One morning in early March, a bunch of flowers were delivered to Sevilla’s Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán stadium. Addressed to goalkeeper Marko Dmitrovic, they had come from supporters at PSV Eindhoven, a card among the red and white carnations wishing him well and apologising on behalf of fans. “Dear Mister Dmitrovic,” it began, before closing with best wishes for the rest of the competition, which takes him to Old Trafford on Thursday night. “It’s a nice touch,” he says; it will also be different this time, he’s sure.
Different is the word, the first Dmitrovic uses. Asked to define this campaign, it works. “It’s crazy really,” he says. Sevilla, who were briefly contenders last season and qualified for the Champions League for a third consecutive year, now find themselves fighting relegation, having had as many managers as away wins, and dumped into the Europa League. Which is at least their competition and where, two rounds in a row, they survived comebacks and the keeper survived being attacked by fans.
Against Fenerbache, missiles were thrown, a coin hitting him – “he’s got a hard head”, teammate Nemanja Gudelj said – while in the Netherlands a supporter leapt on to the pitch and assaulted him. “He came from behind, I didn’t see him,” Dmitrovic recalls. “It catches you by surprise, you don’t know what’s happening. Who pushed you? Why?” The answer, to use his own words, was some madman. Not least because of all the players, this hooligan went and chose the guy who’s 6ft 3in. The man for whom, as this conversation soon makes clear, the term no-nonsense could have been invented.
Dmitrovic smiles, which he can now. “They did tests and he had a lot of alcohol in his blood; he was mad drunk,” he says. “Maybe he didn’t have the strength to get further into the pitch and I was just the nearest. I managed to stay calm and take him out until security came. It wasn’t nice but I was fine.
“PSV banned him for 40 years, so they’re conscious of errors made, and the flowers were nice. It’s a great club, historic, with passionate supporters, and one man can’t stain an entire fanbase. If a fan gets on, there’s an organisational failure. It shouldn’t happen. This ended OK, but in Turkey [at Sivasspor], a Fiorentina player [Alessandro Bianco] was hit and properly hurt. He could have been carrying a weapon, assaulted someone properly, injured them. I remember Monica Seles. Hopefully this will ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
In Manchester Dmitrovic is confident it won’t. “People are passionate there but I don’t recall any incident in England,” he says. “I’m sure the atmosphere will be great, nothing will happen except a few whistles. I’ve long been an admirer, a fan, of English football. I follow it. I spent a few months at Charlton. It’s one of the best leagues. And what more can I say about Old Trafford? Every player would love the chance to play there.”
Dmitrovic landed in London in January 2015, aged 22; by July he had gone again, barely seeing the city. He played just five times. He talks eloquently about the overnight change, stepping up from the Hungarian league to “the best second division in the world”, thrown straight into a relegation battle. He says he can’t call it “a lovely experience,” still less a success but it was, he insists, a “lesson”. And he concludes: “I’m sure if I had to go to England again, it would be different.”
That sounds like a man who wouldn’t mind if he did. What follows does, too: in fact, it turns into something of a manifesto, a lament for something lost here and better preserved in the Premier League.
“If an opportunity arose that was good for me, for Sevilla, for everyone, then for sure, yes,” Dmitrovic says. “But I don’t think: ‘hopefully in a year or two …’ If one day everything falls into place, why not? I really like English football: how dynamic it is, how referees let you play. I like strong football. It’s a sport of challenges, clashes, contact but here fouls are given for the slightest touch. There’s a knock: get up, carry on. If someone’s genuinely hurt: foul, card. It annoys me that with the tiniest touch people squeal, fake, dive. That’s not football.”
There’s a smile. “Maybe I’m a bit old school,” Dmitrovic says. “Now the smallest thing and they go to the VAR, watch in slow motion. Referees have to take more responsibility. VAR was supposed to help, not decide. It’s football, there will be contact. But, then, footballers are cheats: any contact and we complain. In England, fewer of those ‘fouls’ are given. You can learn from them.”
