Getafe travelled to Belgrade on Wednesday ahead of Thursday's Conference League play-off second leg against Partizan. The azulones make the trip with a two-goal cushion, the 3-1 secured in the first leg at the Coliseum, and with a place in the competition's main phase now ninety minutes away.

Mario Martín is part of the travelling party, an encouraging sign that nevertheless stops short of confirming his availability. The midfielder is carrying a quadriceps injury picked up on the opening league weekend against Alavés and missed both the European first leg and Sunday's win over Racing Santander.

The squad train this afternoon at the Stadion Partizana, the venue for the match, and it is in that session that the midfielder will test how he feels. The coaching staff will check how the affected area responds before deciding whether he figures in their plans for the tie, so the final call has been put off until after the official training session.

The doubt goes back a few days. On Tuesday, after a day off, the squad returned to work and Mario Martín was not seen in the part of the session open to view. The club has not released a diagnosis or set a timescale. If he does not make it for the second leg, his return would be pushed back to the league trip to Osasuna.

The tie also has one very particular follower. Veljko Paunović, the current Serbia head coach, wore the shirts of both clubs meeting in Belgrade. He made his debut at just 17 with Partizan, the club where he came through and where he played 17 matches and scored twice, before moving to Spanish football with Atlético de Madrid, Oviedo, Mallorca, Almería, Tenerife and Getafe.

With the azulones he made 52 appearances and scored 14 goals, and he was part of the side that reached the 2006 Copa del Rey final against Sevilla. The family tie to the Serbian club runs deep too: his father, Blagoje Paunović, played close to 300 matches across ten seasons at Partizan and later coached in Spain, where he took charge of Logroñés.

Paunović keeps a close eye on the Serbian league, holding get-togethers every couple of months for players with potential and applying the same working method across all of Serbia's age groups. Two players from the current Partizan side, Nikola Simic and Djurdjevic, were in Serbia's most recent squad last June.