Mari Carmen was 78 and late. It was a January morning in Pamplona, cold and wet, and the taxi that was supposed to take her to hospital hadn’t turned up. Standing in the street watching time and traffic pass but no cabs, she was getting a bit worried when she saw a young man she thought she recognised. She, after all, is an Osasuna supporter and he is their striker. Although, like her, he wasn’t having the best of times back then; he was halfway through the season, well into the winter, and had scored just once, when she approached. “Excuse me,” Mari Carmen said. “Are you Ante Budimir? Could you do me a favour? Could you take me to the hospital?”
So he did, and there was the selfie to prove it. Mari Carmen knew her family would never believe her but, originally from tiny Carcastillo 50 miles south, recently widowed and having moved to the capital for health reasons, a tumour returning, that was definitely her in the front seat and that was definitely him alongside her. The picture eventually appeared weeks later when her daughter Myriam posted a cartoon strip to thank the many people who had helped her mum over a couple of difficult, lonely months, in which it felt like everything was going wrong at once. “Good on Osasuna for signing people before stars,” she wrote.
Before stars, sure, but stars too. “I’d like to think if my mum or grandmother needed help in the street people would be there,” Budimir said when asked about it. That, he said, was “nothing”; this, on the other hand, was quite something. On Saturday afternoon, Mari Carmen’s driver scored against Real Madrid, 22,390 people at El Sadar celebrating as he ran towards teammates who know exactly what this takes, and then handing him a standing ovation when he withdrew. His goal had given Osasuna a 1-1 draw with the leaders and momentarily taken them to seventh, equalling their highest finish in 18 years; it also took him above Sabino Andonegui, the striker who arrived 71 years ago and they called the Hammer of San Juan, history made amid the hysteria.
On a weekend in which all the attention was on Jude Bellingham getting sent off, an inescapable and childishly hilarious mass debate started about what he actually said and whether it made a difference, everyone everywhere throwing accented English expletives about to the point where a primetime TV set was literally emblazoned with “fuck off-fuck you”, you might not know it but something actually remarkable had happened. The baby born in Zenica, Bosnia, whose family had been forced to move to Croatia and begin again, the 33-year-old who hadn’t even played in primera until he was 29, had become Osasuna’s all time top scorer there. “To make history at a club over 100 years old makes me very proud,” he said. And then he said “thank you”: he wouldn’t have got there without help.
“People from the Balkans know that the path to success is a long one,” Budimir once told Ara, and while the war is not something he talks about much, it is something that “marks all of us”. From the town of Ozimica, although he was born 50km away in 1991, within six months was taken to Croatia, where his aunt lived. They way he tells it, he started playing in the street, usually in goal against bigger kids and within view of the 4,500-capacity Velika Gorica stadium. That, he told his mum, was where he wanted to play but he did better: he played at Radnik, Zapresic and Kranjceviceva, at St Pauli, Crotone and Sampdoria, although there were no Serie A goals. When he joined Mallorca in 2019, they were in the second division; he helped them up and the following season, his first in primera, scored 13. In 2020, he became Osasuna’s most expensive signing, at €8m, albeit the move was initially a loan. Since then, only three men in Spain have scored more. At Osasuna no one ever has.
It had started well – there were 11 first division goals in his debut season, a total only beaten at Osasuna once since 2001, and eight the year after – but the day he took Mari Carmen to the hospital, Budimir had just one. Call it karma if you like, kindness repaid, or just a coincidence, but seven more followed, then 17 the season after, and 16 so far this. Only Robert Lewandowski and Kylian Mbappé have more, and at clubs that create twice as many chances; over the last two, only Lewandowski has.
That slump was never likely to last. “Budimir is special,” Osasuna’s keeper Sergio Herrera says. “We have to put up with him sometimes and sometimes we give him some back. He’s so demanding of himself and us that we have to be patient.”
Budimir is profoundly religious, a university economics student who describes himself as serious and speaks in a slow, quiet, almost emotionless voice, but also the man who pinned up a handwritten note on Osasuna notebook paper when he moved flats, thanking his neighbours and wishing them all the best. Eighty-five percent of his goals have been scored with a single touch, which feels fitting somehow: no adornment, no flash, just efficiency: always there, over and over again. “It’s madness. And it’s not just the goals; it’s everything he generates, everything he transmits to us,” teammate Aimar Oroz says. No one in La Liga has made more aerial challenges; no one has won more, either.
He’s the one sending the latest European coefficients to Osasuna’s sporting director, Braulio Vazquez, another opening for La Liga clubs leaving no excuse for failing to update the objective from survival to Europe. “He’s methodical and a bit stubborn: an old-young man,” Braulio says. He’s the one, coach Vicente Moreno reveals, who called before joining, wanting to know everything. “No one else has done that,” Moreno says. At Mallorca, where they worked together, Moreno admits some teammates thought the attention to detail was “a bit absurd”; but, he says, Budimir was “convinced that improvement was about repetition”. He recently described the Croatian as a guy that doesn’t treat every match like it was his last, he treats every training session like it is. “I’d invite you to watch him; everything is a product of work,” he said.
