Dzeko: A letter to the children of Bosnia and Herzegovina

This article is translated and reprinted from The Players' Tribune, authored by Dzeko, and was originally published on June 11.

Introduction: At 40, Dzeko will once again represent his country in the FIFA World Cup. He hasn't forgotten the shelling of Sarajevo when he was six years old. He wants to tell all Bosnian and Herzegovinian children: The world is at your feet, and never forget where you come from.

Dear children of Bosnia and Herzegovina:

I just want to tell you one thing: Nothing is impossible.

Seriously, nothing is impossible.

It is our good fortune to be Bosnian. I say this not only because I later achieved my dreams, but also because I was a child who survived a war, and my destiny could have easily taken a completely different path.

I don't like talking about the Siege of Sarajevo, but I think it's important for you to understand what those days were like.

I was only six years old when the siege began. I remember the first alarm went off, and my mother pulled me, and we hid behind the shoe cabinet. That was just the first day. And that kind of life continued for four years.

At the time, we didn't fully understand what was happening, but every day was lived in fear. When our home was no longer safe or habitable, we moved into our grandparents' apartment. I think that apartment was only about forty square meters. Fifteen people—cousins, aunts, and uncles—all squeezed in there, sleeping on the floor.

Back then, we often played Monopoly. Do you know that game?

Because it was so dangerous outside, with snipers surrounding the entire city, my cousins and I would often sit on the floor next to the balcony and play for hours. Air raid sirens and explosions were constantly heard. Sometimes the ground would shake, and the Monopoly pieces would be scattered everywhere.

But whenever we were engrossed in the game, there were always brief moments that made us forget reality.

For a few minutes, we would forget the existence of war.

Forget that the whole world was crumbling around us.

In that brief moment, we could finally be like normal children, just being children.

We really wanted to go out and play football.

Every day, we would see innocent people being carried into ambulances.

But how can you keep a child indoors for four whole years?

You can't.

And our parents understood that.

So every once in a while, when it seemed temporarily calm outside, my mother would open the door and let me go out and play with the neighborhood children.

I will never forget the look on her face when she opened that door.

She always had a faint smile, because she was genuinely happy to see me able to go out and play.

But when I looked into her eyes, I could also see the deep worry within her.

She was afraid that once I left, I might never come back.

All of us had to go out occasionally. Because the water supply was often cut off, we had to carry buckets and queue at a water point on the street to fetch water. The elevator had long been out of use; there was no electricity. So we had to walk up the stairs step by step. Third floor... fourth floor... and then six more floors above that.

I was probably the "strongest" child in Sarajevo back then.

Food supply was also a big problem. Our parents often risked their lives to go out and find food. But sometimes, boxes full of food would fall from the sky, like magic. We called them "lunch boxes." We didn't know where they came from, and we didn't care.

It was military rations. But to us, that food tasted incredibly good. When you eat the same thing every day, even peanut butter seems like a gift from heaven.

Ultimately, we survived.

Looking back, I'm amazed at how strong we were then. We were just children. But that war was utterly senseless.

So many innocent people were killed, for what? For money, power, and ego.

Meaningless.

When I see war on the news today, it makes me uneasy. I don't want to see it anywhere.

Somehow, adults never seem to learn their lesson.

When the siege ended, I was almost 10, and I had no plans of becoming a football player then.

It seemed so impossible at the time that I never even really dreamed of it.

You know, everything was destroyed back then. The grass fields you see today were scorched earth at that time.

I kept playing football simply because I loved it.

My father would take me to a school gym, where I trained for the first few months.

Later, they finally cleared the field and started painting white lines on the scorched earth again.

My father’s job at the time was delivering cakes and bread, but when I joined my first club, he would drive me to training in between his deliveries.

On the way, he would tell me to be kind, to treat everyone equally, no matter where they came from or what they did.

I never forgot those words.

He was a lower-league player in his youth, and he was my hero.

Every time I got out of the car, he would hand me a banana and say, “Good luck, son.”

On weekends, we would watch football matches on TV together. (That was a rare moment of relaxation for me, a break from the Mexican soap operas I watched with my mother every day.)

Back then, Serie A was the best league in the world.

Have you heard of Shevchenko? The striker who played for AC Milan.

I really liked "Sheva."

I loved Italy.

In my eyes, it was like a fairytale land on the other side of the world.

Playing there, I couldn't even imagine.

It was too unreal.

My only hope then was to be able to play for the senior team of my club, Željezničar Sarajevo.

One of my coaches even started calling me "Sheva" because I had blonde hair and scored many goals.

I thought to myself: Well, okay, I'll accept that nickname.

Then one day, when I was 19, a new coach appeared and said he wanted to take me to the Czech Republic.

I didn't really want to leave home, but he told me I'd have a better chance of achieving my dreams there.

