Zdravko Mamić is a wanted man.
Not in a football sense, but in a real, serious criminal sense.
He’s been in Bosnia, who have refused to extradite him to Croatia, where he’s facing a whole lot of trouble including sentences for tax evasion and siphoning money from previous club Dinamo Zagreb.
But, while he was there, he was apparently good at negotiating transfers, and agent Milan Martinovič doesn’t want people to forget that.
One of the deals that Mamić oversaw was Luka Modric moving to Tottenham Hotspur.
That transfer itself has been the subject of Croatian court cases regarding payment kickbacks, with the player himself ending up in trouble.
Modric could have gone to Valencia for a lower fee, but Zagreb held out, with Mamić confident he would be able to get more in a future window, and he did so.
Martinovič is quoted by Dnes as saying: “This is the strategy of boss Zdravko Mamić, one of the best football managers in Europe. He has a clear vision of how to create a team for youth. He has the intuition of doing business. Luka Modric, I’ll tell you how he sold him to Tottenham. I came after him in January 2008 for Valencia. I told Zdravko they offer €15m, you will not get more. I told him, and he? He said ‘Milan, not yet. We’ll sell him for twenty in half a year.’
“He had a belief. Tottenham happened.”
Tottenham paid £16.5m, which at 2008 exchange rates was significantly more than the €15m from Valencia, and likely around the €20m target.
The newspaper then pointed out that Mamić is living in Bosnia, having been sentenced in Croatia to six and a half years because of embezzlement, but Martinovič is sticking up for his old friend: “If he came back home, he would have to go to jail. Whoever gets a penalty in Croatia for more than five years must go to prison and only then appeal. You know, until judgment is final, I believe Zdravko is innocent.”
