Ajax was close to the arrival of Mateo Barac in 2017, but the transfer was canceled because the defender’s aorta was at the limit of the maximum width. The 28-year-old Croat tells this on the website of KV Oostende, his current club. Ajax did not want to take any risks at the time, as a result of Abdelhak Nouri’s cardiac arrest earlier that summer.
In August 2017, the transfer of Barac from NK Osijek to Ajax seemed to be done, but the transfer fell through at the last minute. At the time, Ajax did not want to go into the exact details of the bounce, but Croatian media reported that Barac had not passed the medical examination due to heart problems. The central defender now confirms that.
“An agreement was reached with Osijek and I flew to Amsterdam to take my physical and medical tests,” Barac recalls. “These tests showed that my aorta was at the limit of its maximum width. In itself that was not a problem to be able to play football, but Ajax did not want to take any risks after their talented midfielder Nouri suffered a cardiac arrest less than a month earlier and was in a coma (Nouri suffered serious and permanent brain damage). The heart tests were also much more extensive than at other clubs. Understandable after what they had been through, but for me it was a sledgehammer blow. Instead of a dream transfer to the great Ajax, I returned to Osijek.”
The following season, Barac continued to play for Osijek. With that club, he also eliminated PSV in the preliminary round of the Europa League in the summer of 2017. A year later, in 2018, Barac left for Rapid Wien. There he would play football for three years, after which he would move to the Russian KS Samara via Sochi. That club is currently renting him to Oostende, which is seventeenth in the Belgian Jupiler Pro League, until the end of the season.