He is the one who would be on to Jagoba Arrasate, the former Osasuna coach, and especially his assistants, asking for stats, videos, extra drills, dragging them to the training pitch after sessions. The one drafting in some young player to deliver cross after cross. In a press conference after training at Tajonar this week, Herrera was asked about him. The first response was probably the most telling: the goalkeeper just laughed. Then he looked left as if to ask: how do I explain him to them? “He’s out of the ordinary: he’s probably still out there working now,” the goalkeeper said, which would be standard stuff, only it turned out he actually was. Within 10 minutes someone had provided a video, live, and there was Budimir alone, finally packing up, wheeling off the wooden box against which he hits countless extra touches every day.
“He might not be the best centre forward in the world, but he’s very smart, he knows how to make the most of his qualities and work on his weaknesses,” Herrera said. “It’s every day and you see it. We’re proud to have him. He is an example to us all, and not just because he is going to make history.”
And so, a few days later, he did. And if Osasuna were a little fortunate to get a 1-1 draw with Madrid, what he does is no fluke. Madrid started strongly, scored through Mbappé and might have got more: Vinícius could have had a penalty and missed two good opportunities, Bellingham was sent off before half-time, Vinícius and Mbappé still made chances even a man down, Herrera producing a superb stop in injury time, and when Budimir got the chance to equalise on the hour, it came from a penalty they contested. The Croatian’s shot was already rolling wide when Eduardo Camavinga took him out, but the VAR gave a penalty.
Girona 1-2 Getafe, Leganés 3-3 Alavés, Osasuna 1-1 Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid 1-1 Celta Vigo, Villarreal 1-1 Valencia, Espanyol 1-1 Athletic Bilbao, Real Valladolid 0-4 Sevilla, Real Mallorca 3-1 Las Palmas, Real Betis 3-0 Real Sociedad, Barcelona 1-0 Rayo Vallecano
It was Budimir’s fifth penalty this season but he won all five himself and you still have to put them away. Last season, he produced the most baffling miss you’re ever likely to see when in the 97th minute at Mestalla his legs just stopped working, as if his brain had jammed and he couldn’t decide which way round his feet went; this time, he sent Thibaut Courtois one way and coolly put the ball the other, the place erupting. Already the highest scoring foreigner in Osasuna’s history ahead of Jan Urban and John Aloisi, his 16th goal in all competitions, took him to 57 in primera and another record. “He deserves it,” Herrera said. “And his success is ours too.”
It was not chance; instead this was the product of a man for whom every detail matters and the people who helped him along the way, someone who does every little thing to the letter. Every. Single. Time. Well, almost. On the morning he became Osasuna’s record scorer, Budimir failed to turn up to the team meeting on time. “I thought it was at 25-past, not quarter-past,” he admitted afterwards. “It’s the first time in my whole career it’s happened, and my teammates enjoyed reminding me. I got a fine but they waived it because of the record and I’ll invite them all to dinner instead.” There was a smile as their greatest ever striker told the story, maybe even a hint of embarrassment too. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Sometimes, though, life’s better like that. Once in a while, Mari Carmen can tell him, good things happen when you’re late and days that start out all wrong turn out all right in the end.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Real Madrid | 24 | 29 | 51 |
| 2 | Atletico Madrid | 24 | 23 | 50 |
| 3 | Barcelona | 23 | 39 | 48 |
| 4 | Athletic Bilbao | 24 | 16 | 45 |
| 5 | Villarreal | 24 | 12 | 41 |
| 6 | Rayo Vallecano | 23 | 3 | 35 |
| 7 | Mallorca | 24 | -7 | 34 |
| 8 | Real Betis | 24 | -1 | 32 |
| 9 | Osasuna | 24 | -4 | 32 |
| 10 | Girona | 24 | -3 | 31 |
| 11 | Real Sociedad | 24 | -3 | 31 |
| 12 | Sevilla | 24 | -5 | 31 |
| 13 | Getafe | 24 | 2 | 30 |
| 14 | Celta Vigo | 24 | -3 | 29 |
| 15 | Espanyol | 24 | -13 | 24 |
| 16 | Leganes | 24 | -13 | 24 |
| 17 | Las Palmas | 24 | -12 | 23 |
| 18 | Valencia | 24 | -13 | 23 |
| 19 | Alaves | 24 | -10 | 22 |
| 20 | Valladolid | 24 | -37 | 15 |
The La Liga blog will take a two-week break before returning on 10 March.
