Luka Modric: ‘Things that aren’t nice happen in war but I don’t have hate’
“The house is still there, you can see it from the road,” Luka Modric says, turning towards the iPad screen and his earliest memories, moments that made him. There are warm memories, he insists, yet there are painful ones too – both centred on a place to which he returns and supporters sometimes visit but where he still has not taken his children. Ivano is 10, Ema seven and Sofia almost three. “They are still a bit young and I didn’t want to talk to them about these stories yet,” he says. “Maybe in a few years.”
They are not easy stories to tell. “They have been [in the village] and seen where I used to live, but I didn’t speak to them about what happened and all those things. In the future, there will be things I can tell them, just not yet. But I will take them, I will take them.”
When he does, they will see a small, broken stone building sitting alone on a bend in the road just above Kvartiric in the village of Zaton Obrovacki where the Real Madrid midfielder lived and a tiny hamlet called Modrici, home to his cousins. “When I go back to my village, you can see the house from there and I get a lot of pictures sent to me. A lot of people are going there and taking photos in front of the house. But it is burnt and everything. It is in bad condition.”
Most of the roof has gone, doors and windows too, and it is empty and overgrown. Behind it, a sign showing a skull and crossbones warns “ne prilazite”: don’t come near. The surrounding area is still a minefield, almost 30 years after it was abandoned. The home belonged to Modric’s grandmother Jela and his grandfather Luka, after whom he was named. Grandpa Luka tended sheep, goats and hens.
It was there, heading up towards the Velebit mountains, that the man who would captain a country that didn’t officially exist yet and would become its most successful footballer spent almost every day until one morning his grandfather was murdered by what Modric describes as the Chetniks – Serb forces. Mown down in machine-gun fire, alone and barely a few hundred yards from his front door, Luka Sr was 66. His grandson was six. He is 35 today.
“I remember my father asking me to kiss him when he was in the casket,” Modric says. “What happened to him is part my own memory, part family story. I have that memory of him, but
also memories of spending so much time with him. I slept at his house, played with him, went hunting with him, everything. I spent a lot of time with my grandpa when my parents were working and I have a lot of amazing memories from my time with him.
“At that age, you just don’t realise why are these things happening, you know? You are not aware of everything happening around you because [your] father is also trying to protect you, to not think about these things. They saw that something was coming. And you see something is happening when you see your parents are worried, but when you are [a] kid you don’t understand. You think about it a moment but you want to play, be with your friends. And then, it was…”
There is a pause. “A tragical moment,” Modric says. “But war never brings good to anyone.”
It was December 1991, six months after the Croatian war of independence had begun and Serb-led Yugoslav troops had occupied the isolated inland area on the slopes where the family lived. If Modric’s grandfather had not fully realised how dangerous it was, now the family did and they fled – first to a refugee camp in Makarska, then in April 1992 to Zadar on the Dalmatian coast. There, they were put up in the Hotel Kolovare, an improvised centre for those exiled by the conflict.
Modric’s father went to war. As Modric recalls it, there was no talk of revenge nor resentment in his father, and he speaks of his own experiences with a certain fondness: days spent playing football in the hotel car park with friends such as Marko Ostric and Ante Crnjak, fellow refugees trying to escape the war – even though there was no real escape from war.
Subjected to heavy shelling, he remembers the sound of grenades and missiles – “that dreadful whistle followed by an explosion” – and the many moments when they had to sprint to the shelter, still with the ball. Yet there is something striking about how he describes that, and his grandfather’s killing, as “part of life”.
It was part of his, three years passing before the war ended. It is a part that formed him but which he has largely avoided discussing publicly before. Now, though, he writes in his autobiography how “my heart breaks every time I think of [my grandfather] dying, literally on his doorstep”. He also recalls how, when he was 10, his teacher asked the children to write a story about something that had left a mark on them. His was a story of grenades falling and his grandfather’s death.
