Mura 05 eye the European spots and Triglav pull another rabbit out of the hat

In round 30 Triglav managed to keep piling points on the board when they won a tight game away to Domžale, the visitors getting the win courtesy of a Nack Patrick Balokog own goal just before the half hour mark. Koper and Celje passed by without any goals, but Olimpija did plenty to help their chances of taking the second spot when they won away at Gorica in a five goal ding-dong. Own goals being the order of the day, Gorica only scored one goal, when Vito Plut scored the fifth of the match on the 80^th minute, Olimpija’s Boban Jovič having chalked one up for the home team when he put the ball into his own net at the beginning of the first half. Over in Prekmurje, Mura proved the top dogs out East when they put three past Nafta without reply in Lendava.

Round 30:

Koper 0:0 Celje

Gorica 2:3 Olimpija

Rudar 0:3 Maribor

Domžale 0:1 Triglav

Nafta 0:3 Mura

Round 31 has already begun, with Olimpija leaving it late to score the only goal in their game at home to Nafta last night. Second half substitute   Filip Valenčič scored his third goal of the season after 84 minutes to seal the win and to put Olimpija eight points clear of third placed Gorica who visit Celje tomorrow. Maribor face bottom club Triglav at home, but the team from Kranj are putting up a good fight at the moment. At the other end of the table, a win for Maribor will see them one agonising point from the title, with five games still play after this round.

For some reason that I can’t quite fathom, round 32 takes place next weekend, but Olimpija play their round 33 fixture this Wednesday when they welcome Triglav to the capital. I imagine Stožice has been booked up by some stadium-rock behemoths on a world tour, or some such non-football nonsense…

Round 31 (all times CET)

Olimpija 1:0 Nafta

Saturday 21^st April

Koper v. Domzale (16:00)

Sunday 22^nd April

Celje v. Gorica  (16:00)

Mura v. Rudar (16:00)

Maribor v. Triglav (17:30)

All Quiet on the Isonzo Front

Apologies to anyone who’s been dropping by only to discover a lack of activity – it’s the winter break in the Prva Liga, so I thought I’d take one too. The next round of games doesn’t kick off for over a month (games will be played on the 3^rd and 4^th of March, weather permitting), but I thought for the sake of the historical record I should put up the results of the last round of matches played all the way back in early December…

Round 21

Maribor 1:0 Rudar Velenje

Celje 0:4 Luka Koper

Triglav Kranj 1:1 Domžale

Mura 05 2:0 Nafta Lendava

Olimpija 1:2 Gorica

Over the break the league looks like this:

Position	Team	Played	Points
1.	Maribor	21	49
2.	HIT Gorica	21	34
3.	Olimpija	21	34
4.	Mura 05	21	32
5.	Rudar	21	30
6.	Luka Koper	21	27
7.	Celje	21	25
8.	Domžale	21	25
9.	Nafta	21	21
10.	Triglav	21	13

So, Maribor are a whopping 15 points ahead at the half way mark – they’re unlikely to give that up, even with a number of departures expected before the end of the transfer window. Triglav look adrift, but the teams at the bottom keep churning out surprising results, in both a negative and a positive sense.

The transfer window closes across Europe on Tuesday night, so we’ll have a round-up of the winter movements. Oh, and today saw Cheltenham Town (the bookies’ favourites for relegation) rise to the top of League 2 in England – thought I should drop that in somewhere…

Maribor hit Brum Note, and Round 13 of the Prva Liga…

The Europa League dished out another defeat to Maribor, who more than just turned up in their home tie against Birmingham City. For UK viewers, the highlights are here (it’s channel 5’s website, not sure if it’s international).  The Slovenian team had some good chances, especially in the first half, but it took some grade-A comedy goal-keeping to allow the Viola to get in front – Colin Doyle’s missed swipe at a backpass allowed Dalibor Volaš to tuck the ball in on the 29 minute mark. In the second half, however, Birmingham came out the stronger. Scottish midfielder Chris Burke levelled the scores with a nice finish in the 64^th minute, before Wade Elliot’s shot squirmed away from Handanovič’s grasp in the 78^th minute to cruelly deny Maribor what might have been a deserved draw. Although the general expectation is that this Europa League campaign is a good way of getting some experience and cash for the team, it’s surely a shame to have missed out on a hard fought point.

Two days later it was back to the Prva Liga. Koper climbed off the bottom thanks to a win over Domžale: Milan Osterc scoring coolly with a lob in the 8^th minute to open the scoring, followed by a goal for Adnan Aganovič on the 33^rd. Mitja Zatkovič’s freekick in the 66^th minute added a goal for Domžale’s account, but it wasn’t enough to prevent Domžale losing 2:1.

