WINDHOEK – Namibian international Hendrik “Ballack” Somaeb on Saturday made his debut for Serbian Super League club FK Zemun, which he recently joined after spending the better part of last year at Namibia Premiership coastal giants Blue Waters FC.
The 25-year old attacking midfielder came on for Milos Toseski in the 46th minute of Zemun’s 7th round 1-0 home victory against FK Rad during their league match on Saturday.
Somaeb joined FK Zemun for an undisclosed fee and the duration of his contract is also yet to be made public but New Era Sport however established that Zemun secured the Namibian’s signature on the last day of the 2018 summer transfer window.
Born at the coastal town of Walvis Bay, Somaeb started playing for township club Blue Waters in the Namibia Premier League (NPL), and was soon scouted by South African agents who lured him to that country’s Professional Soccer League (PSL) club Free State Stars where he played for two seasons.
He later went on to play for another South African club Jomo Cosmos in the 2016/17 season in that country’s National First Division (NFD), before returning home in 2017 to rejoin boyhood club Waters. He has since joined Zemun in the Serbian Super League.
The Serbian Super League is at the top of the Serbian football league system. It is that country’s primary football competition consisting of 16 clubs, applying a system of promotion and relegation with the Serbian First League (Prva liga Srbija, second Serbian football tier).
The Super League was formed in 2005 as the country’s top football league competition in Serbia and Montenegro. Since summer 2006 after the secession of Montenegro from Serbia, the league has only had Serbian clubs.
As for Somaeb’s new club, immediately after the end of the Second World War, the sports activities in Zemun were restored. By early 1945, a club FK Maksim Divnic was formed, named in honour of a player with that name that played before the war and who died as Partisan fighter during the war.
After just a couple of matches the club changed its name to FK Sremac Zemun. By the end of that year another club was also formed in Zemun, FK Sparta Zemun. On October 20, 1946, the two clubs were merged to form a new sports society whose football section was FK Zemun.