“Even though I am still little, I have experienced a lot of fear in my life,” he wrote then. “The fear of shelling is something I am slowly putting behind me. The chetniks killed my grandfather. I loved him so much. Everyone cried … I used to ask if those people who did this and who made us run away from our home can even be called people.”
“Tears came to my eyes when I remembered this [story],” he says now. “It was a long time ago, and it came out after the World Cup, when lots of stories were being told. I almost forgot. I couldn’t believe that story came out. The teacher had saved it; if she hadn’t, no one would have heard it, so I am grateful to her: it was nice to remember it, and it described my feelings then.”
And now? “War never brings anything good to anyone. I wrote that at that moment. After it, I don’t have any hate towards anyone. And that’s it. What happened, happened. It is what it is; it is a pity that he is not with us. Things that aren’t nice happen in war. I don’t have hate or, I don’t know, [other feelings] towards anyone. It is part of life I had to go through.
“These things can make you tougher or can break you. I choose the other way; I choose to become tougher, to create my character. Yeah, it was…” He pauses, breathes. “There was a lot of fear around but you have to cope. Things that happened made me stronger. I can say tough. When you go through what I have been through, it is much easier to accept some things that are happening in your life later, footballing-wise or defeats or critics or this or that.”
That has been part of what made him; what made all of them. Croatia is a nation forged in conflict, which is not without its issues. Identities are powerful and sometimes problematic or painful, contested too. Sentiment runs deep and runs into difficulties. And sport can’t escape politics or history. At times it plays an active part, in fact. Athletes do not live in a vacuum, still less in circumstances such as those.
“Not at all,” Modric says. They are people too, which is where this conversation begins – discussing how easily that essential truth is overlooked, prompted by his observation that “emotions are the essence of any story”.
For some, the Yugoslav conflict began with Dynamo versus Red Star in 1991. A Yugoslavia team that might have dominated was broken up, kicked out of Euro 92. Modric, a basketball fan, says he cried when he saw Once Brothers, a documentary on how the war destroyed the relationship between the country’s best players, Drazen Petrovic and Vlade Divac. “It’s a very moving film and it’s like this; it’s a shame all these things happened but we cannot change it.”
Modric’s football idol was Zvonimir Boban and he recalls watching Croatia reach the semi-final of the nation’s first World Cup in 1998, the significance of it all. Twenty years on, he helped to take them even further. The Ballón d’Or followed, voted the world’s best in 2018. That was an award celebrated as a collective achievement and Modric describes how the pain of defeat in Russia was soon replaced by euphoria as they came to see what they had done, what it meant.
“It’s indescribable, our feeling playing for Croatia, how we feel proud, what kind of responsibility we have. Especially because we are still a young country.
“We feel that on our shoulders, we don’t want to let our people down, and that’s why we have such a strong spirit: all the things that happened made us stronger, more connected. It’s a huge, huge responsibility. They were proud of us reaching the World Cup final. And that was difficult to imagine, to be honest, however good a team we were. To get there you have to be really special – you cannot get there by luck.”
There’s a pause and he’s back at the Kolovare hotel, a small boy again. Back, too, at the ruined stone house he will visit with his children one day. He talks about sharing success with Marko and Ante, fellow refugees then, inseparable friends now; about his family, which is where he starts and ends the conversation. And about grandpa Luka.
“With every achievement, those memories come to your mind, definitely, definitely. You think about him. It is part of me. I will always have him in my mind. Whenever I can, I go and visit his grave. I had a really special relationship with him. I was his first grandson. In war, you lose important people – for me it was my grandfather.
“It’s difficult to not have him see what I achieved. I always remember him when something big is happening. I would like to have him around to see what I did in football and my personal life – my three great kids, my wife. I would have liked him here to have his great-grandchildren around him. It’s a shame he is not with us, but that’s the way it is. I don’t have any hate towards anyone. You keep moving forwards.”
Luka Modrić: My Autobiography is published by Bloomsbury Sport priced £18.99, available now in hardback and audio book. It is available from the Guardian Bookshop priced £16.52.