Dominik Greif unravels the tape that hold his fingers in place, eases into a chair in the sunshine and, to the sound of birds singing in Son Sardina, starts talking about the law of attraction. Somehow Real Mallorca’s substitute goalkeeper, the man who went through hell, almost walked away and played only three league games in three seasons, became the hero who took them to within reach of only their second ever trophy. He faced his demons in silence and solitude; now he and his teammates face Athletic Club in the Copa del Rey final on the day he turns 27. Some might call it destiny. Dominik Greif, for a start.
“Actually, I am trying to force it,” he says, the kind of smile he hasn’t always been able to wear spreading across his face. “I think about Connor McGregor predicting exactly how his fight against José Aldo would go: he said it was the law of attraction, that if you can imagine it and you have the courage to speak it, it will happen. So now I am saying to everyone: ‘The final is the day of my birthday, it is written in the stars, it will happen.’ So hopefully it will.”
It is something else to hold on to, another act of self-conviction, and why not? Not so long ago, even imagining this was impossible. “It’s different now, huh?” Greif says.
The first time Greif thought he had signed for Mallorca, waiting in a Palma hotel after an 18-hour, three-flight journey in January 2021, Slovan Bratislava backed out, forcing him to return to a place where they now called him a “traitor” and a “rat”. “It was not easy but I said like: ‘This is the real football, this is how it is,’” he says. When he did finally move six months later, the most expensive goalkeeper in Mallorca’s history at €2.5m, it was announced with a video inspired by Shawshank Redemption, Greif free at last. Instead he was about the enter a tunnel long and dark like the one Andy Dufresne dug.
He was 24, three times a Slovakian league champion, an Iker Casillas fan who was already an international, and it should have been the start of something special. But a back issue doctors struggled to understand kept Greif out for a year, silent and invisible, and might have ended his career. “When I arrived [in March 2022], he was laid out, abandoned,” Mallorca’s coach, Javier Aguirre, said. “I didn’t know what to do with him. We were going to sell, give him away, I don’t know. He was liquidated, crippled, destroyed, bent.”
“I was not able to move,” Greif says. “I am not over-exaggerating: I really was not able. I could not live. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t move. I ate so much pain killers my stomach was broken. There was something on the MRI and the CTs but nobody knew what. I don’t really want to go into details but it was difficult to find where my problems came from. I can for sure say that it was not my head or something psychological as some might think. A real injury, real problems. But there was uncertainity.
“That [mental part] was the worst thing. If you break your ACL, which is one of the most devastating injuries in football, you make an MRI, you know what the injury is, the protocol, how much time you will be gone. But I didn’t know. You do an MRI, you send it to one doctor, you send it to another doctor, everybody says something [different]. You try something to see if it works, and it doesn’t. So you start again, and again. It was a year until a doctor my agents found says: ‘OK, it’s this …’ and it really was.”
When Greif returned to training in November 2022, finally joining a group he had not truly been part of, he posted a message on social media. Addressed to “all silent fighters”, he told those facing battles “no one knows about”, “demons, pain, sadness [and] loneliness”, that he knew how they felt, and not to give up.
“I wanted to say something because if just one person reads this and it helps, I would be happy,” he says. “Because a lot of days I wanted to hold up my hands and say like: ‘It’s gone, it’s over.’ But you sleep, wake, go again. Always show up … People didn’t know but they were criticising me when I actually couldn’t move.”
The post concluded: “We may not cut any ribbons and we may not get any trophies but if we learn to hang on we will be alright. There is always HOPE!!!”
Now, he actually might. Yet this is not just player returns from injury, wins football matches; 18 months on, Greif has barely played any. In his absence, Mallorca signed a new goalkeeper, Predrag Rajkovic. Until last weekend, Greif had 180 La Liga minutes, losing twice and conceding six. Mallorca, in the tradition of many Spanish teams, including Saturdays opponents, gave him cup games which were little consolation: in 2021-22, he played once, against third-tier Segoviana. The following year, he played three times, but only once against a primera side. Then, this season, everything shifted: six games, one goal conceded, mean that Saturday’s final will be his 14th for the club.
“The turning point was the [quarter-final] win against Girona,” he says. “Until then we only played lower-league teams. I felt the need for a good game against a ‘real’ opponent. Girona were top, demolishing opponents, but I really felt we would win. I made two good saves, we went 3-0 up before half-time. That gave me confidence.” In the semi-final Mallorca drew 0-0 with Real Sociedad at home and 1-1 away. Greif saved two penalties in the second leg, from Brais Méndez just before half-time and Mikel Oyarzabal at the start of the shootout, the forgotten man becoming the unexpected hero. “Dominik deserves it; he has suffered,” Aguirre said.
By the time they got to penalties, they knew. Greif had been wearing his pants the lucky wrong way round – “not during the game: this would be too uncomfortable; it’s uncomfortable enough just during the day”, he says, cracking up – and if there is an image of Mallorca’s run it is the huddle when their players were leaping about, laughing and joking, celebrating as if they had already won.
“We had nothing to lose. There was no pressure. I saw everybody crying and celebrating afterwards and I understand. But I thought of that line from Kobe Bryant in the 2009 NBA playoffs: ‘The job’s not finished’ – and I told them that. For Mallorca, the odds of even getting here are so low. We can be proud whatever happens. But we’re here now, why not try to finish it?”
Greif gazes across the pitch. “I feel a little bit of satisfaction. It is hard not to play, then be healthy again and still not play. In my mind, it’s not enough: I have only played four, five games against real opponents. But I am so happy, so relaxed. I enjoy it more than ever after all the problems … A few weeks ago, I got to this point mentally where I accepted it a little bit: OK, most probably I will not reach the career goals I wanted, where I could, because of the almost three years I lost. That gives me a little bit of freedom.
“It’s not giving up – if I did, I wouldn’t be here every day, playing at this level. It’s more like an acceptance that sometimes you cannot control things. From a young age, people say: ‘If you have talent and work hard it will pay off’ … and it will not. I am not mad about it; it is just the truth. So many talented, hard-working people didn’t get to their level because of circumstances they could not control. Just be the best you can.
“I have a feeling now that I can’t explain. It’s relaxedness, calm. I am ready. If you play for Mallorca it is not so easy to win titles but you go through Girona and Real Sociedad. We are this cup team and we’re in the final: one game.” And on his birthday too, 27 years since he was born in Bratislava, 21 since Mallorca lifted their only major trophy. Even the word historic doesn’t quite do it. The birds sing, the sun shines and Greif smiles. “OK,” he says, “so let’s say legendary.”
