Roma's Bosnian striker Edin Dzeko and his scoring run

He shoots, he scores. The phrase sums up Edin Džeko’s recent form perfectly. The Bosnian forward simply could not stop scoring and was the main reason behind AS Roma’s strong and consistent showing in Serie A. The Wolves had won all of their home league matches that season, largely thanks to their attack.

Džeko had scored 19 league goals in 25 matches since the start of the season, sharing top spot in the Serie A scoring chart with Higuaín. His total stood at 29 goals in all competitions for the campaign, and he looked likely to set a new personal record if he carried on scoring at the same rate. Up to then, Dzeko’s best goal-scoring stats dated back to 2008/09, when he found the net 36 times and won the Bundesliga with Wolfsburg.

The Bosnian striker had scored 11 goals in Roma’s last eight games in all competitions, including a hat-trick against Villarreal in the Europa League as the Wolves won 4-0 away. Even at 30 years of age, Džeko was at the very top of his form.

He was also Bosnia and Herzegovina’s all-time top scorer with 49 goals in 83 caps. He played at the 2014 World Cup, scoring against Iran and being named Man of the Match, and his next aim was to help his country qualify for the 2018 World Cup.

His main task at that moment, however, was to help Roma finally win Serie A, an extremely difficult but not impossible goal that would require him to keep scoring. Moreover, the Roma squad looked strong enough to compete for the Europa League trophy as well, and only the end of the campaign would show how far the Wolves could go.

How the season ended

Džeko kept scoring until the final weeks of the 2016–17 campaign. He finished as the Serie A top scorer, the capocannoniere, with 29 league goals, one more than Dries Mertens and three more than Andrea Belotti. He was the first Roma player in a decade to win the award, and his 29 league goals equalled the club’s single-season record, set by Rodolfo Volk in 1930–31.

Across all competitions Džeko scored 39 goals, comfortably beyond the 36 of his title-winning season at Wolfsburg. Eight of them came in the Europa League, enough to make him joint top scorer of the competition with Giuliano of Zenit Saint Petersburg.

Roma and the title race

The goals were not enough to bring the Scudetto to Rome. Roma collected 87 points and finished second, their third runners-up place in four seasons, while Juventus won the league with 91 points. The European campaign also ended earlier than hoped. Roma were drawn against Lyon in the round of 16 of the Europa League and lost the first leg 4-2 in France, a deficit they were unable to overturn in the return match, and Lyon went on to reach the semi-finals.

Bosnia and the 2018 World Cup

The international ambition mentioned above was not fulfilled either. Bosnia and Herzegovina were drawn in Group H of European qualifying with Belgium, Greece, Cyprus, Estonia and Gibraltar. The campaign began with a 5-0 home win over Estonia, but a 4-0 defeat in Belgium, a 3-2 loss in Cyprus after leading 2-0 at half-time, and a 4-3 home defeat by Belgium in Sarajevo proved costly. Džeko scored five goals in the group, more than any of his team-mates, while Belgium’s Romelu Lukaku led the scoring chart with 11. Belgium won the group with 28 points, Greece took second place and the play-off spot with 19 points, and Bosnia finished third with 17 points from five wins, two draws and three defeats, missing out on the finals in Russia. Gibraltar finished bottom of the group without a single point from their ten matches.