September the 10th, 2024 – A 25-year-old photo of Croatian football legend Luka Modrić on a bike as a youth has surfaced thanks to a retired dentist from Zadar.
As Morski writes, a photo of a young boy on a bike with a large sports bag on his back has been circulating for some time on social media. Most people from Zadar will recognise its location, as it’s a common place where locals meet and gather. The setting is Narodni trg in Zadar, in the foreground is a little girl posing for a photo, and behind her are several boys. It appears that the group of young lads are listening to the character sitting on his bike and carrying a very large bag. That boy is now known to everyone around the world – it’s Luka Modrić.
Luka Modrić celebrated his 39th birthday recently, marking it with a phenomenal goal against Poland. In this photo, young Luka is just 14 years old.
While not being the subject of the photo, your eye is still drawn to him. Perhaps it is the rather disproportionately massive bag he’s carrying, or maybe it’s something else. The way the other young boys appear to be listening to him intently could point to young Luka Modrić being as gripping then as he is now.
“I’ve always liked to take photos of my children, and this is a photo of my daughter, who was four years old in 1999. There was an event in town, and young Luka happened to be in the frame, he animated it all, he talked, and those other boys listened to him attentively. When Luka began gaining global fame, the media circulated only part of his story – that he spent time taking care of goats as a child. I wanted to show that he’s also a city boy. I remembered that I had that picture, so I decided to show it publicly. By the way, I’m a retired dentist and for a time I worked at the football stadium in Zadar, so Luka also came to me as a patient to straighten his teeth at one point,” Dr. Nada Perković Kevrić revealed.
“They showed him as a shepherd boy, and I wanted to show that it’s not important where you’re from, but what your character is like. I remember him back then as a great animator and a resourceful young boy. Whenever he spoke, everyone would listen to him, just like they are in that picture. I wanted to show that it doesn’t matter where you came from, but who you are as a person. He was a leader from an early age,” Dr. Perković Kevrić concluded.