Honestly, at that time, I wasn't even sure what my dream was. I just wanted to get better. But I had faith in myself. The strongest part of my body was actually my will.

When I arrived in Teplice, I told myself: "Dzeko, you have to work harder than these guys, or they'll send you away."

They bought me for 25,000 euros then.

About two years later, I signed for Wolfsburg. When we played against AC Milan, Shevchenko and I exchanged jerseys.

Later, Manchester City signed me for 37 million euros.

After that, I went to Roma.

I grew up in a war, and all of a sudden, I was living a fairytale life.

Truly, nothing is impossible.

Even leading Bosnia and Herzegovina to the FIFA World Cup.

Do you remember 2014? Most of you were probably not born yet.

But when we qualified for the FIFA World Cup for the first time, that was the greatest day of our lives.

I remember playing that decisive qualifier in an old stadium in Lithuania, and when the referee blew the final whistle, a group of Bosnian fans started climbing over the walls and rushing onto the field.

But those walls were almost two meters high, and they had to jump down onto the concrete.

I remember turning around and seeing them all running towards us, and I thought to myself: Oh my god, these people are crazy.

Then I saw one person running a little slower than the others, limping towards me, with tears in his eyes.

It was my father.

I said, "Dad, what's wrong?"

He said, "I twisted my ankle when I landed. But don't worry, I don't feel any pain now!"

We just hugged and cried.

Unfortunately, in Brazil, luck was not on our side.

You might not remember, but I scored a goal against Nigeria that should have counted, and there was no VAR back then, so we were eliminated from the group stage.

But at least, our small country once played at the Maracanã Stadium.

At least we showed the world who we are.

And now, we're back.

Do you know something interesting?

I turned 40 in March this year, but I haven't really celebrated my 40th birthday yet.

I'm Muslim, and it was Ramadan during that time, and then we also had to deal with matches against Wales and Italy.

So I thought, okay, I'll treat these matches as my "birthday celebration."

I remember we were 0-1 down in the match against Wales, and I looked up at the scoreboard: 85 minutes.

Panic set in, time was running out.

Then we got a corner kick, and a very short player was marking me, and I thought: Oh, great!

I gently flicked the ball into the goal.

As I started celebrating, I suddenly remembered something: I had participated in four penalty shootouts in my career, and I had lost every single one of them.

Luckily, our young players know how to take penalties.

They don't overthink things like us veterans.

When we played against Italy in Zenica, I was actually very afraid of Donnarumma. You know, he's so tall.

To be honest, I wasn't even sure if I could score if I faced him in a penalty shootout.

But then in the last minute of extra time, I injured my right shoulder and had to be substituted. I didn't even see our first penalty, because the team doctor was still fixing my arm to my chest.

I sat on the bench, and the coaches blocked my view.

When the ball went into the net, I heard the crowd cheer, and I thought to myself...

You know what? Maybe this is luck. I'm not looking, I can't look. Let me just listen to the sound. Let me listen to the sound of my people.

Then Italy missed a penalty. The sound was very loud. When they missed again, the sound in the whole stadium almost went crazy.

I just kept praying, kept praying. All I could see were the backs of the coaches. Then, when Bajraktarevic stepped up to take the decisive penalty, our head coach turned around and said, "I can't watch either."

He came over to me and hugged me tightly.

We put our heads together, closed our eyes, and just listened...

And then, we heard the strangest sound.

First, we heard him kick the ball.

A collective gasp from the stands: "Ah--------"

Donnarumma touched the ball, just grazed it with his fingertips.

The crowd let out another sound: "Oh--------"

The stadium went silent for a second.

That was the longest second of my life.

And then...

It exploded.

Screaming, flares, smoke, fireworks all at once. People were jumping wildly on the field. Our entire bench rushed onto the field.

I hugged my coach tightly, looked up at the sky, and let out the loudest scream of my life:

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!"

It lasted for about 20 seconds.

Our small country, once again, entered the FIFA World Cup.

Getting here has never been easy.

Even at 40, I wake up the next morning with my back screaming in pain, and I still have to reach for the painkillers again.

But whenever my body wants to give up, I think of many things.

The parties I missed, the months away from my family, the summers I could have spent on the beach with friends, drinking cocktails, but instead I dedicated them to games and training camps.

Mentally, it's very difficult, and outside criticism still hurts me.

But the moment I step onto the field, I still feel like a child, like one of you, with a nervous flutter in my heart and starlight in my eyes.

And each time, I eventually come back to the same conclusion: It's all worth it.

All of it is worth it.

Without those bad moments, the good moments would never come.

After we defeated Italy, I went to find some teammates I used to play with in Serie A. Then I went to the stands to find my family. I kissed my wife and hugged my parents.

None of this would have been possible without them.