Katastrofa: Ibišević injured

This is a post I really hoped I wouldn’t have to write. If you’re reading this blog, you probably already know the gist of it: Vedad Ibišević, our star striker and Bundesliga scoring leader, tore his ACL during a training match against HSV. The general consensus seems to be that he’ll be out for 4-6 months, and that this season is effectively over for him. Like any fan of Bosnian football, the news leaves me very saddened. I wish Vedo all the best in the recovery process, and hope that he can pick up where he left off whenever he manages to get through it.

For most people, the impact this has on the Bosnian national team is not the most important issue here. For what it’s worth, however, I don’t feel it will be as crushing as some Bosnian media are already speculating. I’d never argue that the loss of Vedad – a striker who was just starting to live up to expectations on the international level – won’t have an impact. We’ll never know how much damage the rising combo of Džeko-Ibišević could have inflicted on Belgium in the upcoming qualifying match. Fortunately, the forwards have been far and away the strongest part of our teams, and Zlatan Muslimović is about as strong a replacement as you can ask for; this is the same man who’s scored 12 goals in 16 international caps, 3 of which came in a 2006 friendly against Croatia – Belgium shouldn’t be breathing any easier.

The real tragedy here is Ibišević’s career itself. No player deserves such an awful injury, but it seems particularly unjust for the man with one of the most feel-good stories in European football. This is a fall of epic proportions, and to put it in perspective you should know that just a few days earlier he received the first annual award for Bosnian player of the year. The award is technically called “Idol nacije,” which literally translates to “National Idol,” and it describes the status Ibišević has enjoyed perfectly. Bosnian football hasn’t had the best of luck in its troubled post-war history, and Ibišević’s meteoric rise captured the imagination of a nation that hasn’t really had much to celebrate in recent years.

We followed and cheered along with every one of those 18 goals in an incredible ride that none of us will soon forget. Ibišević was the architect behind one of the greatest Cinderella stories in recent memory, and Bosnia basked in the attention that was suddenly given to one of our own. The game against Bayern maybe didn’t end the way I would’ve liked, but I remember it fondly as perhaps the first time I saw the whole former Yugoslavia united behind a footballing cause. Serbian commentator Marjan Mijajlović’s ecstatic “Raduj se Bosno što imaš Vedada Ibiševića!” (”Be happy, Bosnia, that you have Vead Ibišević!” at 0:34 below) seems destined to go down as one of those great cult pieces of commentary that people will recall for years to come (a Yugoslavian “Oh you beauty!” if you will). At the time, however, I thought it would simply mark the early rise of a player whose best was yet to come. How sad that it now just seems set to mark yet another in Bosnian football’s long line of “could-have-beens.”