The boy herding goats in this old documentary footage from the Velebit mountain is a five-year-old Luka Modrić, captain of World Cup finalists Croatia.

Pavle Balenović filmed the wildlife documentary decades ago but only learned in recent years that the young boy in this clip was the Real Madrid midfielder.

He wrote:

The Modrić family, they used to be quite decent, nice people. I visited them whenever I went filming the wildlife in the mountains.

So I took the shots of my friend and his son collecting their herd of goats, closing the pen. It was planned for editing a wolf documentary.

It was back in 1990 just a while before the war destroyed their home. The war changed everything and I haven’t seen them since. They moved away.

Then just a few years ago I got some information on who the small boy collecting his father’s herd in my episode is.

He hasn’t seen these shots because this is the first time they are published.

The construction of the new highway lasted a few years what ruined the peace the local wildlife needed to live in.

Read more: tportal.hr