Bosnians will not be dark horses to Beslija

MIRSAD BESLIJA could provide his greatest service yet to Hearts should Bosnian champions Siroki Brijeg progress to meet the Edinburgh club in the second qualifying round of the Champions League.

Beslija has been ineffective at best on the field since his club record £800,000 move from Racing Genk in January, which has prompted Vladimir Romanov to offer the winger back to the Belgian club whilst refusing to pay an outstanding amount of £640,000 from the transfer.

With Genk lodging an official complaint with FIFA this week over the missing payment, Beslija could yet prove useful to Hearts by providing inside knowledge on his countrymen from the small Bosnian town on the Listica river, 60 miles outside Sarajevo.

Siroki Brijeg, who play out of the 10,000-capacity Pecara Stadium, were seeds in yesterday's draw for Champions League qualifying rounds one and two in Nyon after securing the Bosnian title last month. They were paired with the Belarussian title winners Shakhtyor Soligorsk in the first qualifier, and those matches will take place on July 11/12 and 18/19. The winners will then meet Hearts.

Should Siroki Brijeg justify their seeding and eliminate their opponents, Beslija can expect to become a critical font of knowledge for Hearts on a previously unheard of side. The winger left his homeland five years ago to join Genk whilst still a teenager, but former Hearts manager Craig Levein, who oversaw the defeat of NK Zeljeznicar of Sarajevo three years ago in the UEFA Cup, believes Beslija's information will be crucial.

"He will have a good idea of the standard of football over there even though he hasn't played there for some time," said Levein. "It's not that long ago that the war was raging over there and I think they were still recovering from that when we were in Sarajevo.

"There were still a lot remnants of the conflict, like bullet holes in buildings and things like that. That served to make it look a little more harrowing and you could just imagine what it must have been like for the people living there during the war.

"They still had to catch up and were starved of proper infrastructure. There were some new companies emerging and a couple of new factories being built but they were still a bit behind. The football facilities weren't great either.

"We didn't play in Zeljeznicar's own stadium because it wasn't fit for UEFA Cup football. It was the national stadium we played in and even that was pretty basic."

Siroki Brijeg's head coach, Ivica Barbaric, commands a talented if modest squad, none of whom are internationalists. Their most reputable players are the Cameroonian William Etshu Tabi and Brazilian striker Celson Ricardo Borges de Jesus.

Shakhtyor Soligorsk are already adversaries of Hearts in a sense after winning the Belarussian Premier League for the first time last year ahead of MTZ Ripo, who are heavily financed by Tynecastle's majority shareholder Vladimir Romanov.

Should they eliminate Siroki Brijeg in the first qualifying round, head coach Vadim Filipovich will be afforded yet more adulation after going down in history for leading his emerging side to the title in a league that runs from April to November.

However, the surroundings in Belarus are likely to be far less imposing for the Hearts squad compared with those in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Shakhtyor's stadium is named after the club like most in the former Soviet Union, but has capacity of just over 5000.

Defender and captain Alexander Yurevich, 26, is a Belarussian internationalist, who played for his country in their recent 2-1 win over England's B side. Yurevich has played more games for Shakhtyor than anyone else, making their distinctive black and yellow shirt his own. Striker Alexander Klimenk, 23, would be the principle danger to Hearts after scoring 15 goals last season.

Shakhtyor's record European result was achieved just three years ago with a 7-1 thrashing of the Northern Irish side Omagh Town in the InterToto Cup. The Belarussians won only 1-0 at home but rampaged to a resounding 7-1 victory in Ireland for an 8-1 aggregate score.

Until now they have never been involved at Champions League level, and their previous forays into the UEFA Cup have brought them only misery with two qualifying-round exits in 2001 and 2004.

Taken from the Scotsman