Malmoe – Crvena Zvezda

The visitors will take three points back to Belgrade.

Malmö, last summer, burst confidently into the group stage of the Europa League. The rout in the playoff qualification stage by CFR Cluj became the brightest episode of that time for the then Swedish champions in the second half of 2025. Otherwise, the team and its fans endured far more disappointments than joys. The richest club in Sweden not only lost the national title on home soil but also failed to reach European competition, finishing sixth in the league table. A similar picture can be seen in the Europa League, where after six group-stage rounds Malmö is among the worst participants, having only one point during that period. The sky-blue side was not helped by a change of head coach in autumn. The new coach did not bring any improvements, and on the first day of 2026 Malmö came under the leadership of Miguel Ángel Ramírez, who had previously worked in South America, the United States, and Spanish Zaragoza. Red Star Belgrade replaced its coach a week earlier than the upcoming opponent. The team was entrusted to the well-known Dejan Stanković, who in the first half of the season did not live up to that trust at Moscow's Spartak. At the same time, the Belgrade club's position on both European and domestic fronts is now far less hopeless. The management's expectations of Stanković are quite predictable: to reach the Europa League playoffs, where Red Star is already on the threshold of success, and to win another Serbian championship, where they trail Partizan by only one point with ten rounds left until the finish. Bookmakers have set the guests as favorites for the upcoming match, offering odds of 2.02 on their victory. Malmö's last match in the Swedish Championship was played two and a half months ago. Since then the team has made two trips to Europa League fixtures, losing to Nottingham Forest (0-3) and Porto (1-2). What the current Malmö looks like is probably unknown even to the new coach himself. In a match against a motivated opponent, such uncertainty can be deadly. The Serbian club played its last official match a month ago, after which it has played four respectable friendly matches. Ahead of the match in Malmö, everything speaks in favor of the guests.