The amazing images of the young Luka Modric, shepherd in the Croatian mountains

At the age of 32, Luka Modric is considered one of the greatest midfielders of his generation. But to become one of the great icons of his country and a wealthy sportsman, the Real Madrid player had to overcome many hardships, especially during a childhood marked by the tragedy of the civil war in the former Yugoslavia.

Before the finale against France, the amazing images of a documentary bought by BBC but which has never been broadcast are resurfacing. These show the young Luka Modric (from 2'29 ''), in the mountains of Jasenice, not far from his village of Modrici, protecting a herd of goats from the threat of the wolf.

Pavle Balenovic, the author of the documentary made in 1989 and 1990, claims to have worked with the Modric family during this shoot. He returns to this amazing discovery. "They were very nice and I went to see them every time I filmed the mountain fauna. Shortly after the 1990s, the civil war destroyed the family's home. Everything suddenly changed and I did not see them again. They had gone like many people from this region. And then, a few years ago, I had information about the child who guides his father's flock. This child had become a famous Croatian footballer Luka Modric. He was not able to see these images since it is the first time that they are diffused ", affirmed Balenovic

The image not being of good quality and the blond child is difficult to identify, it seems difficult to know if the Croatian director says true but Luka Modric (on the photo opposite) actually lived in a family with modest origins installed in the heart of the region described in the documentary . Born in 1985, the toddler and his parents were forced to leave their village at the age of six, at the very beginning of the war for the independence of Croatia (August 1990-November 1995), to join Zadar. The family house destroyed and without his grandfather killed by Serb forces, the young Modric grew up in this city on the Dalmatian coast. It was under the shelling that the Croatian nugget made its first steps as a footballer before becoming, some years later, one of the greatest hopes of NK Zadar, then DInamo Zagreb.