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WORLD CUP
RUSSIA 2018
26 years ago, the stars of the Croatian national team did not run on football fields, but on minefields.
In 1991, Luka Modric, Ivan Rakitic and Mario Madzukic did not understand that the lights in their homes were always to be extinguished to avoid bombing or that they had to be destroyed. walk up to the zigzag shop to confuse the Serb snipers hidden in buildings and hills. It is not easy for a child to understand that the war survives fighting small daily battles.
The indistinct third party that today has the Croatian team in the 2018 Russian semifinals was forged between balls and blood.
Mario Mandzukic
"Here the war is particularly cruel and absurd.The Serbs fire their weapons unexpectedly, when the citizens end up sweeping the broken glass by the last attack.It is the worst of this war. , which does not seem to follow the military objectives There is pure and ruthless malice Even the birds do not know what to expect in this place.
Mario managed to flee with his family to Ditzingen, Germany, where he lived as a refugee for five years, according to Mario's father Mato Mandzukic at Spox's Portal . Mario decided that he wanted to be a footballer. He was even about to enter the children's division of VfB Stuttgart. However, in 1996, the German government revoked the residence permit of the Mandzukic family and Mario had to return home, where he joined the NK Marsonia – the team of his hometown – aware that no spectator would return a club mired in economic crisis and war.
But his desperation disappeared in 1998, when the Croatian national team achieved the feat of taking third place in the World Cup in France . The world again turned to the Balkans and was shocked to see that football was reason enough to put a crowd of people in a war-torn city.
Mario – Inspired by his idol Davor Suker the great figure of this World Cup match – once again believed in his country and joined the ranks of Dinamo Zagreb. Twenty years later, he is a key player in Juventus and the second Croatian World Cup scorer. For his statements a few days ago, he knows that the epic is closer than ever: "we waited years to do something good".
Luka Modric
He was five when this match was turned into a pitched battle at Maksimir stadium in Zagreb. And it was not a common game: it was the internal shock of Yugoslavia : The Red Star was the country's most popular club that was collapsing among the races , religions and territories. Croatian separatists would use identity as Dynamo.
Marshal Tito – the Communist leader who united for sixty-six years six republics, six nationalities, four languages, three religions and two alphabets – had died ten years ago and Yugoslavia he felt more fragile than ever before the desires of collapse.
Modric wanted to see his idol in action: Zvonimir Boban the figure of Dinamo. But even the referee did not give the initial whistle, when fans Serbs and Croats were involved in a bloody confrontation that left thousands injured. The impression this afternoon was taken by Boban himself, who kicked a Yugoslav policeman on national television. This is the symbolic beginning of the war of the Balkans says sociologist Luis Felipe Silva in El futbol y la guerra (2015).
An aggression – he explained – is enough to reverse the false idea of a multi-ethnic Yugoslavia and open a bloody period of armed conflict that would lead to the death of thousands of Balkans in the face of the rivalry of two historically hostile countries: Croatia Catholic and Orthodox Serbia
The war broke out, formally, a year later, with fatal consequences for Modric. In 1991, his grandfather – a humble mountain shepherd – was shot in front of his eyes by Serbian paramilitaries in Zaton.
He lived his childhood as a refugee, besieged by the hunger and cold of the hotels that passed, according to The Telegraph in 2008. This was the only occasion that spoke on the subject.
Today, he plays for Real Madrid and is the captain of a Croatia that has never played a final.
Ivan Rakitic [19659026] The origins of Rakitic lie in the sokci, an ethnic group of South Slavs who are usually identified as Croatians . He is the typical son of a Yugoslav couple: Croatian father and Bosnian mother. Thousands of these unions were detained under Tito's regime without any problem. However, when the war started, these kinds of families – count Alfonso Armada – were separated. His family caught the signs of the disintegration of Yugoslavia in time and fled to the Swiss town of Möhlin, where he was born on 10 March 1988.
He played for the Swiss U-17 team, but he regretted it. On several occasions, he said that he does not understand how he prefers to wear the shirt of a country that forced him into exile. But he also discovered that nothing gives him more passion than wearing the shirt that his childhood idols used in 1998.
"It was a decision that I took with my heart." From Croatian, I have this ambition, this hungry .The Croatian is very competitive, always delivered 100% ", was he declared last week to El País.
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