Maribor were back to winning ways following their rousing, but ultimately unsuccessful struggle against Birmingham (that match itself following a limp 2:0 defeat to Nafta last weekend), when Triglav Kranj rolled into town. After a goalless first half where both teams had decent chances, Maribor struck through a cinematic diving header starring Etien Velikonja’s bonce (1:29, here). The second goal, bundled in by Marcos Tavares on the 87^th minute was far less worthy of the red carpet.

Nafta carried on the good work from last weekend’s victory over Maribor when they held Olimpija 1:1 in Ljubljana. Roland Polareczki found space that shouldn’t have existed to plant a header from a corner in the 33^rd minute to put the visitors ahead. Not to be outdone, Dalibor Radujko made the most of a variation on that theme to draw the match level on the hour.

Gorica kept the pressure up on Olimpija in second place when they visited Celje. From the highlights it looks like it was one-way traffic until Celje managed to pop one away from a free kick via Togolese centre-back Serge Akakpo’s head on the 29^th minute. Despite the chances that Gorica had, Celje (despite losing Zoran Pavlovič for a second yellow card on the 80^th minute) held on to their lead as the 90^th minute came and went. Just before full time the team numbers were levelled when Miha Mevlja used his elbow in an extra-judicial manner not often seen in peacetime, his marching orders swiftly followed. By that point the match was setting itself up for a coup de grace of the most careless kind. With the warmth of the referee’s breath on his whistle to call time on the encounter, Celje giving the world a masterclass in what happens if your defenders don’t know what to do with loose balls. Twice. Goals in the 92^nd and 94^th minute marked the comeback and snatched the victory for Gorica. Spinning heads all round for the Celje players.

Decent chances were few and far between in the other tie of the round, which saw Mura and Rudar play out a scoreless draw.  Perhaps after two weeks of midweek fixtures on top of the weekend rounds the teams will be glad of the international break, which means just under a fortnight off for the Prva Liga.

The national team return to Euro 2012 qualifying with hopes of a play-off place very much in other people’s hands.  They will have to hope that Serbia lose at home to Italy on Friday before they host the Serbs, a match that they will also need to win.  Even if they do that, they will need to hope that Estonia lose away to Northern Ireland, before the Irish then lose to Italy. It’s a minefield, and one that Slovenia are unfortunately very unlikely to circumnavigate successfully. Time for crossed fingers and Faustian pacts.

Prva Liga, round 13. Ties played on the 2^nd and 3^rd of October:

Koper 2:1 Domžale

Maribor 2:0 Triglav

Celje 1:2 Gorica

Mura 0:0 Rudar

Olimpija 1:1 Nafta

League round up and Respite for Maribor with the return of the Europa League

As last season’s defending champions, Maribor have been enduring a rocky time in the league of late. Score draws against Koper and Gorica in the league had allowed Olimpija to close the gap on them to three points coming into last weekend. Round 11 saw Olimpija make light work of a Koper team that continue to be deeply unimpressive. Scrappy goals from defensive errors and an occasionally befuddled looking Igor Nenezič in Koper’s goal marked out the green dragon’s 3:1 win. In keeping with the day’s theme, poor defending on Olimpija’s part allowed Damir Hadžič to score a laughably soft goal from a corner kick.  The annoyance of missing out on the clean sheet must be tempered somewhat by Dare Vršič adding another couple of goals to his tally to keep him firmly atop the scoring charts. A mere 600 supporters rattling around Stožice perhaps bodes badly for hopes of Olimpija managing to establish themselves as a real force in the Prva Liga, in the short-term at least.  The public of Ljubljana need to be convinced one way or another.

Perhaps the public of Celje have never been convinced. The Arena Petrol has many faults, but you’d hope that more than 500 would take an interest in the team from Slovenia’s third largest city. Especially as they seemed to have learnt how to win of late.  An impressive display against Domžale on Saturday saw Celje run out 3:0 winners. If the highlights are anything to go by, they look far more organised now, and the score could have been much higher. It wasn’t until the second half that they managed to open the scoring with Denis Popovič scoring a classic ‘did he really mean it?’ effort from downtown (2:00 here – Goli Gol would suggest that a clearer cross you’d be hard pushed to find, but it certainly looked good). It’s unsurprising that Celje felt they’d identified a weakness, and had an identical crack straight after.

Following on from the ever-suspiciously round attendance figures, a much healthier 4,500 turned up to the Ljudski Vrt to see table toppers Maribor come unstuck at a formerly hapless Nafta team, the visitors running out 2:0 winners. Opening goal scorer Da Silva is on loan at the Prekmurian team from Maribor, which can’t have gone down amazingly well with his full-time employers. The score line probably flatters Nafta, and Maribor had a fair number of decent chances, but the game was put to bed in the 87^th minute when Stepjan Caban planted a shot that Jasmin Handanovič really should have been equal to. For fans of speculative long range shots, the highlights are here. Elsewhere, Mura beat Goria 1:0 and Triglav and Rudar drew 0:0.

