Stojkovic: 'I believe in the play-off, but the odds are against us'
After the home defeat to Albania in Leskovac, the Serbia football national team can only reach the World Cup via the play-off through their Nations League placement.
In Leskovac, on May 17, after the 1-0 defeat to Albania, head coach Dragan Stojkovic Piksi in the tunnel exchanged two quiet words with Sergej Milinkovic-Savic. Nobody heard them, but reporters on the spot noticed that captain Sergej afterwards spent close to ten minutes alone in the dressing room. Those two scenes, taken together, say how much the mood in the camp dropped after the defeat. Serbia at the same moment lost the main control over its own qualifying fate.
Serbia’s qualification for the 2026 World Cup is no longer in their hands, according to nova.rs, after the seventh round of qualifiers. In Group K, which together with Serbia gathers England, Albania, Latvia and Andorra, the national team trails England by six points and Albania by three, with three rounds still to play.
What is the theory of the play-off via the Nations League?
Serbia still has a chance to grab a play-off place for the 2026 World Cup thanks to its Nations League position, according to the nova.rs report. That route is highly uncertain because it requires several interlinked conditions to be met, above all the combination of Serbia not qualifying through the group stage and another team from its Nations League group not securing direct qualification, which would open up a play-off slot.
Specifically, in Nations League B in March 2025, Serbia finished second in the group with Austria, Slovenia and Norway, which secured additional play-off points. That means even if it cannot overtake Albania in the qualifying Group K, the team can at the European play-off tournament in March 2027 still get a shot at direct qualification for the United States, Mexico and Canada. But for that play-off slot, ten more teams with better Nations League positions are competing.
Serbia in the coming days will play England, which in tactical terms means a meeting with a side that has a maximum record in qualifying. England manager Thomas Tuchel said in a March interview with the BBC that “Serbia is a technical team that punishes mistakes by defensive midfielders”. After England comes an away trip to Latvia, where a win would bring at least a mathematical chance for second place.
What about morale and the squad?
After the defeat to Albania, the squad problems are now serious. Dusan Vlahovic, the Juventus striker, is playing out of rhythm because of contract uncertainty and a complicated season in Italy. Filip Kostic, the second right-winger, has missed three of the last four call-ups through injury. Dusan Tadic, the captain through the past decade, at 36 is playing another season in the UAE and is no longer a regular at gatherings.
From the professional side, former international Dragan Muzet in a Sunday column for sportklub.rs assessed that the problem is not the player pool, but “the midfield transition, where Serbia in attack plays too statically, and in defence too deep”. Stojkovic in Leskovac at the press conference said he was not thinking about resignation, but that “if the Football Association takes a different view, that is its discretion”. FSS president Dragan Dzajic for now has not reacted publicly, but sources close to the Association say a decision has been postponed until after the next two matches.
The next match is Serbia against England in October 2026, with the date to be confirmed in June. The new Nations League season starts in September.
On the personal side, the biggest problem for the national team right now is not individual quality, but the sum of tactical limitations built up over years. Stojkovic over the last three years has experimented with three systems, classic 4-3-3, hybrid 3-5-2 and a competitive 4-2-3-1, but none has consistently produced defensive structure against mid-tier European sides. Albania in Leskovac had only one clear shot at the Serbian goal, but used that one, which in modern football is often the line between major tournaments and qualifying disappointment.
On the coaching side, the name of Vladimir Petkovic, the former Switzerland coach who took the Helvetians to the quarter-finals of Euro 2020, has for two months been circulating as a possible replacement. Petkovic is of Serbian origin, speaks the language fluently, and for the last six months has been living in Belgrade after the end of his work in French Bordeaux. The Football Association is not commenting on it publicly for now, but from those close to Petkovic comes the information that he would consider an offer “only if he gets a full mandate through the end of Euro 2028 qualifying”. That is the realistic timeline in which a new head coach could start.
