The Bosnia and Herzegovina national football team will play its first match at the World Cup on Friday (21:00) against one of the tournament hosts, Canada.
Ahead of the match in Toronto, the captain and best player of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Edin Džeko, addressed the public with an open letter.
The team leader shared his message to children in his homeland via “The Players’ Tribune”.
We are publishing excerpts from Edin Džeko’s letter.
“Dear children of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
I want to tell you something important. Nothing is impossible. Absolutely nothing. We are lucky to be Bosnians and Herzegovinians. And I’m not saying this only as a man who achieved his dreams, but as a boy who survived war and could very easily have had a completely different fate.
I don’t like talking about life during the siege of Sarajevo, but it is important so you understand what it was really like. I was six years old when it all began. I remember the first sirens; my mother would grab me and we would hide behind the shoe cabinet. That was the first day. It continued for the next four years. We didn’t really understand what was happening, but every day we were scared. When it was no longer safe to stay in our house, we moved into my grandfather and grandmother’s apartment. It was a small apartment, maybe forty square meters, and fifteen of us slept on the floor.
We often played Monopoly. You know that game? It was too dangerous to go outside because snipers were lurking everywhere, so my cousins and I would sit on the floor by the balcony for hours playing Monopoly. I can’t say it was fun. We weren’t happy, we couldn’t enjoy the game. Outside, sirens and explosions could be heard. Sometimes everything shook so much that the pieces would end up scattered all over the floor.
But every time we played, those were small moments when we could escape into our own world, even just a little. For a few minutes we would forget the war. We would forget that the world around us was collapsing. For a moment, we could just be children.
Of course, we often wanted to go outside and play football, but every day we saw wounded and dead people being taken from our neighborhood. Still, how do you keep a child who longs to play locked inside for four years? It’s impossible, and our parents knew it too. Sometimes, when the day was a little calmer, my mother would open the door and I would go outside to play with children from nearby buildings. I will never forget the expression on her face when she opened that door. She had a slight smile because she was happy to see me playing. And then I would look into her eyes and see how worried she was that I might never come back.”
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…“In the end, we survived. When I think about all of it today, it’s unbelievable how strong we were. And we were just children. But the war made no sense. So many innocent people were killed, and for what?
For money. Power. Someone’s ego. And in reality, for nothing. Today, when I see war anywhere in the world on the news, I feel sick to my stomach. I don’t want to see it anymore, anywhere in the world. But for some reason, adults never learn.
Bosnia and Herzegovina will play at the World Cup for the first time since 2014, when they debuted at the World Cup in Brazil.
“I grew up in war. Suddenly, I was living in a fairy tale. Nothing is ever impossible. Not even taking Bosnia and Herzegovina to the World Cup. Do you remember 2014? Most of you probably weren’t even born then. But when we qualified for our first World Cup, it was one of the happiest days of our lives.
I remember the decisive match in Lithuania. We played at some old stadium. When the referee blew the final whistle, many of our people started jumping over the fence, jumping from the walls and running onto the pitch. The problem was that those walls were at least two meters high, and people were jumping straight onto concrete. I remember turning around and watching people running toward us in ecstasy and thinking, ‘My God, these people are crazy.’
Then I noticed one man who was running slower than the others. He was limping and heading straight toward me. I saw tears in his eyes. It was my father. I asked him what happened. ‘I injured my leg when I jumped,’ he said. ‘But don’t worry. At this moment I feel no pain at all!’ We just hugged and started crying together.”
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Source: Danas; Foto: ATA Images