Maribor’s defeat meant that Olimpija joined them at the top of the table on 21 points, and with the Viola not taking part in the midweek fixtures due to their Europa League tie with Birmingham, Olimpija had the chance to take the top spot. Things didn’t exactly go to plan, however, in the 12^th round, when Gorica beat them 2:1 at home. I’m going to pick Stefan Smiljanič’s consolation (2:11 here), as my highlight, for the shear skill involved in heading that kind of goal. Gorica deserve credit nonetheless. Maribor have a game in hand over their closest challengers thanks to their European tie. That game is against Rudar, who can climb up to join Olimpija and Maribor at the top on 21 points if they beat the Viola in the rescheduled match.

Celje continued to turn things around, much in the way Koper continue to languish, when they beat the luckless Primorskan’s 2:1 away. Domžale beat a hard-working but ineffective Triglav Kranj 2:0, with the opening goal a bobbling free kick and the suspicion of off-side from the single camera view (never worth relying on, frankly).  The fourth match of the round saw Nafta and Mura share the spoils of the season’s second Prekmurian derby 2:2.

Tonight sees Maribor able to take their mind off their precarious position on top of the Prva Liga as they return to Europa League action. Their opponents this time are the blue side of Birmingham. Birmingham City also lost their opening Group H match, although they were facing last year’s beaten finalists Braga. With both sides licking their wounds, Maribor (if they’re fans of foolishness) might take some solace in the random connections between Birmingham and the Viola’s previous vanquished British opponents Rangers: recent manager Alex McLeish, winger Chris Burke and former captain Barry Ferguson each have strong links to both clubs. All of which, of course, will have nothing to do with the outcome tonight (unlike the fact that both Birmingham and Rangers play in a similar shade of blue)…

Round 10 and the coming weekend’s action…

The tenth round of games saw little change in the league table and few points being dished out, with 3 of the 5 midweek games ending in draws. Gorica hosted Maribor and both teams took a point each in a one-all draw. Both goals were scored in the second half, with Gorica’s by Vito Plut, making him current joint top-scorer with Olimpija’s Dare Vršič. Olimpija failed to take advantage of Maribor’s dropped points when they drew 0:0 away at Celje. With Koper also sharing a goalless draw with Mura, and Nafta finding a much needed win at Triglav Kranj, Koper, Celje and Nafta now find themselves sharing the bottom spot on 9 points each. The only game of the round that saw any real action was Rudar’s impressive 2:3 away win over Domžale.  The result sees the Velenje club climb up to third, a single point behind Olimpija, who remain three points adrift of table-toppers Maribor.

With the lengthy winter break appearing far in the distance, the games are starting to pile up. This weekend is again followed by a round of midweek fixtures on Tuesday and Wednesday. Today sees the start of round 11, with Celje hoping that a demoralised Domžale team will be coming to visit the Arena Petrol, and Olimpija hosting a Koper team who are also trying to scrape their way off the bottom of the table. Tomorrow’s three matches will see Rudar travelling to Kranj with the intention of keeping the pressure on the top two, Mura welcoming Gorica in what I think could be the game of the round (it’ll be especially interesting to see if Plut can add to his goal tally), and Maribor will look to further strengthen their position at the top of the table when they play a Nafta team hoping to make it two wins out of two.

Prva Liga, round 11:

Saturday 24^th:

Celje v. Domzale

Olimpija v. Koper

Sunday 25^th:

Triglav v. Rudar

Mura v. Gorica

Maribor v. Nafta

Maribor Flat in Flanders & the League at the Quarter Point

Maribor’s Europa League trip to Belgium saw them lose 2-0 to a Club Brugge side that never looked like giving anything away. Goals from Vadis Odjidja and Nabil Dirar settled the tie for the home side before a quarter of the match had been played. A robust tackle from Aleksander Rajčević saw the Maribor player dismissed in the 85^th minute, but in truth Maribor had rarely looked like getting anything from the match. As recently revealed skilled purveyors of knock-out football, the Viola must wish that the old format of the UEFA cup had been retained after the chastening night in Flanders. Five matches of the Group stage remain for them to prove something on this stage; don’t discount a surprise result or two on the way.

