THE UNKNOWN GALACTICO
Real Madrid’s new €60million striker is one of the most coveted young players in Europe and used to being the centre of attention. Powerful and potent, the 21-year-old Serb has been in demand for as long as he can remember.
With 27 goals in all competitions for Eintracht Frankfurt last season, Jovic was regarded as a football prodigy while still at infant school, swiftly becoming aware that the doors of advancement, which were closed to the majority of his peers, were unbolted and unguarded for him.
An ethnic Serb born and brought up in the Bosnian village of Batar, he was only seven when he received his first footballing job offer, invited to join Teretana Tas, a team in the Belgradebased “Mini-Maksi”, a development league for kids in the Serb capital. This would be a first taste of football meets business and an enlightening glimpse of the money to be made with a ball at his feet.
“We were offered a lot of financial help,” recalled his father, Milan, in an interview with the Serb magazine Mozzart Sport. “Luka scored a hat-trick in a trial game and afterwards I was told he would be paid €50 a match and we’d also have €20 a game in travel expenses. That’s right, €50 in 2004. That was no small amount.”
Just 12 months later he was snapped up by leading Belgrade club Red Star. His sponsor was the club’s long-serving youth coach and talent-spotter Tomislav Milicevic, an iconic figure at Red Star for over three decades and the “discoverer” of a string
