Your essential guide to England’s first opponents: Meet the Serbian players, their stunning WAGs including Miss Earth contestant, fearsome ‘strong boy’ fans known for smashing heads and setting off flares at matches and ‘national treasure’ manager

England will take on Serbia in Germany on Sunday night in the eastern European state’s biggest match in more than two decades.

Led by talisman and captain Dušan Tadić, a former Southampton player, the Serbian side will feature a host of stars England football fans will be familiar with. 

Among them is Chelsea goal-stopper Djordje Petrovic, who moved to the UK last year with his wife, Djina – who is Miss Serbia and a former Miss Earth contestant. They are considered one of Serbia’s hottest young couples. 

The weekend’s opening match will be the first time Serbia has appeared at the European Championships since it became an independent republic in 2006, having last featured in the 2000 Euros as the former Yugoslavia. 

Serbia was previously led by former president Slobodan Milosevic, who infamously embroiled the country in a series of bloody conflicts with the successor Balkan states of Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo – which culminated in a bombing campaign by Nato against Serbia in 1999. 

Before his death in 2006, the tyrant became the first European leader to go on trial for war crimes after his legacy of mayhem left 200,000 people in Bosnia dead, and saw some 800,000 people ethically cleansed in Kosovo.

Serbia is now formally seeking European Union membership but has maintained close ties with Russia and refused to join Western sanctions against Moscow over its war in Ukraine – leading to political tensions with Nato leaders.

The nation is hard-drinking and sports mad, and its most famous athlete of all time is tennis ace and former world number one, Novak Djokovic – who is beloved by the men of the country’s national football side, who he affectionately calls his ‘brothers’. 

With the game in Germany approaching, here’s MailOnline’s guide to Serbia:

Serbia’s ‘Posh and Becks’ and the jaw-dropping WAG doctor of its superstar striker 

Chelsea keeper Djordje Petrovic will be a familiar face to England fans, having signed for the Blues last year.

The 24-year-old goal-stopper plays alongside Three Lions’ stars Conor Gallagher and striker, Cole Palmer – who he has a bromance with.

The pair regularly enjoy lunch together at Stamford Bridge and even have adorable nicknames for each other – with Palmer calling the Serb ‘Beetroot’ while Petrovic has named his Blues bud ‘Beans’ after the 22-year-old forward’s love of lunchtime legumes. 

Petrovic is also married to a woman dubbed one of football’s most beautiful WAGS. His wife, Djina is a former Miss Serbia, who took part in Miss Earth in 2021 and runs her own fashion label. 

The 24-year-old brunette stunner travelled to the Philippines to compete in the beauty contest and is now expecting her first child with Petrovic, having broken the news in a post on Instagram back in April.

Another recognisable name on the pitch is Serbia’s striking superstar Sergej Milinkovic-Savic, who is one of the nation’s most lethal players. 

But off the pitch, he is married to Natalija Ilic, a doctor who can send pulses racing with her sizzling social media snaps. 

The glamorous 29-year-old has amassed a massive following on social media because of her famous romance to the multi-millionaire football ace. 

Mother-of-one Natalija is often seen posing on yachts in bikinis on tropical beaches or poolside in luxury hotels.

Another familiar face is striker Aleksandar Mitrovic, who has been the talisman of his side since debuting in 2013, going onto net a total of 57 goals in 89 games and is far out in front as his country’s all-time record goal scorer. 

And the 29-year-old is one of the biggest menaces of recent Premier League years, having fired Fulham back into the top flight in 2022, scoring a record 43 goals in the Championship to seal their promotion. 

After scoring 49 Premier League goals across a little over six seasons in England’s top flight, Mitrovic decided it was time to move on and joined Al-Hilal in the Saudi Pro League for £46million.

He has flourished even further in the Middle East, netting 28 league goals in as many games this season as his side romped to the league title in his debut campaign, so he’s in good form going into the tournament.

The hooligan Serbian ‘ultras’ with the most fearsome reputation in Europe 

Red Star ‘ultras’, are a thuggish army of Serbian superfans with one of the most fearsome reputations in Europe. They call themselves the Delije, or ‘strong boys’, although it’s not mere strength they’re known for.

Aside from smashing heads at football games, the Delije specialise in gang warfare, political violence, organised crime and racketeering.

The Delije are estimated to number 10,000, including 3,000 or so ultras. Three hundred or so are said to be linked to organised crime.

They are the fanatical supporters of Red Star Belgrade, champions of the Serbian SuperLiga.

