World Cup 2018: Serbia in Group E with Brazil, Switzerland and Costa Rica

Underachieving players and lost points due to crowd trouble have kept Serbia from qualifying for the last three major tournaments. But everyone got their act together for this qualifying cycle, and the Serbians put together an impressive run in their group, finishing on top of the Republic of Ireland, Wales, and Austria.

Serbia will rely on an experienced set of players in Russia, with a number of starters age 29 or older. But there's some interesting youth mixed in as well — Aleksandar Mitrovic, Andrija Zivkovic, Marko Grujic, Nemanja Maksimovic, Milos Veljkovic and Sergej Milinkovic-Savic are all 23 or younger. All are expected to play some part in Serbia's team in Russia.

Serbia have some talented attacking players and creative midfielders. If they want to give those players the freedom to get forward and try to score, they'll need Manchester United's Matic at his...