Luka Modric, Real Madrid’s Croatian midfielder, asked this Sunday to stop the “nonsense” of the Russian invasion of Ukraine for which “only innocent people die”.
Modric he suffered first-hand the harshness of a war, that of the Balkans, which caused him to emigrate to Zadar as a child in 1991 after the murder of his grandfather.
That war marked Modric’s childhood. “I grew up in a war and I don’t wish that on anyone,” he recalled in a tweet in which he called for the end of the war caused by Russia.
“We must stop this nonsense in which only innocent people die. We want to live in peace. End the war”, he wrote on his official Twitter account.
The war took Modric away from a relative with whom he had a special relationship and he regrets not being able to see his successes as a footballer. “I had an incredible relationship with my grandfather. My parents worked and I spent a lot of time with him“, he stated in an interview.
“What happened marked me because I was very young and he was a very important person. It affected me a lot. He was little and was not yet aware of why some things happen, but I have recorded how they went to look for him. It was a very sad situation for all of us, but we survived“he added in Cope.
“We have great memories of him. It is a pity that you have not seen what I have achieved, but I hope you have seen it from above”, he wished.
Modric’s words are those of a person whose childhood was marked by a war that forced him to live with refugees.
“We went to Zadar to a hotel with other refugees. He was six years old and lived in 20 meters with my parents and a little sister. It was a tough childhood, but I remember it with joy. There were many children and in front of the hotel we played soccer and we could not think about what was happening around us”, he said.
“The bombs often fell, maybe a hundred meters away, and we had to run to the bunker before going back to training or going home. I didn’t cry, I knew something bad was happening, but there were a lot of people and the children played when we could”, he recalled.
2022
After the end of the Balkan war, Modric dedicated his career to football and after joining 2003 for Dinamo Zagreb began a successful career that has led him to be a figure in clubs like Tottenham and Real Madrid.