Had Edin Dzeko played for a major football nation, this would not have been his second appearance in the tournament. But 12 years after Bosnia-Herzegovina failed to get out of the group stage in Brazil, the now 40-year-old striker and his country are back on the game’s biggest stage.
Although Bosnia-Herzegovina, which gained its independence in 1992, only made one previous World Cup appearance and never qualified for a European Championship, Dzeko has played an incredible 148 times for his country (scoring 73 goals).
growing up in a defeated capital
That independence came at a heavy price, as it became embroiled in one of the wars that followed the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia. The capital, Zaragoza, was particularly badly hit, enduring a siege that lasted nearly four years by the Yugoslavian National Army and the newly formed Bosnian-Serb Army, which occupied the mountains surrounding the city. Between 1992 and 1995 more than 10,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed by shelling and snipers in Bosnia and Herzegovina alone.
Dzeko was six years old when he was kidnapped and during the siege, kicking a ball through the streets of the increasingly battered capital was a welcome distraction.
“Our house was destroyed, so we had to live there with my grandparents. The whole family lived there under one roof, maybe 15 people in an apartment of 35 square metres,” Jecko told the British newspaper The Mail in 2011 about his experience of the war.
“It was a constant state of stress and worry, if something happened or news came that someone we knew had been killed. I was only young, and I would often cry out of fear. Every day, you could hear guns being fired, and we lost family, friends, and even some relatives.”
from sarajevo to wolfsburg and beyond
He would continue his development in the academy of FK Zeleznikar, one of the two big clubs in the city. It was here that he made his debut as a professional in Bosnia-Herzegovina’s topflight in 2003, but it would be the beginning of the end of his career in his homeland. His first coach, who was Czech, convinced FK Teplice to sign him two years later for a reported €25,000 ($28,870).
There, he attracted the attention of German coach Felix Magath, who brought Dzeko to Wolfsburg in the summer of 2007, the same year he made his debut for the senior national team for Bosnia-Herzegovina. It was in Wolfsburg that he flourished. With Graphite, he was one of the most prolific striking duo in Bundesliga history, scoring a total of 54 goals (28 for Graphite, 26 for Dzeko) as the pair led the club to its only league title in 2009.
By then, the “Bosnian Diamond”, as he was dubbed by a local broadcaster, was coveted by top clubs across Europe. He won titles at Manchester City and Inter, while also enjoying successful spells at Roma and Fenerbahce before returning to Italy’s Serie A with Fiorentina last season. By then he had scored 369 goals in 856 games in all competitions for his various clubs.
returning to germany
At the age of 39, having scored only one goal in five Conference League matches for Fiorentina, and not scoring a single goal in 11 Serie A matches, it looked as if his long career was coming to an end. In December, a disappointed Dzeko started looking for a new club – a club where he would get regular minutes again.
This came at the same time as second-tier German team Schalke were looking to boost their chances of gaining promotion back to the top spot. His Bosnian-born coach, Miron Muslic, who had fled the war with his parents as a child, could not believe his luck when he learned that Dzeko was prepared to take a large pay cut to play in a lower league. In fact, Dzeko was so eager to play that he turned down Schalke’s offer to send a plane for him, even though he had already booked a commercial flight to Germany.
Just a few days after his arrival, Dzeko switched back to his familiar blue and white, which are the traditional colors of not only Schalke, but also his first club, Zheleznikar, and the Bosnian national team. Coming on as a sub, he scored the first of his six goals in the second half of the season as he helped Schalke to promotion just weeks after his 40th birthday.
“I have won many titles during my career. But I have never before celebrated like we celebrated here at Schalke,” Dzeko later told the club’s website. “I said from day one that Schalke belongs in the Bundesliga.”
A ‘great few months’
All the while, Dzeko remained captain of the national team, determined to make another World Cup appearance – a proposition that looked extremely unlikely when another Bosnian legend, Sergej Barbarez, took over as coach of “The Dragons” in April 2024. Not much was expected from Barberez, considering the fact that although he had completed his coaching badges years earlier, he had no experience at all in the role.
But Barbarez, an influential Bundesliga striker in his own right in the 1990s and 2000s, had a way of inspiring a predominantly young Bosnian team to the kind of success they had not seen in more than a decade, upsetting Italy in a playoff to qualify for the North American World Cup. Dzeko was a big part of the campaign.
“I wanted to help get the club (Schalke) back to where it belongs,” he said. “The fact that I have also qualified for the World Cup with the Bosnia and Herzegovina national team has made the last few months great. I have made absolutely the right decision.”
Edin Dzeko seems to have made a habit of making the right choices throughout his long career. It turns out to be a feel-good story to see them make it to the last World Cup, having largely made headlines for the wrong reasons in the tournament.
Edited by: Jonathan Harding