Everton’s Muhamed Besic played against Lionel Messi in the World Cup, his first World Cup as well as Bosnia’s, but the thought of asking for a shirt exchange at the end never occurred to him. “I always keep my shirts,” the 22-year-old midfielder says. “I would never change one because playing for Bosnia means so much.”
For much the same reason Besic never entertained the idea of trying to play for Germany, even though he was born in Berlin. “I had an approach to play for the Under-19s, so that was when I had to make my decision,” he says. “Maybe it would have been better for my career at that time to choose Germany but my heart always said Bosnia. My parents never tried to influence me. They just let me decide for myself and Bosnia was just inside my heart. All the Bosnia players are like this. Miralem Pjanic was brought up in Luxembourg and played football in France but he always wanted to play for Bosnia. The people have a strong mentality.”
Besic ought to be up against one of his compatriots in Edin Dzeko at the Etihad on Saturday evening, except that the Manchester City striker has been out of the team through injury just at the time when the Everton player has been handed a run of first-team games through the unavailability of James McCarthy.
“I have never played against Edin and it looks like I might not get the opportunity this time,” he says. “He helped me make up my mind about coming to England but, even though he is only in Manchester, I haven’t managed to see him since. He told me I would probably do well in England but I would have to be patient. He said it is the best league in the world but I might not get first-team chances right away. Now I am here I can see what he means.
“I always fancied a move to England. I like the style of play but I don’t believe I have produced anything like my best yet, only around 50% so far. In this league I am prepared to be patient, though. I have come from a smaller league to a team where players have played over 200 Premier League games so I have to wait for my chance. But I do feel I am getting better. I am getting used to the pace of the game as well as getting stronger through gym work.
“When I came to England I could see that I was a little bit skinny compared to others, so I am trying to build up weight and strength. I think it might be next season before I am really at my best.”
The “smaller league” to which Besic refers was not in Germany but in Hungary. He has not always been as patient as he now seems, or as philosophical about not getting a game every week, and his time at Hamburg came to an abrupt end when he went to see the manager about not being picked. Besic is keen to play down suggestions that Torsten Fink grabbed him by the throat and threw him out of the dressing room, which was how some German newspapers reported the incident, but the upshot was more or less the same. The player’s Hamburg career was over.
“He didn’t grab me. It was just a conversation but a fairly final one,” he says. “I was not happy about not playing. I could have stayed but I wanted to go. I went to see the manager about not getting selected and said if he didn’t like me I would go. That is all. It wasn’t like it was described in the papers.”
To achieve his goal of playing every week Besic decided he would need to drop a level or two – “Sometimes you have to take a step back to move forwards” – which is how he ended up at Ferencvaros. “I was confident in my ability but for my development I needed to be playing every week,” he says. Moving to Hungary worked for him because he gained World Cup selection, even though he had been playing as a central defender for Ferencvaros and Bosnia used him as a No6, the defensive midfield role he currently occupies.
“When I first started out, aged eight, I was a No10,” Besic recalls. “But when I was 16 coaches started putting me further back down the field because they could see I was aggressive. I enjoy tackling. I like the physical side of the game. I was a centre-back for five or six years. The World Cup was the first time I played as a No6.”
It was the World Cup, nonetheless, that got Besic noticed. Roberto Martínez says he had been tipped off about Besic while the player was still at Hamburg but first studied him properly playing for Bosnia against Argentina. “He marked Messi out of the game in the first half,” the Everton manager says. “He is a young man with incredible potential but he has been playing in different positions in different leagues. He needs to have one position and work on that.”
That is Besic’s intention, too, and he cites Martínez’s enthusiasm as the main reason he chose Everton. He had other offers after the World Cup, including interest from Swansea. “I knew literally nothing about Everton but after speaking with the manager I decided this was the club I wanted to join,” he says. “I think I might have been playing for Basel now without the World Cup. I had been talking to them before going to Brazil, but after the tournament there was suddenly interest from England, Spain and Italy.”
Besic did not have the most comfortable of Goodison debuts, not only losing 6-3 to a rampant Chelsea but also being directly responsible for the final goal with an ill-advised backheel in his own half. “Mistakes can happen in football, all you can do is try to correct them,” he says. “I hadn’t given a goal away for two years, then on my first time in England I lose the ball and Chelsea score. I made a mistake against Tottenham, too, because I thought I could head the ball back to the goalkeeper, but I know I must not let it affect my confidence. The manager has said nothing about either mistake. He just wants me to carry on training and learning.”