Montenegro will prepare for their crucial Euro 2024 qualifier against Serbia next week with a friendly against Lebanon in Podgorica on Thursday.
The visitors will also be preparing for the upcoming World Cup qualifiers and Asian Cup commitments they have on the horizon.
Match preview
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With qualification for Euro 2024 still technically in Montenegro's hands, most of their attention will be on their trip to Belgrade on Tuesday.
While they must win to keep their destiny in their own hands, that does seem a tall order considering they have lost all three meetings with their neighbours since the two countries split shortly before they played as a unified nation at the 2006 World Cup.
Win all three of their remaining qualifiers though, and Montenegro will qualify for their first major tournament as an independent nation, after previous entries under Yugoslavia and Serbia & Montenegro.
Miodrag Radulovic's side will warm up for that encounter with this friendly against one of AFC's mid-ranking nations.
Montenegro will enter the October break feeling both optimistic and underwhelmed after a strange set of games in September.
The Brave Falcons ended a four-game winless streak by beating Bulgaria in their last outing, thanks to Stevan Jovetic's 96th-minute winner while remarkably playing with 10 men.
That result went some way to rectify the wrongs of their 2-2 draw in Lithuania three days earlier, when captain Stefan Savic thought he had won it with an 89th-minute strike, only for Montenegro to squander two points when Fedor Cernych responded instantly with an excellent curling effort to share the spoils.
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This should be a game that manager Radulovic will expect to win and set them on the right foot before the brief journey to Belgrade, but they have not had much success in the last 12 months in friendly matches.
Albeit against tougher opposition than Lebanon, Montenegro have failed to win any of their previous three - drawing here with Slovakia, before losing in Slovenia and being thrashed 4-1 at home by the Czech Republic.
Lebanon enter this break now outside the world's top 100 nations once more after the rankings were refreshed last month.
Despite being as high as 77th five years ago, the Cedars struggled in World Cup qualifying and in some minor tournaments played since their failure to reach Qatar.
Semi-final defeats against hosts Thailand in the King's Cup and to India in the SAFF Championship followed after Lebanon finished bottom of their six-team section in the final stage of Asian World Cup qualifying.
Their bid to reach the 2026 edition - where AFC will have many more qualifying spots - gets underway next month when they face neighbouring Palestine in a group which also contains Australia.
The Asian Cup is also coming up in January where Lebanon have been drawn with Qatar, China and Tajikistan - a group where they may have more difficulty in progressing from than their opening World Cup qualifying section.
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Team News
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Jovetic has put many of his injury woes behind him to feature more prominently for Montenegro in recent months, and he came up big again in the victory over Bulgaria with that late winner.
The Olympiacos man may be joined in attack by Lecce's Nikola Krstovic, who has made a phenomenal start to the season, scoring six league goals already, as well as in the draw in Lithuania.
Igor Vujacic has been named in the squad and will likely feature here, but he will then be banned for the trip to Serbia after being sent off against Bulgaria.
Savic of Atletico Madrid and Lazio's Adam Marusic faced each other in the Champions League last month, and the pair may start together on the right-hand side of defence.
This will be the first game in charge for Lebanon's new Croatian boss Nikola Jurcevic, but the set of players at his disposal here were not picked by him.
The entire squad, picked by the Lebanese FA, all ply their trade in Asia, with only four of the 28 playing outside Lebanon.
Three players present in the King's Cup squad have been left out, including Daniel Lajud, who plays in Mexico with Atlante, and left-back Maher Sabra.
Montenegro possible starting lineup:
Mijatovic; Marusic, Savic, Vujacic, Tomasevic, Vukcevic; Loncar, Bakic, Jankovic; Krstovic, Jovetic
Lebanon possible starting lineup:
M Matar; N Matar, Ayoub, Shour, Al Zein; Srour, Sisi, El-Helwe; Saad, Jradi, Maatouk
We say: Montenegro 2-0 Lebanon
Depending on how strong of an XI Radulovic opts to go with from the outset, a full Montenegro side should have no issue in making it back-to-back wins in this encounter.
Many changes could be on the cards though and chopping and changing in terms of substitutions, so it may not be a rout, despite the gulf in class between the two nations.
For data analysis of the most likely results, scorelines and more for this match please click here.
Andrew Delaney
