That’s the only way to decide who gets the ball as nobody wants to get it.

No kid wants to climb into a cemetery, do they?



That was the first football pitch I ever played on, in my home village of Ub in Serbia. A dirt patch next to a cemetery. And I mean right next to it. There was no grass at all, so the surface was either too wet or too dry, depending on whether it was raining or not. It was absolutely terrible. But it teaches you lessons too. You have to expect anything. When you pass the ball to another kid, he cannot put his foot where the ball is going to be and then look where he is going to pass it, before the ball has come; you have to move to the ball all the time because you never know when it is going to bounce away from you.



We lived in a small village with maybe 1,500 people living there at the time. I had a lot of friends and life was all about playing football – no matter how bad the pitch was – so you just play and play. When you go home to your parents, they can only see your eyes because the rest of you is covered in dirt.

That was just life, though. I loved it.