Adam Bogdan acknowledges that his time at Hibs was among his most painful football experiences.
In 2018, the Hungarian goalkeeper returned to Easter Road after spending the previous season on loan at Liverpool, where he was reunited with former Bolton manager Neil Lennon. Despite making 25 appearances, Bogdan was replaced by Ofir Marciano in the second part of the season after taking a hard blow to the head during a Scottish Cup match against Elgin City.
Later, under Jack Ross, Bogdan rejoined the Hibees on a short-term contract, but he did not play a minute before Covid ended the season. Bogdan, who is currently unemployed and 36 years old, admitted he was first hesitant to move to Scotland but eventually fell in love with Hibs. Still, the keeper can’t help but wonder how his career might have turned out if he had not sustained a concussion at Borough Briggs.
He spoke exclusively to Ladbrokes Fanzone about the Hibernian move: “I went there, but I didn’t want to go there. At that point, I didn’t want to move further north than Manchester, and then I got a call from Neil Lennon, who explained that his first-choice goalkeeper had an injury that wasn’t healing and he needed someone to come in. I knew him from Bolton, obviously.
I immediately fell in love with Hibs when I visited. I thought Edinburgh was so ideal and small that we instantly fell in love with it. Playing for one of the best teams in Edinburgh and in such a beautiful stadium felt, to me, like the meeting of the two ideal worlds at last in my life. I was on a fantastic squad and playing for a really wonderful city with a wealth of history and culture.The funny thing about the Scottish league is that it’s kind of like time travel at times. There were games and places you’d go, and there was a lot of playing long games and second balls, but then you play against teams like Rangers and Celtic, who are more like Premier League teams, in front of 50,000 fans, and then you go away to another game where the standard feels more like League One or League Two football. You get everything in Scotland, but I had a great time up there.
The only other major heartbreak I experienced in my career was being demoted with Bolton; everything else was with Hibs. The peculiar thing about my concussion was that, even though it didn’t seem serious at the time, I was unable to recover from it for several months. It suddenly didn’t feel the same after I lost my position on the team and Neil Lennon was fired during that period.
“After that, I was left without a club for a full six months. I was ready to wait; I’d received offers, but I wasn’t going to accept them because I knew I wanted to live somewhere where the football and lifestyle were equally fantastic. In December 2019, I made my way back to Hibs, which made me extremely happy. I was eager to get going, but the league was canceled due to COVID-19.”