To what extent Misimović, Spahić and Ibišević were interesting to the media and what attitude they had towards them, it is interesting to hear from the media aspect.

Bakir Tiro, the sports editor of the Anadolu Agency for the Balkans, and Muamer Tanović, the sports editor of the Avaz, are certainly competent to talk about this relationship. They are among only a few journalists from our country who followed the BH national team at the World Cup in Brazil, they were with it from the very beginning; they would also enter two-digit numbers on their jerseys, if all the matches they were reporting would be counted, Tiro since April 1997 and Tanović since October 2000.

Muamer Tanović starts with the story:

“When it comes to media cooperation, it can be said that this trio was, to put it mildly, desirable, since younger generations have a different attitude towards the media and are quite suspicious. Ibišević and Misimović are really special characters and I could not remember any of the controversial situations with them. From the first day when “Vedo” started playing for the U-21 team until his farewell, he was always ready to cooperate and was aware of the media needs. Such was also Zvjezdan, calm, introvert, cold-blooded. In the most difficult moments, when everything went wrong, he was cool and ready to meet the media.

Spahić has always been a charismatic character, and because of his character, he was popular with fans because he was fierce, though sometimes prone to unreasonable moves. I could say there were unusual situations with him, because we never knew what to expect, whether at the first contact he would hug and kiss us or complain to us for something. However, Spahić had extra quality, that is, he was a very interesting interlocutor, and every interview with him was special. From that side, he is the best, regarding the BH national team players.”

Bakir Tiro continues:

“A complete personality, a good player and a good man like Vedad Ibišević will not appear for a long time. He is a person who feels the needs of journalists, who knows what the media is, how to use them for himself, and how he could be of benefit also to us who have been in this business for a long time. He’s no. 1, in my opinion, and many years will pass to get such a man and such a player again.

Zvjezdan Misimović also had feelings for the media. I like at him the most, as well as at Spahić and Ibišević, that they never hid after defeats. When the results were bad and the public expected a lot, they did not hesitate to stand before us, journalists, to openly discuss.

It happened that some colleagues had certain problems with Spahić, but honestly, I have never been in a bad situation with him. I’m sorry only that, at the World Cup, he introduced a “silence to the press”, and there were only few of us in Brazil. Viewed from today’s perspective, maybe he was sorry too, because that was our biggest event, both for players and for journalists. It will take time for something similar to happen again and it is certain that his statements will are missing in the history of our first World Cup. Otherwise, Emir Spahić and I had excellent cooperation. He even helped me several times to get to the world famous stars with whom he shared the dressing room. I am grateful to him on this, like to “Vedo” and “Miske”, and I hope that we will continue to cooperate in the future and that they will remain in football in other functions.”

Prominent journalists believe that when it comes to cooperation with the media, we have players who slowly take over the role of “Vedo”, “Miske” and “Spaha”.

Tiro:

“It's certainly Asmir Begović, Edin Džeko and Miralem Pjanić. They are really correct and Džeko recently took the leader and captain role in the national team. He also doesn’t evade standing in front of the media even when it was very difficult, when we lost in Belgium 4:0. This is an extra characteristic of a great player. Regarding the younger ones, they are slowly coming here and what I liked in Razgrad is that the older players, like Džeko, made influence on the younger ones and even in works with the media. The problem of cooperation with younger players is their eloquence. I attribute this to their youth and inexperience both in football and in life. We, journalists, are in service to both the public and the national team, so we often need interesting conversations, that is, answers that are not stereotyped and simple like, for example, “we will win”, “we will fight”. But, probably, it is also up to the journalists who need to know how to “extract” more from interlocutors. Therefore, I emphasize that these three people, who will farewell, are especially interesting, especially Emir Spahić, who sometimes went across the “red line”.”

Tanović:

“It is obvious that besides the quality of these younger coming ones, we also have cultural guys. The problem for us, journalists, is that there are many players coming from abroad and not having mastered our language sufficiently. They are interesting for us, however, the communication goes very slowly, but I believe that they will pass over this obstacle during time, as Vedad Ibišević and Miralem Pjanić succeeded before.”

Bakir Tiro and Muamer Tanović would have many more interesting details to tell, but the obligations are waiting for them, so both of them say at the end:

“It's not always easy for us to go to tasks and work in all conditions, but that’s our job, and even when we look critically about some things, we do it with the best intentions. Our criticisms are never malicious, but in order to correct certain things.

Therefore, it would be nice that in Zenica on Monday, all together, I think of us, media, fans, as well as the entire public, should properly follow our football stars. Because of everything they gave for the national team, but also to us journalists, they deserved to follow them in the right way.

Therefore, both to Vedo, Emir and Zvjezdan, every honour, thank you, guys!”