Serbia romped to an emphatic 5-1 victory over Bahrain in a friendly match at the Muharraq Stadium last night, much to the delight of a large contingent of their supporters who nearly filled up an entire enclosure in the main stand.
The margin of victory could have been larger for the visitors, who used this game to acclimatise to Middle Eastern conditions and as a warm-up for the 2022 Fifa World Cup which starts tomorrow. But they will head into their first Group F game against Brazil on Thursday, satisfied with their performance despite having to play without three key players who were nursing injuries but are expected to recover in time for that tough encounter.
They were set on their path to victory by captain Dusan Tadic, who sent the ball curling into the net in the eighth minute after a foul on one of their players had resulted in a free kick from just a few yards outside the Bahraini box.
“Serbia! Serbia!” their supporters chanted as they clapped and cheered their team on.
But, Bahrain, who were playing their fourth international friendly in the last two months, were determined to show one of the best teams in the world that they were ready to compete at the highest level.
Soon enough, their gritty style of play was rewarded when, after midfielder Ali Madan was brought down in the Serbian box by a nasty tackle, star forward Abdullah Yusuf Helal stepped up to take the resulting penalty and calmly sent the ball soaring into the left side of the net while goalkeeper Vanja Milinkovic-Savic dived in the opposite direction.
With the score now 1-1, the Bahraini crowd, which vastly outnumbered their Serbian counterparts, went into a frenzy, singing and clapping endlessly as their team took the fight to the visitors for the rest of the first half.
After it had ended with the score at 1-1, the Serbians appeared to shift a few gears right from the start of the second half.
Suddenly, Bahrain captain and goalkeeper, Sayed Mohamed Jaffar, who had managed to save a couple of shots at goal in the first half, found himself in the thick of the action, again and again, as the Serbians attacked relentlessly.
Soon, the pressure told as Tadic scored again to put Serbia 2-1 ahead in the 50th minute and, a minute later, forward Dusan Vlahovic also managed to put one past Jaffar, to make it 3-1 with just under 40 minutes to go.
Suddenly, the Bahrainis began to make unforced errors and the Serbians tried to capitalise on every opportunity.
Finally, after a number of shots had gone just wide of, or over, the goal, another forward, Filip Duricic got the better of Jaffar and the score read 4-1 in the 87th minute.
But the Serbians weren’t finished yet.
With just a minute to go till full-time, forward Luka Jovic pounced on a pass inside the Bahrain box and tapped it over the diving Jaffar to make it 5-1 and the Serbian supporters became ecstatic.
Although most of them live and work in Bahrain and had turned out to watch their national team in action, a few had travelled from other countries as well.
“My wife and I have come specially from Dubai for this game,” Dr Marko Selakovic, a Serbian chamber of commerce official based in the UAE, told the GDN. “I went to the 2018 World Cup in Russia and I plan to go to this World Cup too, but only from the quarter-finals onwards, because I expect Serbia to reach the last-eight stage and go further!”
Meanwhile, Yelena, a Serbian fitness trainer who lives in Bahrain, told the GDN before the match that she was very excited to see her national team in action.
“And I want to see them win!” she exclaimed.
“And Emma, here, is Bahraini and she’s going to be supporting Serbia too!” Yelena added, grinning as she pointed to another young woman standing next to her.
“I’m here to support Bahrain,” Emma said, laughing along with her friend. “But, just for tonight, I’ll support Serbia too. I’ll support both teams!”