Bosnia & Herzegovina vs Northern Ireland 09/10/20

09 October 2020

Bosnia & Herzegovina (FIFA rank: #50) welcome Northern Ireland (#38) to Bilino Polje for their EURO one-off semi-final showdown.

The hosts are not enjoying the best of times, having lost three of their last five competitive fixtures (W1, D1, L3), conceding 2+ goals in each. Quick out of the blocks, the ‘Dragons’ have found the opening goal seven of their previous eight competitive home outings, winning five of them (W5, D1, L2). In turn, despite returning just a single win from their last three fixtures (W1, D1, L1), Bosnia have scored the opener in each match-up. However, going back to October 2018 and their last meeting with Northern Ireland, Dusan Bajevic’s men have managed no more than a mere four wins from 13 competitive games (W4, D3, L6), with six of those ten results (wins/losses) coming despite a -1 handicap.

Meanwhile, the visitors have failed to get on the scoresheet in three of their last four competitive fixtures, scoring precisely once per game in the other three (D2, L4). Frustratingly for Ian Baraclough, each of those four losses has yielded a full-time margin of over 1.5 goals despite his men holding their rivals to a half-time draw twice (HT: D2, L2). What’s more, they have lost two of their previous three competitive road trips (D1, L2), conceding over 2.5 goals in each failure. Meeting with Bosnia may stir more painful memories, given that the ‘Green and White Army’ have lost both of their previous competitive H2Hs. The one consolation for the traveling side is that they’ve managed to open the scoring in two of their last three away clashes against nations ranked inside the top 50.