Dear Little Mario,
When you put on these shoes for the first time, you can't even imagine what you'll experience in football. You'll score goals on the biggest stage in the world, you'll win the greatest trophies at the greatest clubs, you'll be proud to play for the national team and you'll write the history of Croatian sport.
You'll be successful because you'll always have great people around you, your teammates, coaches, family, agents, and your friends who will always support you and you'll always be grateful to them.
Most importantly, you will succeed because you will eventually give it your all. In the final moments, this will be the thing you are most proud of. You'll sacrifice a lot, but all the moments will make you know it's all worth it.
You'll realize that the time has come for you to retire and seal those boots in the shoe cabinet, and you won't regret it. Because football will always be a part of your life, you will look forward to a new chapter in your life.
Enjoy!
Sincerely, your big Mario
PS: If you happen to run into England on the World Cup stage, get ready around the 109th minute of the game.
Croatian striker Mario Mandzukic, 35, announced his retirement with his first pair of football boots and a letter to himself as a child.
Mandzukic's performance on the pitch is there for all to see, and the 2018 World Cup has been impressive so far, but we don't seem to have much of an impression about his off-court story.
Mandzukic is a low-key player who rarely gives interviews and we hardly see news about him that has nothing to do with football.
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In the early 1990s, the Balkans were filled with smoke and the sound of bullets passing through the air and the roar of shell explosions.
This was especially true of Mario Mandzukic, whose family lived in Brod, Slavonia, close to the Bosnian border, and where the fighting was particularly fierce as an important transportation hub, and the house where Mandzukic lived was close to the center of the war.
Mario Mandzukic's father, Mato Mandzukic, said: "People have been killed on our doorstep, we can't stay home, my only concern is the safety of my family. ”
So, when Mario Mandzukic was 5 years old, Marto Mandzukic and his family left their war-torn homeland and came to the small town of Diechenen near Stuttgart, Germany.
Marto Mandzukic is a footballer who joined TSF Ditzingen to represent the team in the German Fifth Division, while Mario Mandzukic entered the football academy of TSF Diechenen to begin studying football.
The Life of the Mandzukic family was also relatively peaceful.
However, in 1996, Marto Mandzukic's visa expired and the German authorities unexpectedly did not renew his residence permit, leaving the Mandzukic family to return to Croatia as a family.
After returning home, Mario Mandzukic entered NK Marsonia in Brod, Slavonia to continue studying football.
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Mario Mandzukic's football talent was not prominent as a child, he was short and thin, and it was difficult to associate him with a future professional footballer.
But Mandzukic is very resilient, he works very hard and he wants to prove himself.
At the age of 11, Mandzukic ran 3350 meters in a 12-minute run, which is a very remarkable result for an 11-year-old, and this 12-minute run also impressed the coach with the skinny Mandzukic.
As he grew older, Mandzukic's body began to develop, he grew very quickly, he became the tallest on the team, but his foot skills were not particularly good.
Usually, Mario Mandzukic is placed in the right midfield and sometimes plays as a defensive midfielder.
In a youth match, Masunnia led the opponent 3-0 in the first half, and in the second half the coach put Mandzukic in the forward position, in fact, Mandzukic was not accustomed to the position of the striker at that time, the running position was chaotic, the shooting skills were average, but he still scored a goal.
After the game, Mandzukic said to the coach: "Coach, I want to tell you what I like and if I can, let me attack more often. ”
Since then, Mandzukic has been practicing the striker position, and with his height advantage and hard work, he gradually adapted to the forward position, while he also learned to "dive", and was often severely punished for this.
In 2003, at the age of 17, Mario Mandzukic was loaned by Masunnia F.C. to F.C. Željezničar Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
On the first day of joining the team, Mario Mandzukic said to the manager: "I will only play as a striker, coach, this is the perfect role for me, otherwise I would not have come to train." ”
Mandzukic's words stunned the head coach, and in order not to be out of the ordinary, the head coach still accepted Mandzukic's conditions.
Mandzukic returned to Masonnia six months later, not knowing if it had anything to do with Mandzukic's only willingness to play as a striker.
Since then, Mandzukic has only played as a striker.
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In the summer of 2007, Mandzukic was bought for 1.3 million euros by Croatian powerhouse Dinamo Zagreb, where he met legendary Croatian coach Miroslav Blazevic, the Shanghai Shenhua coach who led Croatia to third place in 1998.
Watching Mandzukic's clumsy movements in the penalty area, Blaževich gave him the nickname Djilkos, which is not a friendly name.
In Croatian, Djilkos is often used to describe peasants who have just moved to the city, much the same as what we mean by "hillbilly".
Blaževich explained: "It's a joke because every time he falls in the box he's going to foul me and we're friends. ”
Blažević may have just made a joke with Mandzukic, but since then croatian football media have often referred to Manjukic as Djikkić by Djilkos, and they like the nickname.
This angered Mandzukic, who publicly protested in a 2011 interview with the Croatian daily sports newspaper Sportske novosti.
"I asked everyone to stop calling me Djilkos, Blaževich once called me that, and since then everyone has been repeating it and not even understanding what the word means, I have a first name and a last name, please use them."
