By Jaroslaw Adamowski
July 4 – The Serbian Football Association (FSS) is looking to boost its Jelen SuperLiga and increase the marketing opportunities for the Serbian championship, according to Zoran Lakovic, the secretary general of the FSS. New measures include a restructured top tier and a relaxation of foreign player rules.
“From 1990 to 2008, we introduced nine changes to the system,” Lakovic told local daily Vecernje Novosti. The proposed modifications have the potential to significantly change the Serbian top tier, he said.
Among the proposed changes, the FSS is looking to introduce a system of play-offs which will divide the 16-team SuperLiga into two groups of eight teams. The first group will compete for the Championship of Serbia, while the second one will compete to avoid relegation to the second tier.
The Serbian association is also aiming to launch the Super Cup of Serbia which will pit the season’s champion against the winner of the Cup of Serbia, said Lakovic.
The third major proposal is related to the limit on foreign players playing for Serbian clubs. Under the current regulations, local sides can include only four foreign footballers in their squads. The FSS is planning to increase this limit to six, of which three could be from the former Yugoslavia states, such as Croatia or Slovenia, while the remaining three could be from any other country.
“We have a lot of players from the former Yugoslavia who have so far been treated as foreigners,” Lakovic said. “The proposal is to allow the clubs to have three [ex-Yugoslav players] and three foreigners [from other countries].”
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