FIFA World Cup 2018: Subasic has gained unlikely stardom in India | Football News

We Bongs, the self-proclaimed spiritual guardians of football in India, are suddenly drawing a connection with Croatia at this World Cup. If you think it’s about Russia, Yugoslavia, east Europe, communism and all that stuff, you are as far off the mark as CR Park is from Greater Noida.

Over the last couple of weeks, we have suddenly woken up to a Croatian goalkeeper with an uncanny resemblance to a Bengali name – Subasic. Incidentally, his virtual namesake, Subhashish, too, is a reputed national level goalkeeper, but the resemblance ends there.

In two back-to-back World Cup knock-out games, our new-found hero, whose details we are still trawling the internet for to further reasonable football conversations, has done something quite spectacular. The AS Monaco shot-stopper from Zadar in Croatia, has saved four penalties over the pre-quarters and quarters that has taken his team to the semifinals and there are already references to another favourite of ours – Sergio Goycochea, who did pretty much the same for Argentina in 1990 (incidentally, one was against Yugoslavia). It saw Diego Maradona play his second World Cup final on the trot which looked a long shot till it actually happened.

There was another twist to the Subasic story on Saturday night that made us draw a parallel with another favourite name – Franz Beckenbauer. Just the way Kaiser had famously refused to be substituted in the 1970 semifinal against Italy and played with an arm in a sling, Subasic did quite the same against Russia who were sniffing blood on home turf.

Towards the fag end of the match, he fell to the ground clutching his right hamstring. Croatia had made all three substitutions by then and if Subasic came off, they would have had to play the last few minutes of regulation time with 10 men and an outfield player doing the keeper’s duties. We know how difficult it is to stand, let alone stretch, if there’s a twinge in the hamstring. But Subasic knew the game would be over for his nation if he chose to leave. He made one spectacular reflex save in injury-time without moving an inch and once the 90 minutes were done, after taking some treatment, he refused to be substituted for extra-time.

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If Subasic had gone off and Croatia took the fourth substitution, they would have been down to 10 men pretty soon because Sime Vrsaljko limped off during the first half of extra-time. The 6-feet-2 keeper braved it out and took all the confidence of his saves from the Denmark game into this tie-breaker, where the odds seemed to be in favour of Russia. The rest, as they say, is history.

“He could go on and that was the most important thing,” his captain Luka Modric said later, “I’m not sure how it affected him, but he saved fantastically the first shot in the shootout. He said he was OK, it did not affect him much.”

We don’t yet know the gravity of the hamstring pull, but such injuries generally mean you are out for at least three weeks. Croatia hopes he will be fine, and so are we, desperately trying to cling on to a new tale of valour after all our heroes have let us down in this World Cup.