The captain of the Croatian national team worked as a waiter trainee at the Maestral restaurant in Zadar, and the cook who met him then never thought he would become a world-class footballer.
The cook of the famous Zadar restaurant Maestral revealed an anecdote about young Luka Modrić to the Story portal. Modrić did his waiter training at this restaurant, located in the Zadar marina, while attending the secondary hotel and tourism school. Her words illustrate just how unpredictable the path to the top was, even for those who knew him up close.
The cook, whose name is not given, recalled her first encounter with young Modrić with a hint of humor.
"Luka was a tiny, small child from whom I honestly never would have expected such success. I told the man who brought him: 'Where have you brought him to me? He can't handle the physical strain.' I thought he couldn't even carry a tray-definitely not cut out to be a waiter,"the cook told Story. However, she also added a note of praise:
"But I have to say he was very obedient and kind."
Modrić finished elementary school in Zadar, after which he enrolled in the secondary hotel and tourism school. The waiter training at Maestral was part of that educational path. However, after just the first year of secondary school, Dinamo's call was stronger than hospitality, so he went to Zagreb where he continued his education in evening school, balancing it with his growing football commitments. He completed evening school, but the waiter career remained just a short episode.
Modrić's path to the top was not only a sporting challenge but also a life one. In the Netflix documentary series Captains, he himself described growing up during wartime.
"It wasn't easy living in that time. You hear alarms, bombs falling, rockets... When I look at pictures from my childhood, I'm always with the ball. You could see that ball would play an important role in my life. And football was an escape from all that was happening around us. That's how it all started. On that concrete, on the asphalt in front of the hotel,"Modrić said. These words provide the context that explains why the boy who couldn't carry a tray ended up carrying the Golden Ball.
Modrić built his career gradually, reaching its peak at Real Madrid, where he spent 13 years and won everything there is to win, including the award for the world's best footballer. With Croatia, he achieved fantastic results at major tournaments. At the time of writing this article, at 41 years old, Modrić plays for AC Milan, continuing a career that has long surpassed what anyone could have predicted, including the cook from the Maestral restaurant.
Such anecdotes from the early days of great athletes' careers often speak louder than trophies and statistics. Modrić's case is particularly illustrative because the physical fragility-visible both to the cook in Zadar and to scouts who rejected him in his early youth-was never an obstacle to his talent, game intelligence, and mental strength. It is precisely this combination of traits, not physical imposingness, that took him to the very top of world football.
