They have been their country’s most celebrated outfield players for, well, almost long as Bosnia and Herzegovina has had a competitive national football team to represent its young nation.
On Sunday, in Greece, Edin Dzeko and Miralem Pjanic hope once again to show that their individual qualities can dovetail effectively in the service of their country.
For Dzeko, a major milestone is within touching distance. One more goal and the forward will have 50 in international football.
He will win his 83rd cap on Sunday. By any standards, that is a fine ratio of goals per game. By the standards of a small country, who have been taking part in international competitions for only two decades, it is excellent. In his home country, Dzeko has been a pathfinder, as well as a formidable penalty box predator.
In club football, where he has commanded high transfer fees and achieved significant medals, Dzeko’s reputation is high, but perhaps just a little short of the very top rung in the hierarchy of great 21st century marksmen.
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Dzeko was devastating as a young striker in Germany, and hugely influential in propelling Wolfsburg to an unlikely Bundesliga title in 2009.
When that persuaded Manchester City to spend over €35 million (Dh139.5m) on him in 2011, he seemed to have entered a new stratosphere.
He would win two Premier Leagues with City, score 50 goals in his 130 appearances there but while there were periods of electric form, there were also droughts, not least a run of 15 matches without a goal in the 2014/15 season.
He could look detached from his midfield at times, fine target man though he is. City loaned him to Roma in the summer of 2015, with a clause in the contract that the move should become permanent a year later.
At Roma, Dzeko has enjoyed more security of his first-team starting place; and, better still, he had a long-time alibi.
Pjanic, his compatriot, had been with the club from the Italian capital for four years, Roma having made the delicate midfielder who had emerged as a potential star — and French Ligue 1 champion — at Lyon an important creative fulcrum, a precision passer, a superb executor of free-kicks and corners.
Pjanic, four years Dzeko’s junior at 26, has been a senior Bosnia international alongside Dzeko since he was 18. He has been the leading provider of assists in Serie A for the past two seasons.
Dzeko the poacher plus Pjanic the provider, two men speaking the same language, well rehearsed at international level in each other’s movements and talents: Roma should have celebrated a great marriage of talents, of the two players who had done as much as any to guide Bosnia towards a first major tournament, the 2014 World Cup, and endorse the country’s calibre.
“They are the two idols of our country’s football,” says Tino-Sven Susic, the Bosnia midfielder. Yet as fellow Romans, they sometimes seemed strangers. After an exhilarating start to the season of Dzeko-and-Pjanic in tandem, Roma stalled. Dzeko’s goals ran dry. His form spluttered through the winter and spring.
Pjanic outscored him, with 10 goals in the league season, to Dzeko’s eight. And, remarkably, only once in the entire campaign did a Pjanic pass lead directly to a Dzeko goal.
When Pjanic was lured to Juventus last summer, consensus in the capital was that Roma had lost the wrong Bosnian.
Yet since then, Dzeko, orphaned of Pjanic’s through-balls and crosses, has rediscovered his mojo. He currently leads the Serie A scoring list, and has scored eight of his 10 goals this season for Roma since the beginning of October.
Pjanic has yet to fully tune in with Juventus, who see him as their new Andrea Pirlo, although he has had his moments.
The partnership, the pairing that never quite clicked at Roma, has flourished since Pjanic and Dzeko ceased to be club colleagues.
For Bosnia, who could join Greece on nine points with a win on Sunday, and aim to leapfrog the Greeks into at least second place in a group led by Belgium, the duo have lately looked again the perfect pairing. Dzeko, who has three goals from three qualifiers so far, scored twice in the win against Cyprus last month.
Naturally, it was the trusty Pjanic who set up both goals.
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