Mario Mandzukic's life was like this when he was young, he constantly struggled with everything around him, he asked to play forward, he protested his nickname.
Eventually, he did it all, and now no one will say that Mario Mandzukic is a hillbilly.
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Usually, professional footballers will find some "celebrities" as their partners, even if the other party is a third-line actor or a five-line model.
Mario Mandzukic, on the other hand, is his wife Ivana Mikulich, a girl from the countryside who doesn't have any online social media accounts and for a long time the media only knew her name, with Croatian journalists calling her the most mysterious soccer player mate.
Later, the Croatian Daily Sports newspaper obtained more information from Ivana after an investigation.
She was born in a village called Strizhivojna, 200 kilometers from Zagreb, which is home to about 2,500 inhabitants.
Her father, Zeljko, who died unexpectedly in 2002 while repairing a generator at a thermal power plant in Kosovo, was a salesman and raised two daughters alone.
Ivana's sister married a man from her village and stayed in the village, while Ivana attended high school in Slavonski Brod, where she and Mandzukic met.
A few years later, she came to the capital Zagreb with Mandzukic, where she went to university and Mandzukic played football and has been inseparable ever since.
Later, Mandzukic became a superstar on the football field, ivana did not become a "celebrity", she rarely participated in social activities, she did not give interviews, she did not have a social network account, there were only a few photos of her and Mandzukic on the Internet, and she rarely even went to the scene to watch Mandzukic play football.
Ivana's low profile may have been influenced by Mandzukic, who, in addition to the necessary commercial publicity, also dislikes the media and social events.
Once, after an advertising campaign, several Italian journalists spotted Mandzukic and followed Himdzukic to the front of the car to try to film Mandzukic.
Mandzukic said angrily, "Boy, you're so close, do you want to get in the car together?" ”
Of course, Mandzukic has no ill will toward normal media people, he just doesn't like to be interfered with by the media in his life.
In the summer of 2018, Mandzukic's goal in extra time helped Croatia beat England in the World Cup semi-finals, the first time croatia had reached the final in croatian history.
In the ensuing celebrations, AFP photographer Yuri Cortez rushed into the frenzied celebration of croatian players, which allowed him to take a series of wonderful photos, but he was also injured by the crowding of Croatians.
Upon learning of Cortez's injury, Mandzukic immediately sent Cortez a gift with a handwritten apology note.
"My love and life will bore you, but it makes me comfortable, and as long as there's a dog and a girl next to me, you'll have almost no chance of seeing me in town." Someone will think my life is boring, but that person won't be me. ”
This is Mandzukic's daily life.
The life of a superstar is often so unpretentious and boring.
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Although Mario Mandzukic's daily life is so unpretentious and boring, he is passionate about his hometown of Slavonski Brod.
In 2017, when forest fires raged in Croatia, Mandzukic not only expressed concern through social media posts, he also contacted the fire department in Slavonia Brod.
At the suggestion of the fire department, Mandzukic purchased firefighting equipment worth 20,000 euros for firefighters from Supetar.
A spokesman for the fire department said" Mario said he wanted to remain anonymous, but we wanted to publicly thank him for being really incredible when someone was able to do something so meaningful, and he did it wholeheartedly." ”
In 2018, Mandzukic donated 5,000 euros to a non-profit organization that helped stray dogs in Brod, Slavonia, and soon after he donated 7,000 euros, of which 4,000 euros were used to buy feed and another 3,000 euros were used for veterinary services for stray dogs.
During the 2018 World Cup, Mario Mandzukic fought even more fiercely with the people of his hometown.
In order for the whole city to watch the Croatian national team together, Mandzukic funded the installation of a huge screen in the city park.
Before the croatian match against Russia began, Mandzukic distributed beer for free to all fans who came to the square to watch the match, costing about 3400 euros.
Mandzukic on the pitch wore sneakers bearing the Slavonia Bro logo and after a 2-1 win over England in the semi-finals, he wore a Croatian flag bearing the abbreviation of Slavonja Bro.
After the World Cup final, Mandzukic did not go on vacation, but returned to his hometown.
Everyone came to the square to pay their respects to Mandzukic and thank mandzukic for all he had done for his hometown.
Mario Mandzukic stood on stage and said: "I'm so proud of you guys, during the game I watched the video of you cheering and celebrating the victory and it inspired me. ”
The mayor took the stage to present Mario Mandzukic with the Certificate of Honor of Citizen of Slavonia Bro.
"Today we welcome our Mario, the greatest moment in the history of Croatian football!"
"Mario is the second Croatian to score in the World Cup final, but most importantly, Mario is the one who will not forget his city, the only footballer whose shoes bear the name of the city in which he was born."
"When Mario pulled out the Croatian flag with Slavonja Bro at the end of the semi-finals, many of the people watching the match in the square cried."
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From his start at Masonia FC to his final season at AC Milan, Mandzukic scored 228 goals in 582 professional football games and 33 goals in 89 national team matches, the second-most goals scored in Croatian national team history.
He has been praised by all those who have fought alongside Mandzukic, but when we talk about Europe's top striker, Manjukić's name is rarely mentioned, even if his achievements have surpassed the vast majority.
Maybe Mario Mandzukic was underestimated, but he didn't care.