passes/90 at 88% success. In Qatar, that was 173 at 49% and 424 at 83%. Their PPDA in Germany was 19.4, in Qatar, that was 8.05 which bears the argument out - the duels rate shows Serbia weren’t working less at all, the PPDA shows that Serbia’s pressing and the outcomes of those duels were not working well. Progressive passes were up, smart passes were way down - Serbia worked hard with the ball but didn’t do a whole lot of anything to actually break opposition teams down.
Before you sit and talk about Piksi being Piksi, you have to state and re-read those facts. You shouldn’t be doing more work and getting less reward for it. A group of England, Slovenia and Denmark is not better than a group of Cameroon, Switzerland and Brazil. If Piksi wanted to play an aggressive, pressing game, it failed dismally. If Piksi wanted to sit back and counter-attack, it failed dismally. If Piksi wanted to play a possession game and pass through defences, it failed dismally. Serbia moved the ball about to little effect. If you’re asking what Piksi’s actual plan was for this team, the stats give a confused outlook.
Also confused were the squad, most notably, Dusan Tadic, who publicly criticised Piksi after the England game for leaving him on the bench, something brushed off as him being rested for the more winnable Slovenia game which Serbia then drew.
Tadic was then dropped again for the final game against Denmark, where players learned the squad selection seemingly not from the staff but, as captured on camera on the pitch, from a notification on Dusan Vlahovic’s phone. On top of that are the later revelations around Vanja Milinkovic-Savic allegedly hitting a fan after being questioned around drinking during the Euros on a day off from training.
It’s clear in hindsight that there were communication problems in the Serbia camp. Changing formation in both friendlies won’t have helped that. Regularly shifting midfield pieces about won’t have helped that and, ultimately, Dragan Stojkovic didn’t help that. ITVs commentary on the Denmark game stated he had a bit of an ego and while, not knowing Piksi personally, it’s hard to say what’s an act and what isn’t, it does seem from communications with the media (and, seemingly, spilled over into the team itself) that some part of Piksi’s personality was getting in the way of proper communications with those around him. Just because you can bring a side together is no indication of whether you can keep a side together and it seems that while Piksi’s force of personality brought the side together in the first place, it’s also been what has pushed it apart at the most important moments be that in the heads gone performance in Qatar against Cameroon or the heads slumped performance against Denmark.
Piksi will be sacked. Very few people have any doubts about that. But Serbia need another Piksi to bring the squad back together, particularly with a captain surely retiring from internationals soon, players scattered across continents and an extremely unhappy President Vucic who wants sport to spearhead Serbian soft power.
4 - The FSS
And Vucic has plenty of reason to be miffed. The state has invested in sporting crown jewels - new stadiums such as in Zajecar, Leskovac, Loznica are already open with spades in the ground in Kragujevac and on a new national stadium along with plans confirmed Pancevo and Zrenjanin. These things don’t come cheap and it makes somewhat a mockery of such investment if the nation’s football is, well, mocked.
If you get given a big political slap on the back, that investment must, eventually, come through and deliver.
In terms of the domestic league, the Superliga isn’t in a great place as, while smaller clubs have been able to run smaller scale economically viable and youth focused operations, the dominance of Crvena Zvezda has pushed Partizan to the brink of bankruptcy to the point where they are now, in part, administered by the state itself due to the sheer scale of the debts owed to the state. Zvezda themselves are hardly debt-free but the access to Champions League revenues makes their situation considerably more manageable.
Serbia’s issues aren’t isolated to personalities and tactics, they expand to the general administration of football in the nation itself. They expand to every appointment made, be they politically motivated from Vucic (such as Branislav Nedimovic to a senior role in the FSS) or be they peculiar and ineffective, such as those of age group national sides.
There is no grand plan, just reactions to things which leads to short term appointments, short term thinking and diminishing returns. For a nation that is investing in the stadiums that will see things safe for decades, that isn’t sustainable. Serbia has the talent - that’s rarely ever been in doubt.
Now is the time they need the support structures in place throughout its football to allow them to realise it.