Here at In The Mixer we thought we would give you the inside track on some of the teams that you may not know inside out. Rather than focusing on the big teams full of English-based players we have chosen to pick some of the more obscure teams, whose top players you would struggle to name… or even pronounce.

FIFA Ranking: 21

Nickname: Golden Lillies

Manager: Safet Susic

Captain: Emir Spahic (Bayer Leverkusen)

Top Goalscorer: Edin Dzeko (35)

Kit:

A Brief History

Formerly playing as part of Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s first games as an independent team were in March of 1993 against Genk and Kaiserslauten. Becoming an official member of FIFA in 1996 (following the end of the Bosnian war), Bosnia and Herzegovina have never qualified for an international tournament. They made the playoffs for both World Cup 2010 and Euro 2012, losing on both occasions to Portugal. However they made light work of qualification for Brazil 2014, finishing top of their group by virtue of a superior goal difference over second placed Greece.

Brazil 2014

Drawn against Argentina, Iran and Nigeria, Susic’s team have a fantastic chance to qualify from group F. With Iran set to be the group whipping boys it will come down to a direct shootout between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Nigeria as to who qualifies in second place. Although reaching the quarter finals may be a challenge, however they finish in Brazil will be an achievement for a nation with a population less than London (only four million). Based in Sao Paolo throughout the competition their preparations for the World Cup have gone well having won 1-0 against Mexico and beating Ivory Coast 2-1 courtesy of an Edin Dzeko double.

Players

The squad of 23 named for the competition ply their trade in various domestic leagues, with five players based in Turkey and seven players playing in the German leagues. The two most familiar names for readers in England will be goalkeeper Asmir Begovic and talisman Edin Dzeko. The Manchester City striker has 35 goals in 62 games, and was second only to Robin van Persie in the goalscoring charts throughout the qualifying campaign. Dzeko will likely be targeted by opposition defenders, which works well for Bosnia and Herzegovina as it diverts much attention from arguably their most naturally gifted player Miralem Pjanic.

The 24 year old Roma midfielder is technically gifted and will be the fulcrum around which the team operates. Pjanic moved to Luxembourg with his family as war broke out in Bosnia, and represented the country at U-17 and U-19 levels before committing his international future to the country of his birth in 2008. We fully expect Pjanic to come of age at this tournament, and could well be the catalyst for his team to progress to the latter stages of the competition.