Asmir Begovic Taking Calculated Gamble If He Signs on as Chelsea Understudy

It was only a matter of weeks ago that Asmir Begovic was making it abundantly clear that he is not one of those sub-species of goalkeeper who is perfectly willing to spend time on the substitutes’ bench.

At the end of last season, with Stoke City already guaranteed a safe mid-table finish, manager Mark Hughes took Begovic aside and told him that, given his uncertain contract situation, he had decided to give the ex-Portsmouth man's understudy, Jack Butland, some more Premier League experience over the final few games of the season.

Begovic responded by telling Hughes that he was not interested in sitting on the bench for any game, even a dead rubber at the end of a successful campaign. So Hughes left his No. 1 out of the squad entirely for the away trip to Swansea at the start of May, with Butland going on to start the next two games as well as Begovic taking the opportunity to undergo some mild surgery.

"[Begovic] wasn't involved because he felt he should have been and his mind was not focused to be on the bench—which I understood to be honest and I was okay with that,” Hughes told Sky Sports after that Swansea game.

It is slightly confusing, then, that for a man seemingly so determined to play in each and every match, Begovic is suddenly being linked so strongly with a move to Chelsea by outlets such as the Guardian, an impending transfer that would almost certainly see him spend prolonged periods on the bench as the understudy to established No. 1 Thibaut Courtois.

On Monday Petr Cech left Chelsea to avoid being Courtois’ understudy for even another year, noting that he had “missed [playing first-team football] badly.” Yet Begovic, to the confusion of many, seems now to be striding towards that same purgatory.

Dave Thompson/Getty Images

Entering the final two years of his contract at the Britannia Stadium at the start of the last season, Begovic was coming off a World Cup appearance with Bosnia & Herzegovina and did not hide his ambition to soon start playing at the highest level possible. Initially, however, he seemed similarly keen to stress that he thought such ambitions were achievable under Hughes.

"I want to keep pushing forward," Begovic told Sky Sports in February. "I've been here five years now, I feel I've progressed, improved as a player. I'm now getting to the stage of my career where I want to achieve things, win things."

He added: “But I'm happy here, we are trying to build something here. We'll see what happens, but I hope to be a part of that."

Stoke were also bullish about their hopes of keeping the goalkeeper.

"Clearly Asmir is a terrific goalkeeper and we are very keen to keep him at the club," club chief executive Tony Scholes told the Stoke Sentinel newspaper. "He wants to make sure he can play at the very best levels his abilities will enable him to... we hope that we can fulfil all of those things at Stoke City." 

By Butland’s Swansea appearance, however, the mood within the club about Begovic's future had clearly changed. It had become clear that a number of elite goalkeepers were going to move in the summer, creating an active market for decent No. 1s—Begovic among them. When Butland started three of the final four games of the season, it was a clear sign of planning for the future.

When Begovic started the last game—a 6-1 home win over Liverpool—it felt somewhat like a farewell gesture.

“It’s about trying to be ambitious as possible, to win and compete for as much as possible because I'm going to be 28, not 20,” Begovic told the Daily Mail prior to that Liverpool game. “I want to have some special things to look back on when I finish football.

“So that's the situation; we will have an honest discussion and I'll be very clear with my opinion and we'll see what the options are on both sides.” 

With transfer plans beginning to firm up at clubs around the continent, Begovic also expressed his openness to being the junior party in the “platoon” system that many top clubs now employ with their goalkeepers. Cech may have been understudy to Courtois last season, but he still played in 15 games for the Blues—winning Capital One Cup and Premier League medals along the way.

“A lot of teams now can't afford to have just one goalkeeper, you have to have two,” Begovic added. “A lot of teams want to have the best keepers. But sometimes that doesn’t suit everyone. Some guys are just programmed to play every week. Play and be the No 1.”

He concluded: “I’m always open minded to everything in football. But one of the things I’ve always done in my career is to be a No1. For me, that’s the main goal.”

Begovic clearly feels he is one of those goalkeepers who needs to play every week. His comments, however, also suggest he is willing to test that hypothesis if it means he finally gets to play for a big club and finally gets the chance to regularly win trophies.

