Young Player Worth the Watch #5- Ibrahim Dresevic
- Andrew Cheam
- Aug 26, 2020
- 3 min read
Biodata
Full Name: Ibrahim Dresevic
Nationality: Kosovan
Date of Birth: 24 January 1997
Height: 1.86m (6ft 1in)
Position: Centre-Back
Current Club: SC Heerenveen
Current Market Price: 1.32mil Euro (Updated in April 2020)
Highest Market Price: 1.65mil Euro (Mar 2020)
Former Clubs:
2016- 2019 Elfsborg
International Career:
2014 Sweden U17
2014- 2017 Sweden U19
2019- Kosovo
Achievement:
None
Strength
Direct free-kicks
Weakness
Concentration
Career
As the latest country that is affiliated under UEFA Confederation, Kosovo is still yet to qualify for the major tournaments. However, their performances in recent years had suggested that their wait on a major tournament qualification will not be very long. Especially when there are some players who have Kosovan descent are able to pledge to play for Kosovo under the rules and regulation of FIFA. Ibrahim Dresevic is one of the players who fit the criteria to play for Kosovo national team.
Ibrahim Dresevic was born in Sweden and joined Elfsborg youth setup at the age of 14. At the same year, he participated in the Sweden U17 side in an international friendly against the Belgium U17 side. In the club level, Dresevic was also progressed positively as he started to gain more game time in the club U19 side in the 2014-2015 season, where he also scored 3 goals in the U19 league as a centre back. In the same season, Dresevic also started to gain more playing time in the U21 side.
With his impressive performances in the youth level, Dresevic started to caught attention from the senior level. He finally got his debut in the second round of 2016-2017 Svenska Cupen against IK Gauthiod at the age of 19, in which he played the remaining 30 minutes of the match. He got his debut in style as Elfsborg trashed their opponent 7-0 away from home. He subsequently made his league debut weeks later as the starting centre back against Kalmar, where he played the full 90 minutes. Since then, Dresevic gained more and more game time in the Swedish league. His breakout season came on the 2018 season of Allsvenskan, where he appeared 23 of the 30 league matches in the season, helping Elfsborg to escape relegation at the same time.
Dresevic’s performance in the Allsvenskan at such a young age certainly caught the attention of numerous clubs in Europe. On January 2019, Dresevic joined Dutch side Heerenveen on a three-and-a-half-year deal. His utmost mission in his new club was to help the club to escape relegation as the club was on the 11th place in the league, only 3 points above the relegation zone. Dresevic was not the first choice defensive pairing in the squad as Kik Pierie and Daniel Hoegh was the main defensive partnership. In his first half-season in the Eredivisie, he only managed to gain 6 appearances in the league despite Heerenveen managed to escape relegation.
In terms of his national team career, Dresevic pledged to play for Kosovo national team despite spending his national youth career in his country of birth, Sweden. Dresevic managed to get a call-up from Kosovo for the Euro 2020 qualifying matches. He is eligible to play for Kosovo because of his Albanian parents. However, he was forced to postpone his national team debut despite getting a national team call-up as FIFA did not permit him to play because of the documentations problem. After several months, FIFA finally gave the green light for Dresevic to play for Kosovo and he subsequently got his first national cap in a friendly on October 2019 against Gilbraltar, which he played the full 90 minutes.
In the club level, Dresevic finally got his place in the Heerenveen backline with a new partnership with Sven Botman in the 2019-2020 season. This is considered as his breakout season as he helped Heerenveen to concede fewer goals compared to the same period before the suspension of the 2019-2020 Eredivisie season. The club has conceded 41 goals in 26 matches in the recent season compared to 59 goals in 26 matches in the previous season. He even managed to score 2 goals in the opening two matches in the league, one of them was an equaliser against Feyenoord. His defensive stats were also impressive as he registered 1.6 tackles, 1.6 interceptions and most incredibly 3.5 clearances per game. Not bad for a 21-years-old centre back.
Verdict
Potential: 7.5. We all know Eredivisie has the capability to nurture young talents into stardom in their career. Therefore, we are actually confident that Dresevic was actually in a safe pair of hands when it comes to developing young talents. As most of the top clubs in Europe are looking defensive addition, Dresevic might be a cheaper option to fix their defensive issues. Don’t be surprised when his move came sooner than we expected.
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