HEARTBROKEN Millwall players, staff and fans will pay a touching tribute to their much-loved keeper Matija Sarkic this weekend.
The 26-year-old tragically passed away after suffering heart failure in June while on holiday with partner Phoebe in his dad’s native Montenegro.
His untimely death left the whole Millwall community stunned — just one year after their American owner John Berylson died in a car crash and two years since lifelong fan and SunSport journalist Paul Jiggins passed away suddenly, aged 50.
Ahead of their Championship opener against Watford, the club will unveil a mural in Sarkic’s honour, funded by the Millwall Supporters’ Club.
The Lions are also retiring his No 20 shirt and a new gong called the Matija Sarkic Save of the Season Award will be competed for across the first team, academy and Lionesses.
A memorial tree is being planted at the players’ entrance at the request of the squad and Sarkic’s family will be welcomed pitchside pre-match.
Goalkeeper coach Andy Marshall, 49, worked closely with Grimsby-born Sarkic, first at Aston Villa nine years ago, before linking up again at The Den.
Marshall told SunSport: “I met Mati when he was 17 and brought him over to the UK from Belgium.
“He was a smart young man and that was the first thing that hit me about him — always eager to learn. He was desperate to absorb all the information you could give him.
“And it was that, along with his work-rate and determination to succeed that made me think, ‘this lad is going all the way to the very top’.
“He had everything you wanted. The size of the lad, determination but the best thing about him was that he had the ability to have a fun side towards it.
“He enjoyed what he was doing. He realised how to become successful and what was needed to become successful plus he could enjoy himself at the same time.”
Millwall: 33 games, 12 clean sheets
Shrewsbury: 29 games, 11 clean sheets
Birmingham: 23 games, 10 clean sheets
Livingston: 18 games, nine clean sheets
Stoke: Eight games, three clean sheets
Wigan: Three games
Havant & Waterlooville: One game
Marshall will never forget the early morning phone call that broke his heart, from Sarkic’s grieving father Bojan.
The Lions coach said: “There are poignant moments in people’s lives when certain things happen and people remember. I was laying at home in bed and at exactly 6.57am my phone rang and I saw it was Bojan.
“I didn’t quite get to the phone in time to answer but text to ask him if everything was OK, because when someone calls you just before 7am you know something’s not right.
“He called straight back and as I picked the phone up, I knew Mati had died and that was tough. It was awful.
“I’ll forever remember the conversation, what he said to me, that Mati had died and that was very, very tough to hear. I had to take ten to 15 minutes to try to absorb it, which was impossible.
“I was thinking he was a 26-year-old man who four weeks earlier I had been in Turkey and also in Spain training him.
“I also drove over to Belgium to watch him play for Montenegro just ten days before his death.
“Matija was like a son to me. I was close to his family, too.
“So when I found out this after all the years I have spent with him, it hit me like a juggernaut. I was extremely emotional for a long time after.
“It’s hard to accept someone so young has passed away.”
Lions defender Joe Bryan, 30, was close friends with Sarkic.
He said: “As is often the case in tragic circumstances, you hear people talking about a wonderful, incredible person — and with Mati that is true. He was a happy, smiley, wonderful person.
“He was always the first one in to the training ground every morning and had a big smile on his face. He loved his coffee. I’m also into coffee and he was telling me about all the places that he and Phoebe were going to visit.
“He loved his cortado. He always said, ‘The shorter the coffee, the more sophisticated the man’. We’d always laugh about that.
“Mati had this Pilates machine in the canteen that he used to always be sitting on doing his hamstring stretches.
“Whenever I think about it, it makes me laugh. It looked so out of place in the canteen under the darts board.
“It’s been so difficult for us all. We’re just used to seeing him wandering around here with a coffee in his hand smiling. That’s the Mati I remember and it’s difficult moving forward to come to terms with the fact we’ll not see him again.”
Millwall boss Neil Harris believes Sarkic had all the talent to reach the very highest level and would have played a key role this season.
But he said Sarkic’s sad passing has brought everyone even closer together in what was already a tight-knit dressing room.
He said: “When we came back into the building, the first couple of days we started to use it as a mourning period for Mati.
“It gave us a chance to laugh, shed a tear, to remember, to talk.
“We had a group meeting, which I led, and then had a minute’s silence out on the pitch in the goal area. It felt right to do it in the goal area rather than anywhere else — that helped, it gave us a chance to reflect.
“This isn’t about being a professional footballer, this is about being a human being and how you deal with adversity and difficult moments in your life.
“We’re here to help, the club have been hugely supportive to everybody but the players have also been exceptional and continue to be exceptional.
“It’s been a difficult couple of years with Jiggo, who was a good friend of mine, passing and then John, who was also a mate as well as my boss.
“We will always remember these great people and it’s fitting that the club are doing so much to pay tribute to Mati. He deserves that.”
