Miralem Pjanic and Bosnia-Herzegovina's World Cup Vision

A quarter of the way through Bosnia’s World Cup qualifier at home to Lithuania, nothing much was happening. Bosnia-Herzegovina, having expected to win comfortably, were becoming frustrated, and Lithuania were beginning to pose a threat with their aerial strength. Then Miralem Pjanic took control. The first sign that something was brewing came as he took down a ball on his chest on the right touchline, and swept a pass across the entire width of the pitch to Senad Lulic on the far left, a moment of extraordinary vision and skill.

A couple of minutes later, Pjanic made an angled dart across the pitch and slipped a reverse pass through for Vedad Ibisevic to smash in the opener. Then Pjanic advanced down the right and his cross was deflected for Edin Dzeko to add a second. Before half-time, it was 3-0, Dzeko holding the ball up and knocking it across goal for Pjanic to score with a smart volley. In quarter of an hour, Bosnia had gone from frustration to certain victory, Pjanic scoring one and setting up two. That was his victory and this was indicative of his importance to Bosnia. It may be Dzeko who captures most of the headlines, with his goalscoring and his leadership, but Pjanic is just as vital in terms of creating the play. The 24-year-old has just signed a new contract with Roma, and it’s easy to understand why the club were so keen to get him to commit to a new deal before the World Cup.

Pjanic was born in Bosnia, where his father, Fahrudin, was also a professional footballer, playing in the Yugoslav third division for Drina Zvornik. As the war approached, he received an offer to go to Luxembourg and play semi-professionally, working by day and training in the evenings. “Today, people say that no one dreamed there would be the war in Bosnia,” he said. “But for me it was quite clear what would happen in Yugoslavia. Playing third division games in small towns you saw everything and felt everything: hatred, violence, threats. I knew there would be riots and so I decided to leave.”

Drina, though, held Fahrudin’s registration, and were reluctant to let him leave. Desperate, Pjanic’s mother, Fatima, went to the club to beg them to hand over her husband’s papers, taking the baby Miralem with her. “A child is a child,” she said, “and when he felt that I was upset he started to cry. Only then did the secretary of the club give us the documents. I doubt that we would ever got out of there if Miralem had been silent at that moment.”

In Luxembourg, Fahrudin began to take his son to watch him play. “The ball entered his blood,” he said. “It went along with me and the rain and the sun. It was natural for him. When he was six or seven years old I realized what a talent he had, but I never believed that he could play for a club like Lyon.”

Initially Pjanic joined Metz, just over the border in France. He helped them to the French youth championship at the age of 16, while playing internationally for Luxembourg’s Under-17 team. He is almost certainly the best player ever to have represented Luxembourg. France also wanted him, but when the time came to choose, Pjanic opted for Bosnia. He soon outgrew Metz, too, and at 18 rejected offers from Barcelona, Internazionale, Schalke 04 and Bayern Munich to join Lyon. He spent three years there, helping Lyon to second in Ligue 1 in 2010 before moving to Roma in 2011. It took him a little while to settle, but he was a consistent performer this season and was one of the main reasons Roma started the campaign so well and ended up finishing second.

In many ways Pjanic is the typical modern Bosnian player. This national side is the team of the diaspora, of those whose families fled the war. The goalkeeper Asmir Begovic was raised in Canada, the attacking midfielder Zvjezdan Misimovic was born in Germany, the forward Vedad Ibisevic played college soccer for Saint Louis in the United States. The holding midfielder, Haris Medanjunin, fled to the Netherlands with his mother; his father stayed behind and was killed.

Shortly after the war, the family returned to Bosnia to visit friends and relatives. The journey took 12 hours and, according to Fahrudin, Mirlem played with a ball the whole way there. “We arrived late at night, and at six in the morning my father woke me,” said Fahrudin. “He said he could hear something banging in the garage, and that it was maybe a burglar. So we went down and we saw how Miralem played with a ball. I knew then he would be a player.”

Pjanic insists he always felt Bosnian, that his intention was always to return to play for them– and it’s true he had made that clear in interviews long before he was called up. His love for his homeland was exemplified last week when he bought out an entire pharmacy in Sarajevo and donated the drugs to the relief effort for victims of the severe flooding in the country. 

The irony is that Pjanic is more representative of the typical Bosnian style than Dzeko, the player who remained behind, living in Sarajevo through the siege. Dzeko was initially mocked for his awkwardness, his abilities as a target man recognized only after held moved to the Czech Republic. Pjanic, though, is classically Bosnian, all quick feet and neat technical ability.

Although he operates predominantly on the right, he is adept at cutting infield and effectively has a playmaking role. But then so too does Misimovic. And there are two forwards. Plus Lulic, a fairly orthodox winger. It doesn’t take much to see why Bosnia were the top-scorers in Europe in qualifying, or why there are such concerns over their defensive capabilities. But that’s the players they have: they don’t have the luxury of picking players to fit a system. Their only way of playing is to attack; their only way of defending to hold the ball, which is where Pjanic’s ability is so key.

And beyond tactics, there is a sense of Bosnia playing on the excitement of being debutants, their squad bonded first by memories of the war and then by thoughts of doing something for the victims of the flooding. “I can’t wait for the World Cup to start,” said Pjanic. “I think only about it. We need to prepare and be in a good atmosphere to go to Brazil. If that’s the case, I believe that we can achieve the goal and to qualify for the second round of the World Cup."