If there’s a man you can imagine agreeing with every word here, it is José Luis Mendilibar, who coached Dmitrovic at Eibar and has taken over at Sevilla on a mission to simplify everything. On a mission, above all, to survive. “If I am a bit old school, he is 100% old school,” the Serb says, smiling. “For years I’ve told friends he’s the best coach I’ve had. He’s a 10/10, a great person. We have a special relationship. After Eibar, we kept speaking, more about life than football.”
Previously the back-up in the league and a starter in Europe and the cup, among Mendilibar’s first decisions was to put Dmitrovic in the team domestically, which may prompt a switch the other way in Manchester. He and Yassine Bono are too good to sit on the bench and it hasn’t always been easy, Dmitrovic says. Yet when he talks team first and friendship with the Moroccan, it doesn’t sound like he’s spinning a line. Nothing he says does. “Only one plays and we compete but if I wish him ill, I won’t progress either,” he reasons. “Bono is at an incredible level. I told myself: pull your sleeves up, work, try to be as good. That’s better than wanting his level to drop to play.
“Mendilibar has been very important for me and people think he loves me, but I played because I gave him what he wanted, not because he likes me being bald or because I’m a good guy. You could be his son: if you don’t do what he wants, you don’t play.”
If Mendilibar’s mission, the change Sevilla sought, can be crystallised in an image, it may be the moment previous coach Jorge Sampaoli sent on a sheet of complex instructions. Marcos Acuña marched over, pulled the paper from Óliver Torres’s hands, screwed it into a ball and threw it away. Sometimes can managers intervene too much?
“I tell you something,” Dmitrovic replies, “Mendilibar is always in the game too. You might not hear him on television but, pfff, he can drive us mad. There have been times I’ve wanted to tell him to ... well, better I don’t say. I would love you to watch a game near him. you’ll laugh a lot, really enjoy it. When he gets angry, he shouts a lot.
“Sampaoli’s style is nice but we didn’t quite manage to do things his way. In the final games people were a bit lost. If you play a risky way, you know what it gives you but you have to know what it can take from you too. ”
Instead, Sevilla were left fighting for survival after 20 unbroken, hugely successful seasons in primera – and simultaneously competing for a seventh Europa League. Some teams would ditch Europe, prioritising the league, but not the club whose identity is bound up in this competition. “There is no option,” Dmitrovic insists. “The only option is win every game. The league can’t impact much – a little, maybe – on what happens in Europe, where our aim is to go through rounds. We have been through two, now it’s Manchester.”
Facing him will be David de Gea, who Dmitrovic says “marked the last decade”, who “does everything simply”, making saves “without sweating”, so often United’s “saviour”. “Over 10 years he’s been United’s best player,” he says. “If the goalkeeper is the best something is wrong but he’s world class. I try to learn from what he has that I don’t, and it will be a pleasure to compete against one of the best.”
There is one thing De Gea doesn’t have that Dmitrovic has. The Serb might not like stats much but here’s one that makes him smile: in 2020-21, he put a penalty past Jan Oblak to become one of only seven keepers ever to score in La Liga, until that same season he was joined by Bono to make it eight. “I stay behind taking free-kicks and penalties. Eibar had missed three or four penalties in a row and Mendilibar said: ‘bloody hell, you should take them,’” he says. “He told me two games before. No one knew. I scored. Unfortunately, I missed the next, took it really badly. That’s life. And I have a goal now.”
So if it goes to penalties against United? “If I have to take one, I’ll be ready,” Dmitrovic says, grinning. His friend Bono might be too. Either way, that would fit this season somehow. There’s that word again. “It’s been different,” he concludes. “We’ve had three coaches and things that are never nice to talk about – the incidents in the last two away games – but we’re still in the Europa League, up against a massive club, going to the theatre of dreams, and it’s in our hands now. It’s been an unusual season. Let’s see if we can end it well.”