Dave Thompson/Getty Images

Many have characterised Begovic's interest in the move as a sign of a lack of ambition or a desire simply to get paid, but from a sporting point of view, you can still see why Begovic believes the switch might be worth the gamble.

While he will doubtless spend plenty of time watching Courtois from the sidelines, Mourinho showed last season that he knows how to keep his No. 2 involved (Cech played games in all four competitions Chelsea were involved in). If Courtois is injured, at any point, then Begovic will be in place to step into the void. Who knows, from there he might be able to make the starting spot his own.

That is the best-case scenario; the worst sees him languish on the bench much as the likes of Henrique Hilario, Carlo Cudicini and Ross Turnbull have done over recent seasons. But even that is perhaps no disaster: After two years or so, he would surely be able to engineer his exit and relaunch his career elsewhere. At 30, he would still have plenty of time (perhaps even a decade) to achieve all of his ambitions, even if he might initially have to move slightly down the footballing hierarchy to do so.

Still, at least he would have taken the gamble.

For Chelsea, the transfer is something of a no-brainer. Not only is Begovic a great goalkeeper, a player you would happily rely upon to step in if Courtois was unavailable, but, helpfully, he also qualifies as homegrown (at least for now, although the Football Association are looking at rule changes that would remove his eligibility). That is a huge bonus for Mourinho—with the eight homegrown players (of a total of 25) Premier League sides require a quota that elite sides have recently struggled to fill.

The alternative cited in the press, such as the Daily Star, is Queens Park Rangers goalkeeper Robert Green, who would undoubtedly come cheaper (and also qualifies as homegrown). But Green is not of Begovic’s quality and, at 35, would only be a short-term solution. He would not be a bad option, but Begovic would clearly be preferable.

Wages will also not be a problem, with the Blues able to offer Begovic a package that would vastly improve upon his Stoke wages without making a huge dent on the Stamford Bridge salary structure (he would almost certainly earn less than Cech was on, ensuring a net profit of sorts).

A slight complication, perhaps ironically, may come from Cech’s transfer itself—which was completed for an undisclosed fee on Monday. Believed to be for £10 million, according to the Guardian, Stoke can reasonably use that deal as a yardstick for their own negotiations. Like Cech, Begovic is entering the final year of his deal at his current club, yet he is five years younger than Cech and of comparable ability.

According to the Guardian, Chelsea have so far offered just £6 million for Begovic, while Stoke are holding out for nearer £8 million (they initially also wanted Victor Moses in part exchange, but the winger is apparently not keen). If the Cech fee being bandied about is even vaguely accurate, you might think Stoke could hold on for nearer £12 million without being considered unreasonable.

After all, if John Terry claimed to the Alan Brazil Sports Breakfast Show that Cech could save “12 or 15 points” for his new club, it follows that Begovic could be worth a significant number for Stoke next season—especially if the alternative is finally giving 22-year-old Butland the No. 1 spot.

If Stoke are only being offered £6 million for their No. 1, it would seem to make more sense to enjoy his quality for another year, see where that takes them (with each Premier League place in the table being worth an extra few million in competition payments) and then allow him to walk away on a free with their best wishes.

Jon Super/Associated Press

Of course, that neatly ignores whatever desires Begovic has already expressed—and evades the possibility that an unhappy player might not be much benefit having around. It also only delays the issue for 12 months, which is not usually the best way for a club with growing ambitions to move towards then.

In the end, perhaps for Begovic it comes down to where his priorities lie between playing games and winning trophies. Perhaps, after five years of regular games in a middling Premier League team, he has decided the time has come to compromise somewhat on his desire to start in the pursuit of bigger rewards.

In some regards that would be shame—in an ideal world you want to see the best players playing on a regular basis—but in others it is harder to begrudge the desire.

“Like anyone I'd love to play at the highest level,” he said in May. “It's what I've worked so long and hard to do, so somehow if that happens—I will be honest with the club and cross the bridge when we get there.”