Greenhorns of this year’s cups: Modric kicked for Zrinjski Mostar in his youth, waited almost a century for the first league

Klaksvík is the first Faroese participant in the European Cups, but the historic achievement is also celebrated in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Zrinjski Mostar, who let 19-year-old Luka Modric take a peek at big-time football, will play in the Conference League.

Zrinjski Mostar is Bosnia’s oldest football club, founded in 1905. Influential Mostar residents wanted to introduce a sports association called Hrvatski sokol as early as 1896, but the club was not yet approved at that time.

For many years the club operated as an amateur association. It did not play in the professional Yugoslav league and was banned several times before and after the First World War and could not play. In order for its players to play, Mostar had to join with other working-class teams.

It was fatal for Zrinjski when during World War II it decided to participate in the league under the puppet state of “Independent Croatia”. After 1945, all clubs from this league were banned in Yugoslavia.

Zrinjski disappeared from the football map for 46 years, the club was reformed only with the formation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992. The new state meant a chance to succeed on the top stage, with Mostar reaching the top league in 2000.

At the same time, the following season they played European Cup qualifiers for the first time in the club’s history. In the first preliminary round of the Intertoto Cup (not known as today’s Conference League), they fell to Sweden’s Vastra Frolunda.

Since then, he’s been on a steep upward climb. In 2003 the club was financially lifted by a new board, the following year Luka Modric was a guest here. Two years later, Mostar celebrated its first league title.

It now has eight Bosnian league trophies to its credit. This year’s one took it all the way to the Europa Conference group stage. Along the way, it knocked out Armenia’s Urartu and Iceland’s Breidablik. He was relegated from the Champions League to the third power competition after losses to Slovan Bratislava and LASK Linz.

The historic achievement is further enhanced by the fact that this is the first time any team from Bosnia has qualified for a cup group. And the competition will be tough indeed – Unaie Emery’s Aston Villa, last year’s semi-finalists AZ Alkmaar and Legia Warsaw.

Source: Zrinjski Mostar