Talent is not always enough to get a great football career. Even if you come ungdomslandsholdet and looks to have a bright future on the track.
Ilija Jurkovic of 22 years is a textbook example of how it can go completely wrong.
His career on the grass are likely to be over even before it really got started, and now has one of Sweden’s greatest talents taken the criminal career and is considered by police to be among the most dangerous and rosa.
the Story will be published in Aftonbladet, who have set an interview up with the young man who played on the ungdomslandsholdet with another shining talent, Alexander Isaac.
Jurkovic was even so good at an early age, that he managed to train with the first team at AIK Stockholm as a 17-year-old.
For the moment is Ilija Jurkovic behind lock and key in one of the highest security prisons in Sweden, in Salberga Institution outside of Västerås. Because of a meaningless fight.
“sitting and watching his old teammates play on television. So you are even here in the prison. People you have met and played with. Alexander Isaac,” says Jurkovic and holding a period of reflection.
“people are happy on their behalf, and I usually write to them on Instagram. ‘Go for it’,” says Jurkovic, who twice previously has been in prison for gross breach of våbenloven and aiding and abetting money laundering.
He himself has been the victim of two assassination attempts, he explains.
three years ago, he put the boots on the shelf.
“I said nothing. I stopped just to meet up. They tried to call me. They asked my agent. He called me, but I answered not.”
“I also had bad contact with my father, and he was always the one who had pushed me, but I answered not him. I was set on having some other things. So I stopped with the soccer ball, and it was there that my problems started,” he explains to Aftonbladet.
Ilija Jurkovic still have a dream to become a successful football player, but he does not want to leave the criminal environment.
“No, if I wanted it, I had done it for the longest time. I do it for a reason. It is not to play smart, or I think it is cool, or something. It has a cause. Everyone has a purpose,” he explains without wanting to tell what it is.
Jurkovic got a korsbåndsskade in 2014, and already the year after he was suspected of the killing, but did not in the prison due to lack of evidence.
