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It's just been announced that Cardiff City are entering into some form of agreement with Sarajevo.

This is being headed by Vincent Tan, who, as I've mentioned before on here, has been involved in some pretty odd dealings in the country (one, in 2007 or 08, involved a real estate company being formed, and then him buying it 3 days later for €8,000-ish. He's also been promising a mega-resort here since 2006 on a huge swathe of land he apparently bought, and has mooted the idea of a private airport, focusing on low-cost airlines, to rival the nationalised airport in Sarajevo, which has limitations due to runway length).

I don't know what this'll mean in the long run; Cardiff fans are speculating it'll be like the Rags' agreement with Antwerp, but the whole point of that was to get non-EU players EU work permits. As BiH isn't in the EU, there's no potential for that, and the last time a Brit played in Bosnia, it didn't end well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Wood.

Watch this space...

Speculative stuff as the former Yugoslavian states finally emerge from the war. Croatia just joined the EU and BiH lined up.

Loads of opportunity but backing winners is hard. Have to say that kids there work harder than kids here. Same for adults too. Politics are everywhere. You dont take things for granted after a war so it could come good for Cardiff.

spiny wrote:Speculative stuff as the former Yugoslavian states finally emerge from the war. Croatia just joined the EU and BiH lined up.

Loads of opportunity but backing winners is hard. Have to say that kids there work harder than kids here. Same for adults too. Politics are everywhere. You dont take things for granted after a war so it could come good for Cardiff.

If 'Football Manager' is to be believed, players only need two years in Croatia to be classed as European (compared to 3 in Belgium) - linking with a Croatian/Bosnian club is a good move for a team with ambitions.

Dameerto wrote:

spiny wrote:Speculative stuff as the former Yugoslavian states finally emerge from the war. Croatia just joined the EU and BiH lined up.

Loads of opportunity but backing winners is hard. Have to say that kids there work harder than kids here. Same for adults too. Politics are everywhere. You dont take things for granted after a war so it could come good for Cardiff.

If 'Football Manager' is to be believed, players only need two years in Croatia to be classed as European (compared to 3 in Belgium) - linking with a Croatian/Bosnian club is a good move for a team with ambitions.

Croatia and Bosnia are two different countries. Croatia is in the EU, Bosnia is not, and has not even applied to join the EU yet. It took Croatia 10 years to join after application, and was less infrastructurally affected by the Yugoslav wars, had less (although still a significant) problem with corruption and has a less complex and wasteful political system - all problems to overcome for Bosnia, on top of all the 'fiddly' EU bits, such as agricultural reform. Although there is a motion to 'fast track' Bosnia's EU accession, particularly as Serbia is now an Official Candidate as of 18 months ago, it is far more likely that neighbouring countries will be staggered in their joining, so as not to leave Bosnia & Herzegovina as an enclave surrounded by the EU.

I will happily bet that all of the players currently in our EDS Squad will have hung up their boots before BiH joins the EU, if it still exists, so I don't see it as a good speculation, more as a very, very strange move by a man who has made many other very, very strange moves in this country before.

BlueinBosnia wrote:

Dameerto wrote:

spiny wrote:Speculative stuff as the former Yugoslavian states finally emerge from the war. Croatia just joined the EU and BiH lined up.

Loads of opportunity but backing winners is hard. Have to say that kids there work harder than kids here. Same for adults too. Politics are everywhere. You dont take things for granted after a war so it could come good for Cardiff.

If 'Football Manager' is to be believed, players only need two years in Croatia to be classed as European (compared to 3 in Belgium) - linking with a Croatian/Bosnian club is a good move for a team with ambitions.

Croatia and Bosnia are two different countries. Croatia is in the EU, Bosnia is not, and has not even applied to join the EU yet. It took Croatia 10 years to join after application, and was less infrastructurally affected by the Yugoslav wars, had less (although still a significant) problem with corruption and has a less complex and wasteful political system - all problems to overcome for Bosnia, on top of all the 'fiddly' EU bits, such as agricultural reform. Although there is a motion to 'fast track' Bosnia's EU accession, particularly as Serbia is now an Official Candidate as of 18 months ago, it is far more likely that neighbouring countries will be staggered in their joining, so as not to leave Bosnia & Herzegovina as an enclave surrounded by the EU.

I will happily bet that all of the players currently in our EDS Squad will have hung up their boots before BiH joins the EU, if it still exists, so I don't see it as a good speculation, more as a very, very strange move by a man who has made many other very, very strange moves in this country before.

Wait wait wait, back it up a sec.

Croatia and Bosnia are two different countries?

Slim wrote:
Wait wait wait, back it up a sec.

Croatia and Bosnia are two different countries?

You must have been a very busy man during the nineties.
(I had to go back and edit my post - I mistakenly thought Sarajevo was in Croatia earlier - sorry to all our Bosnian or Croatian members)

They'll need to clear up those 2 million anti-personnel mines in the forests before I go for a hillside stroll around Sarajevo.

john@staustell wrote:They'll need to clear up those 2 million anti-personnel mines in the forests before I go for a hillside stroll around Sarajevo.

It's nowhere near as bad as it was 5 or 6 years ago, actually. Huge swathes of land have been cleared around where I used to live, and the remaining mines are predominantly in thick forests - the kind of places you wouldn't go in any country - and around formerly-besieged cities, mainly on mountainsides. I think the country aimed to be landmine free by 2020, but has now down-estimated to 2016. Although saying that, I know of 2 children to have been killed by landmines this year, one in the suburbs of Sarajevo about a month ago.