Danijel Subašić On March 28, 2008, he shot a ball that went off the field, and then the greatest tragedy in the history of Croatian football took place – the then 24-year-old Hrvoje Ćustić he hit his head on the concrete wall at Stanovi and died a few days later. Today is the 14th anniversary of the death of a young football player for whose death no one has been held accountable to this day.
Ten days after the tragedy, NK Zadar covered the concrete walls with protective styrofoam and plastic foil so that such a thing would never happen again. The material cost 5,000 kuna …
Croatian football was dumbfounded that unfortunate day, Ćustić was transported to the hospital where he underwent emergency surgery and was placed in an induced coma, and the first prognoses even gave hope. However, his condition suddenly deteriorated and he died. After his unfortunate death, there was a lot of talk about the conditions at Croatian stadiums and how to improve them, and here we are today, after 14 years, nothing has changed.
When I watched the match between Šibenik and Gorica on Šubićevac on Saturday, I didn’t think that I would write about Ćustić the next day, but I still remembered him. And for a moment I shivered. Namely, Šibenik’s striker Delić pushed Goričin Krizmanić in a duel along the out line, who ‘flew’ towards the wall! He barely stopped, and another great tragedy was avoided …
Today, on the anniversary of Ćustić’s death, Zadar is playing the 25th round of the 3rd HNL South against the Croats at Stanovi
“Today is Sunday and we are going to watch 11 lions from Zadar’s Stanovi. But I will only see the Twelfth Angel, who flies there with a ball and watches over them,” Zadar wrote on his social networks.
However, the memory of the Zadar football player will never disappear, at least as long as Danijel Subašić, who always wears a T-shirt with his picture under his jersey and with which he led us to historical success at the Russian World Cup. In 2010, Ćustić also got a street that passes by the stadium.