The shadowless serve that silenced the Barça stadium and stitches wounds at Espanyol

Barcelona“I remember very well the day he arrived. We were in pre-season in Marbella and he got on the bus. We didn't know him yet. We all looked at each other and said: «Who is this big, serious guy?» Then they told us he was the new goalkeeper and that he was coming from the English Charlton”, explains Máyor, then a forward for Alcorcón, in the Second Division. It was the first adventure in Spanish football for Marko Dmitrovic (Subotica, Serbia, 1992).

“He didn't speak any Spanish and initially he was very cold. But Balkan people pick up languages easily and he quickly learned the language”, adds the former Alacant footballer. Dmitrovic was born in Subotica, a small, quiet city in northern Serbia. It wasn't one of the areas most affected by the Balkan War, but the player still remembers the fear he felt with his sister and grandmother when the sirens sounded in the town during the NATO attack in 1999. It was the signal to go to the basements to take shelter from the bombs. He was 7 years old.

At 15, he already stood out as a goalkeeper and Red Star, the team of his loves and the biggest in the country, went after him. If they didn't let him leave, he would escape, he told his parents. And as a child, he showed up alone in Belgrade, the capital. He couldn't debut with the first team, but that decision made him mature quickly and turned him into a professional footballer. He emigrated to Hungary and England, before landing in Spain at 23 years old.

The feat of Montjuïc

“In Alcorcón it was already clear he would be a First Division goalkeeper”, says Máyor. He only needed two seasons in the south of Madrid to confirm it and fulfill his dream. In 2017 he signed for Eibar and debuted in La Liga. He had been signed by sporting director Fran Garagarza, who last summer called him again, this time to join Espanyol. “We reached an agreement immediately”, said the Serbian goalkeeper at his presentation, who landed in Barcelona with a free transfer.

He came from a Leganés that, despite its interventions, was relegated to the Second Division. At Butarque they still remember the saves against Barça on December 15, 2024, at Montjuïc. Also Robert Lewandowski, unable to score against him. The Madrid team won 0-1 and Marko Dmitrovic silenced the blaugrana stadium with his saves. To this day, he is the last goalkeeper who, in a league match, has not conceded goals at Barça's ground. On Saturday, in the Barcelona derby (6:30 PM, DAZN), he can repeat the feat. This time at Camp Nou.

The derby arrives at a great moment for Dmitrovic, who after almost four months without achieving it last Saturday, once again kept his goal clean, with a spectacular performance under the posts at the camp del Betis. It was the umpteenth exhibition as a white-and-blue player by the Serbian, awarded by La Liga with the prize for the best save of the month of March, in a week marked by Joan Garcia's debut with the Spanish national team, in Cornellà-El Prat.

Lesson learned

To Dmitrovic, highly valued by the dressing room, he was precisely signed to replace the player from Sallent, currently at Barça. “Joan Garcia’s shadow doesn’t weigh on me. At Sevilla I was Bono’s replacement, who left a great shadow, and then yes, mentally I made some mistakes. It won’t happen again,” said the Balkan goalkeeper to Mundo Deportivo in one of his first interviews as a white-and-blue. Words and actions, because, leaving aside the emotional effect of Joan Garcia’s departure to the city rival, sportingly his saves have made people forget the record of a goalkeeper who at this stage of the season had conceded three more goals than Dmitrovic, the Serb who mends wounds at Espanyol.