Super Eagles of Nigeria will on Tuesday engage fellow World Cup bound European Nation, Serbia in an International Friendly at the Hive Stadium in London, United Kingdom.
Serbia has produced quite a number of notable names in World Football and has a healthy football history.
In this post, brila.net brings you five interesting things need to know about the Serbia National team.
1, Serbia played her first World cup as an independent nation at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Winning only their opening game against Germany, Serbia lost the other 2 group games and crashed out of the group stages.
Serbia has previously played at the World Cup while part of defunct Yugoslavia and in 2006 as Serbia and Montenegro.
2, Serbia has a bulk of notable players in their ranks. Serbia has produced the likes of Nemanja Matic, Nemanja Vidic, Branislav Ivanovic, Duran Tadic, Adem Ljajic. Roma wing back and former Manchester City man, Aleksander Kolarov is the current team captain and UCL winner Dejan Stankovic is the country’s most capped player with 103 appearances.3, Super Eagles opponent at the World Cup, Croatia is Serbia’s fierce rivals. Especially off the pitch, both countries are at loggerheads politically. They were part of defunct Yugoslavia and a war between the two nations led to the dissolution.
4, Serbia who missed the 2014 World Cup qualified for this year’s edition after topping Group D of Euro qualifying series for the World Cup with 21 points, 2 points ahead of second-placed Republic of Ireland.
Serbia is drawn in Group E alongside Brazil, Switzerland and Costa Rica.
5, Serbia are ranked in number 34 in the world as of March 15th, 2018 FIFA rankings.
Following the latest rankings, Serbia is 18 places above the Super Eagles (52) who defeated Poland (6) on Friday.
Bonus: The Serbia National team is nicknamed “Orlovi” which means “Eagles”. So it would be the Super Eagles vs the Eagles on Tuesday.