More recently, last season, Zrinjski won the Bosnian Premier League for a record ninth time, losing just three league games all season, which earned qualification for the UEFA Champions League first qualifying round.
This season, with a third of their season left to play, they sit six points behind league leaders FK Borac Banja Luka at the time of writing, having suffered four league defeats. They remain in the hunt for an unlikely treble, as they are also in the Bosnia and Herzegovina Cup quarter-finals.
After aggregate defeats to Slovan Bratislava in the second round of that competition – and then to Utrecht in the play-offs for the Europa League qualifiers – Zrinjski entered the Conference League at the league phase stage this season.
Among the Zrinjski ranks is veteran forward and captain Nemanja Bilbija, who remains the Bosnian Premier League’s record goalscorer and Zrinjski's highest-ever appearance maker and scorer, with 188 goals and 315 games across two spells for the club.
A broader history
The city of Mostar is the historical capital of Herezegovina and a two-hour drive from the largest city, and capital, in the country – Sarajevo. In terms of population, it is Bosnia and Herzegovina’s fifth-largest city.
In 1905, within the premises of the Croatian Cultural Society Hrvoje in Mostar, Croatian youth, led by Professor Stjepan Kuštreba, founded the “Student Sports Club,” which seven years later, in 1912, evolved into the “High School Football Club” Zrinjski.
The club were banned from further activities between 1945 and the early 1990s, but were refounded in 1992 and have since competed in three different domestic leagues.