The ninth round, and the one quarter played mark of the Prva Liga was played over the weekend.  The returning Maribor side were held to a 2:2 draw with a Koper side seemingly setting up home in the lower reaches of the league table. Raised eyebrows all-round. Nafta’s ‘all-points must go’ summer sale continued as they were beaten at home by Rudar Velenje, leaving them languishing at the bottom and seemingly destined to give up their place as Prekmurje’s representatives to the resilient newcomers Mura.  Mura themselves took three points away to a Celje team that seems unable to ‘get their shizzle together’ this season. Celje drop to eighth, completing the triptych of failure.  Gorica and Triglav shared a goalless draw, while the televised match saw Olimpija beat Domžale 3:1 in the closest this league season will get to a proper derby.  The result sees Olimpija climb back to second, only three points behind Maribor.

Tonight sees Domžale host Rudar, and is televised on Šport TV in Slovenia at 20:00.

Tomorrow’s fixtures:

Celje v. Olimpija (TV 18:00)

Nafta v. Triglav (20:00)

Koper v. Mura (20:00)

Gorica v. Maribor (20:00)

The Slovenian Cup: Losing ‘derby’ in translation…

Continuing Slovene football’s wilful misuse* of the term ‘derby’ (essentially using it to mean any match of note), the Slovene FA’s website is heralding tonight’s game cup game between Koper and Olimpija as a derby. The cities are separated by a distance of 107km, which in Brazil might make a derby, but for a country the size of Wales the term ‘derby’ doesn’t really cut it.  To be fair, the game is the most eye-catching of the round, with the other ties being played this evening featuring Prva Liga teams against lower level opposition and Celje already through to the quarter finals after playing their tie with Triglav Kranj last Tuesday. Celje won the game 1-0.

Koper made it to last year’s semi finals before losing over two legs to Maribor. Olimpija (sponsored by a fruit company called ‘Derby’, just to make everything even more confusing) lost out in the quarter finals to eventual winners Domžale. Maribor’s match with ND Adria is delayed to allow them to go gallivanting off on Europa League duty. Gorica travel up to the Soča valley to play Tolmin, and a non-Prva Liga team is guaranteed to appear in the Quarter finals after Odranci were paired with Interblock Ljubljana.  While the cup doesn’t receive the attention that the league gets, it’s only six games from this point to some silverware and a place in the Europa League qualifiers. With Maribor steaming away at the top of the Prva Liga, several clubs will see the cup as the season’s best opportunity for success.

Result: Triglav  0:1 CM Celje
(Močivnik 11)

Tonight’s games:
MU Šentjur v. Rudar Velenje
Luka Koper v. Olimpija
Tolmin v. HiT Gorica
Garmin Šenčur v. Nafta
Odranci v. Interblock
Zavrč v. Domžale

Postponed: ND Adria v. Maribor

*According to Wikipedia ‘derby’ is acceptable for any big match, bloody Wikipedia…

Round 8: Maribor bounce back in style

Just eight rounds in and Maribor are already pulling away from the rest of the pack. The seven goals served up in the Viola’s 5:2 win against a Celje side that looked promising earlier on demonstrated that it’s not only the Premiership and Serie A getting in on the high-scoring action. Particularly worthy of a mention was Dejan Mezga’s 82^nd minute howitzer (coming straight outta Sensible World of Soccer, circa 1995), which can be found here at about 2:36 into the highlights. The drubbing of Celje, who are having a difficult start to this season, shows just how quickly Maribor have got into their stride, the heavy loss to Olimpija notwithstanding.

The players that form the foundation of the squad have stayed pretty much the same over the past couple of seasons, giving them a familiarity and stability that doesn’t seem to exist elsewhere. By the conclusion of this coming weekend’s round everyone in the Prva Liga will have met each of the other nine teams once, and Maribor are by far the most convincing title challengers. A record of six wins, one draw and one loss is a hell of a statement of intent coming up to the end of the first quarter of the 2011/12 programme.

Domžale have picked up the slack and the top of the table is beginning to have a familiar look to it. The Ravbarji have retaken second place from Olimpija following a straight-forward 2:1 win over bottom of the table Nafta, in a match that promised more goals – Dejan Zadnikar showing Dejan Mezga how it’s really done somewhere around the 40 second mark here. Just when Olimpija were beginning to look like this season’s credible opposition, they managed to capitulate on their away trip to Prekmurje and newly-promoted Mura 05. Although Dare Vršič managed to provide Olimpija’s second in a 4:2 defeat with a header he really shouldn’t have been able to get away with. Excellent timing or poor defending? I’ll give Dare the benefit of the doubt, it’s at 2:20 here.

Elsewhere, Koper recorded their first win of the campaign, a 30 victory away to Triglav Kranj lifting them out of the gutter at Nafta’s expense, and Gorica failed to take advantage of Olimpija’s tumble by losing themselves, 1:0 away to Rudar Velenje.

Thursday sees Maribor travel to Bruges for their first Europa League group stage fixture, more on that nearer the time.