The World Cup is great for surfacing fun facts. Here's one that might shock your ears as you watch Bosnia-Herzegovina play its first group-stage game on Friday: The team's coach, Sergej Barbarez, is 54 years old and working his first job as a manager. Also, he was most recently a professional poker player.
Don't worry, Barbarez does actually know a thing or two about soccer. He played professionally for 14 years, and was no slouch. He spent most of his professional career in the Bundesliga, where he scored 105 goals in 377 appearances. From 2004 to 2006, he was captain of Bosnia-Herzegovina's national team, and acquired his coaching license a few years after retiring in 2008. That's around when he started playing cards professionally. According to Cardplayer.com, between 2010 and 2022 he won $143,628 in 26 games. He doesn't have any recorded tournament wins, but he did make it to two final tables in the World Series of Poker. Throughout his time as a poker player, Barbarez enjoyed something approaching national icon status, and remained an outspoken critic of the Football Association of Bosnia and Herzegovina's governance decisions.
In 2021, Vico Zeljkovic became president of the association and helped throw the team into chaos. Zeljkovic oversaw a rapid succession of managers, three of whom were hired and fired months apart as the team failed to qualify for the 2024 Euros. Fans criticized the FA's leadership, including the 2022 decision to schedule friendlies with Russia right after it had invaded Ukraine and was banned FIFA and UEFA competitions. One of the loudest critics of the FA was Barbarez, so it was something of a shock when he was announced as the national team manager.
Barbarez's hiring has been generally popular with Bosnians, even if he's been involved in some public dustups, like when he accused Brondby manager and Welshman Steve Cooper of dropping Bosnian player Benjamin Tahirovic to help Wales's World Cup bid. In a news conference, Barbarez said, "I don't think I should apologize for anything."
The most important thing is that Barbarez has the national team standing on two feet again. Bosnia-Herzegovina qualified for its first World Cup in 2014, and seemed to have a bright future ahead of it at the time. It's been 12 long years in the wilderness, but Barbarez quickly pulled this squad out of the muck to get it back into the World Cup field. Perhaps no other team in the tournament is afforded as much pride just for making it this far, since doing so required knocking out both Italy and Wales in qualification playoff games, both of which Barbarez's boys won on penalty shootouts.
When Barbarez was hired in April 2024, he said that his goal was to qualify for the Euros in 2028. Beyond that, he said all he wanted was his players to feel proud when wearing the national team colors. It's smart for a manger walking into such a tumultuous situation to set expectations relatively low, and so far he could not have exceeded them any further. Barring a truly disastrous showing in the group stage, Barbarez has already earned himself a long tenure at the helm. It's just too bad it took the FA so long to find him.
