The haziest of memories gave way to something starkly vivid when, in 2008, Asmir Begovic returned to Bosnia‑Herzegovina for the first time. He had not been back to Trebinje, the town of his birth but a place of which he had next to no recollection, since leaving at the age of four while war ripped apart the country and it took the sad occasion of his grandfather’s funeral for the scale of his family’s loss to make sense.
“I saw where we used to live, saw where the house was basically broken down and collapsed; it just didn’t exist any more,” he says. “Difficult, difficult things to see. But it’s part of my past, part of what made me the person I am today.”
It is an opportune time for some reflection. Begovic is midway through a week of fresh reunions that, while of far less importance in the grander scheme, emphasise how far he has come. Last Saturday there was a successful visit to Stoke City, the club where his name came up in lights, which brought three crucial points for his current Bournemouth side; on Saturday they host Chelsea and perhaps Begovic would be forgiven a tinge of regret upon facing a team in which he could never quite establish himself.
He will, assuming there are no last-minute dramas, be making the 200th Premier League appearance of his career and it is a milestone he would have reached in Chelsea’s colours had things turned out more favourably. In the event he was firmly second fiddle to Thibaut Courtois during his two years at Stamford Bridge and, while circumstance brought 25 games in the first of them, a mere eight in 2016-17 – only two of them coming in the Premier League-winning campaign – never felt anything near enough. He had to move on for his own sake but Begovic is clear that neither José Mourinho nor Antonio Conte mis-sold him a dream move that always came with caveats.
“I don’t hold grudges,” he says. “I had such a positive experience there. There’s always a couple of low points, some difficult moments, over a period of time with any club and Chelsea was no different but I gave it a great shot.
“I went there to compete. Mourinho said Thibaut would have a head start as No1 and I’d come in as No2 but it wouldn’t be that black and white and I’d get plenty of games. I looked at it as a challenge: I wanted to feel what it’s like to compete for trophies on a regular basis, so I saw more of a complete picture. It wasn’t a case of ‘You’re going to play five, 10, 15 games a year’. They wanted two of the best goalkeepers in the world to compete and I took that as a very big compliment.”
Nevertheless the chances evaporated under Conte, largely because of Courtois’s avoidance of injury but also through the manager’s own volition. Having fielded Begovic for the third, fourth and fifth rounds of the FA Cup he went with Courtois for the latter stages of Chelsea’s run to the final; Begovic might have expected to be the designated cup goalkeeper and admits it was “disappointing for sure”, although he stresses no promises had been made. Conte took to his personality straightaway and, just as he successfully did with other less-utilised members of last season’s squad, encouraged him to use it for good.
“It was again clear who was No1 and No2 but he wanted my presence around the team, wanted me there as one of the characters and a leader, and I embraced that,” Begovic says. “We all embraced the idea that setting the right example in training, being a top professional, would rub off on everyone else. I enjoyed it, you know – it was a successful season and worthwhile in the end. It isn’t always easy when you sacrifice yourself as an individual but in a team game you have to do it.”
Begovic saw at first hand how Conte, tying together elements that had become disparate under end-stage Mourinho and the interim manager Guus Hiddink, turned Chelsea around. “He spoke well to each of us and immediately gained respect by having those conversations,” he says. “We all took to him right away. He wanted to instil a different work rate, bring in discipline again, bring in respect for the process and that baseline worked really well for us. He stamped his authority on the team.”
He prefers to see those seasons as an invaluable learning process rather than a period that, from the outside, looked like the checking of a sharply upwards trajectory. But he was ready to leave upon being given permission to talk to Bournemouth in May and knew that, a few weeks from his 30th birthday, it was time to push on again.
“Last year was stop-start, not too many appearances, and I was getting to the age where I feel great, feel like I’m in top shape for the best years of my career,” he says. “I didn’t want them to go to waste. I really wanted to go back to playing every week.”
A decade ago he could not have envisaged playing Premier League football with Bournemouth, where he spent two months on loan from Portsmouth in 2007-08, leaving before administration pushed the club into League Two. “I’m sure it’ll be a movie one day,” he says of their progress, remembering his handful of appearances at what was then a three‑sided stadium. Back then he had his own concerns; he was, it would turn out, halfway through his five years at Fratton Park and during a succession of temporary moves away there were times when a breakthrough at the top level looked distant.
