Klaus Gjasula would have been ready for this.
72 minutes into Albania's second game at Euro 2024, Gjasula was going to make his Euro debut, and it was a perfect setting. Leading 1-0 through an early Qazim Laci goal, Albania had been sitting deep as Croatia amped up the pressure, David holding Goliath off as best they could. Gjasula was going to be a new, polished stone in the defensive sling.
Coming on for Laci, the message to him was simple: shut up shop. Defend well, stay in that position he likes just in front of the centre-backs, crunch into tackles and sweep up anything and everything. This is what Gjasula had done all his career, after all.
A late bloomer who was only called up to the national team aged 29, Gjasula only ever played club football in Germany. Starting off in the fifth tier of German football, he'd slowly worked his way up: intra-state league to inter-state league to regional league to the second tier to the Bundesliga. This past season had been his second in the first division (with SV Darmstadt): he'd registered three goals across the two seasons and 24 yellow cards (17 of those in one season, a Bundesliga record). If stats could tell you what kind of a player Gjasula was, these were it. Be a human wall, a destroyer... no one expected anything else.
Sounds easy enough, but at this level of football, nothing ever is.
Gjasula entered a game that had reached a frenzied state of energy, and it swamped him. Two minutes after he came on, Matteo Kovacic ran at him straight down the middle. He stepped out to meet the veteran but was just a tad too late, and Kovacic deftly swept the ball away from his lunge - on it went to Ante Budimir who teed up Andrej Kramaric for the equaliser. If you'd managed to focus on Gjasula amidst the Croatian bedlam, you would almost have seen the wheels spinning in his head: 'No! This can't be the impact I have on the match, I must redouble my efforts, run faster, close down with more urgency.'
Buoyed by the equalizer, Croatia would ratchet up the intensity even further. Two minutes after Kramaric swept the ball in, Budimir bullied a ball to young Luka Susic just outside the Albanian six-yard box. Sucic had ghosted into the box, and you could see Gjasula race in behind him desperately. He wasn't tight enough but maybe he could intercept the pass, or worst-case hurry Susic into the shot. Neither happened. Susic's shot, though, was blocked by captain Berat Djimisiti who'd flung himself at it, but the ball rebounded out... right into the path of Gjasula, who simply couldn't put the brakes on in time. Whack! It hit his shins, and into an unguarded net it flew. All of Albania's tremendous hard work snuffed out by an accidental deflection.
Inside four minutes Klaus Gjasula's life had been turned upside down.
Now, a normal person would have crumbled. This is the kind of misfortune that can make anyone believe that the universe has it out for you, that maybe you really are not meant to be here. Gjasula is no normal person though: you don't forge a career out of nothingness like he did, surviving years in the lower-tier wilderness and make it all the way to the Bundesliga by simply bowing down and accepting your fate.
A hint lay in the nickname he was known by across German football: Spartacus. The name had come about because of a protective helmet he started wearing after an injury to his cheek and had kept on for years afterwards, but it also spoke to the kind of footballer he was. Incessant, aggressive, unflappable. So he kept at it, driving Albania forward by stopping Croatia in midfield and quickly passing it out to the more creative players. Surely, though, he wouldn't have a direct impact on the score anymore.
The 90-minute mark came and went but it didn't seem like Croatia would crack. Six minutes got added on and four minutes into it, Albania launched yet another attack. Arber Hoxha drifted out wide and fed an underlapping Mario Mitaj. The left back curled it into the box, but big Josip Sutalo stuck out a leg to divert it from the six-yard box, right into the path of... Klaus Gjasula. No one had tracked him there, because no one had expected him to be there. He'd started running from deep and had just kept at it. Now, no one had ever scored an equaliser this deep into a European Championship game, but Gjasula kept his calm, waited for the ball to trickle to him in slow motion and calmly placed a powerful shot through Josko Gvardiol's legs and past a diving Dominik Livakovic. Bottom corner found with the expertise of a poacher. 29th game for country, first goal scored... and what a time to do it.
���� Klaus Gjasula's last-gasp strike for Albania! #LastMinuteMoments | @Hublot pic.twitter.com/bCsuMwLZzW
- UEFA EURO 2024 (@EURO2024) June 19, 2024
On Euros debut, he'd become the first substitute to ever score an own goal and a goal in the same match in the competition's history. The inconspicuous destroyer had turned an implosion into a salvage act of epic proportions, and he'd done it all via a twenty-three-minute cameo that turned into this edition's greatest tale of personal redemption.
And so, for going from villain to hero in such emphatic style, Albania's Klaus Gjasula takes our Moment of the Day from day 6 of Euro 2024.
P.S. He wasn't done yet, by the by, after scoring the equaliser. In the 97th minute, in borrowed time past injury time, Gjasula would cynically pull back the great Luka Modric to stop a Croatian attack and quietly accept the yellow card that came with it. Of course he got booked too. It was just that kind of evening.