Soccer, not politics, is Softic's game

Emmet Malone talks to Sarajevo-born Admir Softic, who is focused on Cork City's task rather than politics

Like the English he speaks with a surprisingly strong Cork accent Admir Softic's football skills have picked up on his travels. Now 20, he started playing the game while a refugee from his native Sarajevo in the early 1990s. A decade on he left home again to pursue a career in the game and tonight, he hopes, will prove a landmark in his still fledgling career with Cork City's game against Red Star Belgrade offering the young midfielder the prospect of a first start in European football.

It's rare players find themselves having to play down how motivated they are ahead of a big game but as Softic ponders this evening's encounter with Serbia's most famous club, he is anxious to emphasise the occasion is about football not politics. He was, he quietly points out, a child when the Serbian shells that rained down on his hometown prompted his mother to the pack Admir and his sister on one of the last buses to safety. With the help of the Red Cross, three quarters of the family ended up in Switzerland, near Zurich, where they spent two and a half years. His father Salko, meanwhile, stayed behind, joining the army to defend the shattered remains of a once proudly multi-ethnic country in the face of the military might of a murderous regime.

"To be honest," he recalls, "the whole thing sort of passed me by and it was only when we got home again that I really realised just how serious the situation had been. When you're kid it's amazing how easily you adapt to the things going on around you and within a year or so of going back everything seemed very normal to me again.

"Football was very important to me then and you don't think too much at that age about the fact that you play on concrete or where there is no grass because so much of the land has been destroyed or seized. I simply enjoyed playing and my father, who is football mad, always encouraged me to practise, even when the other kids were off doing other things."

Having worked his way to the top of the local football tree by signing for FC Sarajevo as a 14-year-old, Softic appreciated his opportunities were going to be limited. The family, though, decided to leave again, this time permanently, and having consulted with friends who had already departed for various destinations round Europe they decided on making Ireland their new home.

The then teenager played a while with Birr Town in the Leinster Senior League but soon knew the standard was not what he required if he was going to make progress. After three months, however, he was recommended to Liam Murphy at Cork and following a brief trial he was signed by Pat Dolan.

"When I arrived I was playing for the under-21s, the under-17s and the youths," he says. "It was great to be getting so many games plus I was training at times with the senior team . . . it took a while for me to adapt to the game over here which was a lot more physical than anything I had ever played in Europe."

A tall, strong looking player, Softic actually looks perfectly suited to the Irish game and feels he has adapted well enough but, he insists, the contrast in styles initially came as quite a shock to him. "All my life I'd been learning to play football that had no physicality in it. You're not running about or getting on people's backs nearly so much but," he laughs, "I got used to it after the first few elbows."

Dolan's successor at City, Damien Richardson, was quick to spot his potential, elevating him to the first-team squad last season. He was given his league debut early in this campaign but Softic realises that, in football terms, he must learn to walk before he can run. "I know I need to be patient and I look at the next couple of years with Cork as being a learning experience but obviously some of the players will be missing for this game and I would love to play."

The fact the opposition are Serbs is unimportant he insists. "When you let emotion take over then the football suffers and what's important here is Cork City win the game, which we believe we can do. I'm not thinking about what is in the past."

Rather, he feels, the game is about the future, his own and the club's, each of which, he hopes, will look a little bit brighter by the end of this evening's game.