“I’d be lying to you if I said I didn’t sometimes think: ‘Is this ever going happen?’ Maybe 10-20% of the time you’re wondering that but I didn’t want it to be for a lack of trying or doing the right thing.”
That attitude stems from the values instilled in him by his parents, Amir and Ajnija, during a childhood in which football was a rare constant. After fleeing the destruction wrought upon Trebinje the family laid down roots in Heilbronn, Germany, but nothing would be the same: Amir, a talented professional goalkeeper who played in Yugoslavia’s second tier, had to find work as a plasterer while Ajnija, who had been about to qualify as a lawyer, became employed in a factory that made plastic bags.
“You go from a really good life, everyone doing well, family all within 20km of each other, and then – boom – it’s all turned upside down,” Begovic says. “It’s a far cry from where you started. Dad kept playing football part-time and I followed him everywhere, taking the team bus and everything, like a kind of mascot.”
The shot-stopping genes had been firmly passed down by then and Begovic had an open offer to join the academy at nearby Stuttgarter Kickers. A pathway already looked set but, to the dismay of a 10-year-old rooted in his friendship groups, another move followed. In common with other refugees from Bosnia at that time, the family had problems renewing their visas to live in Germany; Canada was the best alternative and upon their arrival in Edmonton it felt like starting all over again.
“Life had turned around once and then it turned a second time. You go to Canada and my mum’s working two or three jobs at a time, then coming home and studying to become a nurse. Dad was working various jobs as well, basically whatever he could do, and at the time you’re so young and don’t understand. Now, as I’m getting older and am a parent myself, you realise what they went through and think: ‘OK, those were pretty serious times.’
“I think the experience made me tougher, made me grow up very quickly because you had to. It also made me very determined to pursue football and do well in my career, and it’s still driving me to this day.”
It turned out Edmonton was not quite a football black hole and Begovic, steered away from ice hockey’s greater physical dangers by those who recognised his talent, was able to move through regional and national youth systems, eventually earning that first, decisive trial at Portsmouth in 2003.
He could later have declared for Canada’s senior team but, in a decision that coincided almost exactly with his reconnection to Bosnia, opted in 2009 to represent his country of birth. It has been a rollercoaster: when we last sat down together at length, a little over four years ago, we were in the Sarajevo suburb of Ilidza and Begovic was preparing for a double-header against Liechtenstein and Lithuania that would take a freewheeling side to the 2014 World Cup. The mood was euphoric even before those games had been played; the picture is gloomier now and, after failing to qualify for next year’s tournament under Mehmed Bazdarevic, Begovic believes they need to deal with some uncomfortable truths.
“We lived a huge fairytale but we failed to build on it and we’ve regressed,” he says. “Our team is worse now than it was then. We think we are better than we are but the structure to improve was never put in place. We don’t do things the right way, we don’t have the same discipline as we should. Teams like Iceland have similar talent levels to us but they have much more discipline about it than we do.
“Do we want to be better, want to progress, want to learn from better football nations out there and try to improve ourselves? We have to learn from our mistakes and hopefully we’ll get a proper manager now with a strong hand and a record that will put us back in our place.”
It is the most animated that Begovic, urbane and pleasant to a fault, has been during the interview. There is clearly a message he wants to convey to certain people but then his wider influence in Bosnia has increased over the past four years through his Asmir Begovic Foundation, which aims to create new sports facilities for children. “It’s not their fault if they’ve grown up through corruption and bad politics,” he says, explaining that he has witnessed those ills at first hand during some of his project work.
He has plenty on his plate, including increasing demand for media appearances and a podcast – Season of Sports – in which he discusses a mind-boggling range of pursuits every fortnight or so. You suspect there will be a good alternative vocation should he want it but he aims keep playing football for “at least another 10-15 years, certainly into my 40s”, while also taking his coaching badges. “To do what I’m doing after everything that’s happened over the last 30 years is special, humbling and I wouldn’t take it for granted.” This weekend’s landmark may offer pause for thought but, these days, Begovic’s career is moving quickly forwards again.
