Soccer: Keeper of the faith brings Bosnia rich rewards

Bosnia's Asmir Begovic clears the ball. Photo / AP

The tunnel still visible on the Sarajevo airport runway brought everything home to Asmir Begovic: the desperate need to escape the gunfire and fear that always came when darkness fell on a Bosnia riven by civil war.

More than 20 years have passed since his family took him, then a 4-year-old, away from the carnage which befell their home town, Trebinje, after ethnic conflict between Bosnians, Serbs and Croats exploded as Yugoslavia was torn apart. The Begovics packed up the car and left, finding safety in Kirchhausen, Germany and ultimately moving to Canada. And though Bosnia was always there during this form of exile, it is football which has restored the Stoke City goalkeeper to the country where he most belongs.

Begovic began to restore the link when he made the newly formed Bosnia side in 2009 where he met Edin Dzeko, now a close friend.

Football has given him the opportunity which seemed inconceivable - a place at this summer's World Cup, where Bosnia are grouped with Argentina, Iran and Nigeria.

Life has been always about adapting, ever since the family fled to Germany, where they lived for six years before moving to the oil and ice hockey city of Edmonton, Canada. The goalkeeping is down to his father, Amir, who played for national Yugoslavian league side FK Leotar at Trebinje where he was raised and where Begovic was born. His father represented Yugoslavia to age 23 and picked up the pieces with German semi-professional club Kirchhausen.

"He was my first coach," Begovic says of his father. "After school, on weekends, we just got the balls and 'Let's go train, let's go work'. It was never a chore."

In his early 20s when he returned to Bosnia for his grandfather's funeral, Begovic saw what the war had taken from his family. Dzeko's stories told him much about the dispossessed. But the testimonies of his family rebuilding their lives in Trebinje drove home all he had left behind.

"They talked about the city being bombarded with gunfire. There were certain times of the day you [could] expect it and that's when you went into hiding in basements, on the ground, in houses.

"It's just the way war works. You see it at Sarajevo when you look at the airport runway and see those escape tunnels. A lot of people went underground there to get out."

His mind was made up he would play football for Bosnia if he could; he stopped playing for Canada at Under-20 level to keep the route open. "It was in the back of my mind, 'Maybe one day'," he says. And then, five years ago, the call came from Miroslav Blazevic, the coach at the time. Two weeks later Begovic was a Bosnia international.

- The Independent