Nebojša Marković

Serbian Football Journalist | Writing featured @guardian @FourFourTwo @srfsport @altairmagazine & more | Tweets 🇷🇸🇬🇧

[Nebojša Marković @MarkovicNeb]

✍️ My story for The Guardian about FC Copenhagen's Champions League rise.

Their successes intrigued me, so I went to 🇩🇰 to investigate about:

• their remarkable academy
• shades of Ajax 2018-19 strategy
• a young coach inspired by Pep & De Zerbi

👇👇
https://t.co/u7QgDwpDJU

[Nebojša Marković @MarkovicNeb]

@lemmacantor11 Yes, and that one was far more consistent throughout the decades.

[Nebojša Marković @MarkovicNeb]

Ever heard of the 1948 Balkan Cup?

You're missing out if you haven't.

This is one of those football competitions that today seem odd.

This international tournament was never finished and, of course, that was thanks to politics.

🧵👇

[Nebojša Marković @MarkovicNeb]

There's a place where I write about odd stuff like this, so feel free to subscribe 👇

https://t.co/OQqdRUlDXO

[Nebojša Marković @MarkovicNeb]

The unfinished 1948 tournament left Hungary top of the standings after 6 matches—never facing Yugoslavia, but playing Romania twice—and 22 goals scored.

Yugoslavia sat 2nd, Czechoslovakia lost all 4 games, while Albania finished with a goal difference of 1–0.

[Nebojša Marković @MarkovicNeb]

Hey everyone, I co-wrote a book! Well… not really 😅

But I did contribute with a chapter on football in Belgrade, which is one of the 22 cities in This Is Our Game, a book by Joel Rookwood & Dan Fieldsend.

I spoke with Dan about it in The Belgrader 👇
https://t.co/MVaOwerQLA

[Nebojša Marković @MarkovicNeb]

@SweeperPod No "🇷🇸 Destroyed Serbia 3–0!" or maybe that's not even surprising anymore? 😆

[Nebojša Marković @MarkovicNeb]

My interview with North Macedonia international Boban Nikolov is out.

On beating 🇮🇹&🇩🇪, scoring in the Champions League, reasons why Steaua is for him bigger club than Crvena Zvezda, and difficult times off the pitch.

Fresh from a title win at Vardar 👇

https://t.co/yDXIgtOum6

[Nebojša Marković @MarkovicNeb]

My favourite Lobanovskyi title was in 1977 when he won the Soviet league with an away record of 3 wins, 11 draws and 1 loss.

Dynamo Kyiv finished the season with more draws than wins...

[Ororo😎 @McFlybowy]

Valeriy Lobanovskyi of Dynamo Kyiv.

If you see a Dynamo Kyiv team that beat Barcelona 7-0 on aggregate across two Champions league team, He was the Coach.

Many People don’t know that man with 30 Trophies he’s the Father of what we do in Modern Football today. Almost Everything we do today came from his system, he was way ahead of his time.

He was a mathematician that treated football like Science. Lobanovskyi is credited for bringing a scientific and analytical approach and strong emphasis on physical fitness and diet to the game. Many people recognized Lobanovskyi as the first person to bring science into football, at the time when most managers used basic attributes in their training process. He brought an accurate system of calculation of the training process and mathematical modeling of physical load for players.

He worked with a fellow Scientist, Anatoly Zelentsov and turned training data into a data driven system, just like we use it now

Think Extensive statistical analysis (shots, passes, tackles, errors, etc.—basically an early version of modern analytics and xG thinking).

He also used Mathematical modelling of physical loads and player performance.

He used Computerised testing for fitness and optimisation.

Tactically, he was a pioneer of Total Football the same one football is gradually evolving to today (around the same time as Rinus Michels in the Netherlands). His teams featured fluid, interchangeable positions any outfield player could take over any role. What made him special was that he believed football was about the collective before the individual. Players weren’t separated into rigid roles. Defenders attacked, attackers pressed, midfielders rotated constantly. His teams played with coordinated pressing and terrifying transitions years before modern gegenpressing became mainstream.

What’s funny is that some of the things we call “modern football” were already visible in Lobanovskyi’s teams:

coordinated pressing
vertical transitions
athletic intensity
positional fluidity
tactical automatisms
collective defending
data-driven preparation

He also built three different world-class Dynamo Kyiv teams a decade or more apart, proving his methods weren’t dependent on one golden generation. He also coached three Ballon d'Or winners Oleh Blokhin, Igor Belanov and Andriy Shevchenko across different Era.

A good way to describe him is this, he helped turn football from a game of improvisation into a game of systems. That’s why coaches, tacticians, and football historians speak about him with enormous respect.

He doesn’t get much mention because he did all these away from the western media spotlight.

[Nebojša Marković @MarkovicNeb]

@cetchingham_ I don't think we missed any chance here, like in '98.

Even if we finished top of the group, we'd play France in the quarters. And considering how chaotic everything was in this squad, there was no way to get any further.

We probably got out of the group because of a good draw.

[Nebojša Marković @MarkovicNeb]

Moments before disaster 🥰

[90s Football @90sfootball]

Yugoslavia, 2000.

[Nebojša Marković @MarkovicNeb]

@cetchingham_ Pure madness.

And everything about Yugoslavia at EURO 2000 was crazy – from team's preparations in Hong Kong, to squad issues behind the scenes, to matches like the ones against Slovenia, Spain and the Netherlands.

[Nebojša Marković @MarkovicNeb]

@cetchingham_ Peak Balkan madness 😅 Difficult to rationally explain what happened in that match, other than just reverting to the local mentality

[Nebojša Marković @MarkovicNeb]

@paul_c_watson Congrats, man! 🫡🙌

[Nebojša Marković @MarkovicNeb]

For those not from Serbia, last night's dramatic Cup final probably went under the radar.

Lots of interesting things happened, on and off the pitch. Check it out 👇

https://t.co/OxEjXihfo4

[Nebojša Marković @MarkovicNeb]

That time when Yugoslavia destroyed England just before the World Cup.

In 1954, it was Hungary who gave them a pre-World Cup warning with a 7–1 trouncing in Budapest.

Four years later, it was Yugoslavia's turn.

Read the latest story in The Belgrader 👉 https://t.co/paIATgHfiE