His name was Luka Modric, he wasn’t a footballer but a shepherd. The war in Yugoslavia had just began and one day in December 1991 the Serbian rebels found and killed him because he was Croatian. That same day his son, Stipe Modric, moved with the whole family to Zara. At the age of six, his eldest son Luka, same name as his grandfather, was starting a new life as a war refugee. Twenty-seven years later, that child is one of the strongest footballers in the world: Luka Modric winner of the Balon d'Or.
He grew up playing with a ball in a refugee facility,
a person who worked there said: "He broke more windows with a ball than
the Serbs with their bombs." Some doubted that he could become a good
footballer and at the first severak teams rejected him because he looked frail .
He was rejected by Hajduk Split, for example.
At the age of twenty, in 2005, Modric signed a
ten-year contract with Dinamo Zagreb to which he remain tied; then since 2008 in England, he played for Tottenham, and since 2012 for
the strongest club in the world, Real Madrid.
He has been married to Vanja Bosnić since 2010
and the two have three children.
With the blancos Modric won a Liga, a King's Cup but above all four
Champions Leagues, the last three consecutively.
But it is Croatia’s shirt which led him to the greatest glory: in the summer he became the head of the group
that surprisingly beat Argentina, Russia and England, but only stopped in front
of talented France. At thirty-three, Modric crowned his career with the best
prize and for the first time in history, a Croatian footballer is on top of the
world.
“You have to understand one thing
about the Croatian people. After everything that happened to us after the war,
we are stronger. What we have been through has been very hard. Today we are
difficult to break up. And we are determined to show that we can achieve
success ", this is what Luka Modric said when he won the Balloon D’Or.
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