Opposite the turnstiles at their home ground sits a Russian-made T-54 tank, now de-commissioned but thought to have been used by the Serbs during the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The club put it there in 2019, saying that its army of fans would be ‘stronger with a combat vehicle’.

British football supporters have encountered the Delije before, notably last year when Manchester City supporters in Belgrade were set upon by 30 Red Star hooligans armed with wooden stakes. And there will be a fresh meeting next Sunday, when England play Serbia in Gelsenkirchen in their opening game of Euro 2024.

Police are on high alert for the game. The German authorities have announced detailed searches for weapons and fireworks and promise a special command centre to co-ordinate riot police and ‘tactical response’ units.

Serbian fans have form for mixing it at international games, including a notorious stadium punch up with supporters of Brazil at the World Cup in 2018.

Some of their violence has been truly sinister. The Euro 2012 qualifier against Italy in Genoa was abandoned after just seven minutes. Kick-off had already been delayed by 40 minutes as Serbia fans attempted to invade the pitch. Then, when the match got going, they threw flares at home supporters and a section of the security fence was torn down.

Mystifyingly, some Serbian ultras attacked their own team bus. The Serbian goalkeeper, Vladimir Stojkovic, reportedly was hit by a firework and withdrew from the game.

And members of the radical gang of thugs had a chilling warning for England fans seeking to cheer on the Three Lions this weekend. 

‘May God help you,’ the Delije ultra in his early twenties told Mail+ this week, when asked what message he had for England fans thinking they could take on the Delije in a fight, adding: ‘We don’t fear anyone but God.’

The star manager dubbed a ‘national treasure’

Dragan Stojković was touted as the Maradona of the Balkans during an injury-hampered playing career, which included a European Cup final appearance with Marseille in 1991.

He captained the Yugoslavia side who competed during the Euros in 2000. He took charge of the national team once again – this time as manager – in 2021 after spells with clubs in Japan and China.

Now 59, he has steered Serbia to their first Euros as an independent nation – and he is eager to show just what the ambitious young squad can do in Germany.

He said: ‘Now, after more than two decades, I have the task and the privilege of leading the Serbian national team to the European Championship as a coach, and I am glad.

‘It is a great pleasure for me that I participated in the European Championship as a player, and now again as national team coach. It is indeed a great achievement.’

Serbia’s war criminal leader

Slobodan Milosevic was the ruthless manipulator of Serbian nationalism who later became one of the most dangerous men in Europe. 

From 1991 to 1999, he presided over mayhem and mass murder in south-eastern Europe – in some of the continent’s worst crimes against humanity since the Second World War.

He rose to power as the president of Serbia in 1989. He pursued Serbian nationalist policies that led to the bloody break up of the Yugoslav federation.

He subsequently embroiled Serbia in a series of conflicts with the successor Balkan states of Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. 

In the process, the former Yugoslav president left a legacy of more than 200,000 dead in Bosnia and two million people – about half the population – homeless. 

He ethnically cleansed more than 800,000 Albanians from their homes in Kosovo – with mayhem later forcing Nato’s hand, and leading the alliance to launch airstrikes against Serbia in 1999. 

And he had political opponents and former friends and colleagues in Belgrade murdered. 

Milosevic became the first European head of state to be prosecuted for genocide and war crimes. 

He died at the age of 64. He was found in his prison cell at the UN detention centre near The Hague while on trial for war crimes. 

It has its own royal family – and its Crown Prince was born in a London hotel

Serbia’s royal family is led by Crown Prince Alexander – who is King Charles’s cousin – and his Greek wife, Crown Princess Katherine. 

Alexander was born in exile at London’s Claridge’s hotel. Under the orders of Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill suite 212 was temporarily declared as Yugoslav territory for a day in 1945 to get around succession laws requiring future kings to be born on home territory.

As an adult, the Crown Prince went on to become an officer in the British Army in 1966. Rising to the rank of Captain, he served in the 16th/5th The Queen’s Royal Lancers. 

His tours of duty included West Germany, Italy, Middle East and Northern Ireland before he left the military in 1972.

The Crown Prince had three children with his first with Royal Highness Princess Maria da Gloria before, who he married in 1972 before they relationship ended nine years later, in 1983. 

He married his current wife, Crown Princess Katherine in 1985.

In 1989, he took a very active role in helping his people shake off the legacy of decades of dictatorship and the regime. In 2001, after the Yugoslav wars, he moved ‘home’.