Former Croatian footballer Dario Šimić arrested over alleged illegal campsite permit

Dario Šimić, a former Croatian international footballer, was arrested as part of a new investigation by the Croatian anti-corruption bureau USKOK and police. Unofficial reports suggest the arrest is linked to suspicions of illegally acquiring a permit for a campsite in Tisno.

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Jelena and I have been together since our youth and we go through everything together. We celebrate successes together, we lift each other up when we fall. I owe her everything I have achieved in my career.

This marks a new legal challenge for the former AC Milan and Dinamo Zagreb player. In recent years, Šimić has often been in the public eye due to his long and seemingly stable marriage to Jelena. The couple, who met in their youth and married in 2000 after a four-year relationship, have been married for 26 years and have four sons: Roko, David, Viktor, and Nikolas.

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When I am away for work, and even today when I am not around, she takes on both my role and her own, and does the hardest job in the world, keeping the family together.

In past interviews, Šimić described his marriage as a partnership where they support each other through successes and failures. He stated that Jelena handles the majority of family responsibilities when he is away for work, calling it "the hardest job in the world." He emphasized their shared decision-making and open communication as keys to their lasting relationship, noting they only argue over minor issues.

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Perhaps the secret to our happy marriage is that we make all decisions together, we only argue over trifles, and we talk about problems.

The couple's eldest son, Roko, is following in his father's footsteps as a professional footballer, currently playing for Cardiff City and representing Croatia's youth teams. Their second son, David, was born with Down syndrome. Inspired by their experience, Jelena and Dario established the Hureku association for early education in January 2017. Šimić explained that their initial focus on children with intellectual disabilities broadened as parents of typically developing children also showed interest in their educational methods, leading them to advocate for early education for all children.

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We founded Hureku in January 2017. David was a year and a half old then and was already achieving his first successes, cognitively and motorically he was almost not lagging behind children with typical development.