As recently as last Thursday lunchtime few Plymouth Argyle fans would have heard of the name of Miron Muslic – apart from a group of supporters who are based in Belgium but regularly travel over to watch the team.
Yet by late the following night, the 42-year-old Bosnian-Austrian coach had been appointed by the Pilgrims as their new boss on a contract until the summer of 2028.
Muslic watched from the directors’ box when Argyle caused a massive FA Cup upset by beating Premier League club Brentford 1-0 at the Gtech Community Stadium on Saturday afternoon before briefly returning home to Belgium to prepare for his move to Plymouth.
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His introductory Press conference as Argyle’s new head coach was set to take place today, with his first game in charge coming against Oxford United under the floodlights at the Theatre of Greens tomorrow evening.
Talk about a whirlwind few days for Muslic! He was born on September 14, 1982 in the Bosnian city of Bihac but most of his football career, first as a forward in his playing days and then as a coach, has been in Austria.
His first head coach role came at Vienna-based Austrian Second League side Floridsdorfer FAC in 2020 after previously working in the academy at SV Ried.
Muslic had a short spell in charge of Ried in 2021 before becoming the assistant to Dominik Thalhammer at Belgian Pro League side Cercle Brugge later that year. When Thalhammer was sacked in September 2022, with Cercle second from bottom of the table with one win from nine games at the start of the season, Muslic stepped up to head coach.
That was when things really started to happen for him, and Cercle, whose home ground is the 29,000 capacity Jan Breydel Stadium. Under Muslic, they rose from 17th out of 18 teams to a final regular season position of eighth.
They then finished second in a play-offs group to Gent, who secured top spot and the place in the UEFA Europa Conference League second qualifying round that went with that. That was just the start for Cercle as they finished fifth out of 16 teams in the Belgian Pro League the following season, with a record of 14 wins, five draws and 11 defeats.
That saw them the play-offs group to decide the overall league champions and they ended up in fourth spot, behind only title winners and city rivals Club Brugge, Union St Gilloise and Anderlecht.
By doing so, Muslic had guided Cercle into European competition for the first time in 14 years and only the fourth occasion in club history. They entered the 2024/25 UEFA Europa League at the second qualifying round stage and beat Scottish Premiership side Kilmarnock 2-1 on aggregate.
A 3-1 defeat aggregate defeat followed to Molde, of Norway, so Cercle went into the Europa Conference League Play-Off Round where they beat Poland’s Wisla Krakow 7-5 on aggregate, which earned them a place in the league phase of the tournament.
Under Muslic, they won two of their first four games in the league phase, including a 2-0 home defeat of another Scottish club, Hearts, but they did suffer a surprise 3-1 loss away to Icelandic club Vikingur.
Domestically, Cercle struggled to repeat the results of the previous couple of seasons in the Belgian Pro League and the transfer of star striker Kevin Denkey to MLS side FC Cincinnati in November did not help either.
Muslic was eventually dismissed after a 3-2 defeat away to bottom-of-the-table Beerschot on December 1, 2024, a game in which they had led by two goals at half-time. Cercle were 15th out of 16 teams at the time with a record of four wins, three draws and nine defeats from 16 matches.
Six weeks later, though, Muslic is back in football management as he becomes the first overseas Plymouth Argyle boss in the club’s history, ready to show not just the Green Army but the wider Championship community what he is all about.
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