Andréa's Own Way

We had this assignment to make an interview, and write it for our business english course at Malmö University. First my plan was to make one with Kevin Prince Boateng. I had the perfect  structure in my head, but that went down the drains when our Prof told us it should be something more career-oriented, so then my dear friend Andréa Lukic was the perfect candidate :)

Here's the result:

Zoran Lukic is almost a legend in the Swedish football world,  so you can imagine that a life as his daughter, who wants to make herself a name in the industry, can not have been easy. Especially when people always refer to you, not by your name, but as “Zoran Lukic daughter which tries to go in her father’s footsteps, and in this way, make a career for herself”. And it probably did not help that Andreá chose to be on the cover of the men’s magazines Slitz and Café.

In 2002 and 2003 Andréa’s father, Zoran Lukic got the biggest achievement in Swedish football one can get, the league. Furthermore he won the Swedish Cup and got to play qualifiers in Champions League. Zoran was the head coach of Djurgården IF and Andréa, who has always been a huge football fan, went to almost all of the games and with these successes her interest for the sport rose even more. She did not just want to watch the game and hope for her father’s team to win, she wanted to get to know the game better, get engaged in it, plunge down into the statistics of “maybe the world’s most beautiful sport”. This was when a dream started to form.

In high school Andréa studied media, with journalism and graphic design as extra subjects, so already then she knew that media was something she wanted to work with. Her thoughts never went to writing for tabloids; she had a vision which was not typical for a girl. Thereto mainstream was definitely not the thing she was going for. People warned her about how hard it is to get a foot in the door in Swedish media, so after she graduated, she panicked and moved to Madrid to get some distance from everything. The hope was to find herself and see if media really was the path she wanted to take with her life. In that particular moment she was not sure if she wanted to take the challenge on; to fight to get into the business in Sweden. After a while in Madrid her mind was set, her competitive side won and she was on a flight back to Sweden to give it a go.

Just after a couple of days at home, she got the opportunity to do some photos for the men magazine Slitz and grabbed it. “I never really thought about it, my impulsivity was the thing that sealed the deal.” It had the snowball effect and the next thing she knew she got the cover for Café. “I do not regret it, but naturally it was not something “positive” in the eyes of many people. In Sweden you cannot take people, who work with something as serious as journalism, seriously when they at the same time pose for magazines as Slitz or Café.”. Andréa wanted to be rebellious, to go her own way instead of listening to everybody else; she did not want to let herself be pushed down by those who thought negatively.

Rebellious or not, the men’s magazines did not make it easier for her career in the football world.


She had a really tough time; almost everywhere she went she heard comments as “That Zoran Lukic daughter who think she knows everything about football” or “That Slitz-chick that tries to go in her father’s footsteps”  etc. “It was really tough and even today I sometimes hear comments like that. Luckily I have managed to produce a couple of really good articles and interesting interviews in my early career, which keeps my bosses to have confidence in me”.  Early career yes, the turnaround came when she landed an interview at the world renowned company IMG that would change her path in life forever. “I did not have any big references in sports journalism, or even rather none, but They gave me an opening into this market, they believed in me from the very beginning.”. Without ANY references in sports journalism, IMG gave her the opportunity of a lifetime.  With a job, life was still not easy; people wrinkled their noses and thought that she rode on her father’s wave of success. It even went as far as people saying that she did not write her own articles; some persisted in believing that somebody else ghost wrote for her. “They simply could not take a good looking young girl in the same way as they took male sportswriters.”.

Football is a male-dominated world and a girl has to be thick skinned to have any success. Its not a grateful job, and as a girl you will receive, and have to deal with a lot of criticism, sometimes even hate. Andréa says that it gets better with time, she has been in this business for a couple of years now and most of the people know to take her seriously. “Girls has to be self-assertive at all times, twice as much as any male and that takes a toll on you.”. Even with all the bad parts the sport is Andréa’s passion; it is a blessing for her to get to work with what she really loves, even if it probably was not what her father dreamt about for her. “I do not think he wanted his only daughter to work in the ungrateful world of sports journalism”.

It may not have been the dream for her father, but Andréa finally is complacent with her life. Last year she moved to her World Cup skiing fiancé in Switzerland, she works for Sweden’s biggest online football-site FotbollDirekt, where she writes chronicles and texts about the sport. She sees a difference in the comments she gets in comparison to the male writers. “After their texts you almost never see any negativity. By me its the quite opposite.”. But it is not all bad, a lot of readers love her texts, her view on football and her way of writing,  nevertheless there is always that minority that persists in writing negative- and sometimes even brutal comments. “That is something that I have had to learn to live with, even if it is not always so easy”. Her bosses thinks that her writing is fantastic. “THAT is a fact that is worth much more than all the negative comments put together. “

The question still stands, from what she knows today, would she have done Café and Slitz again if she got the chance?

“Definitely. These photos can or shall not define the work I do in sports journalism.”. She even wants to take it further and advise young people to try to really find their own niche in life, to be themselves at all times and not to think so much about what the world around them will say. Of course you should always hold a professional stand, but she thinks that magazines like Slitz and Café are harmless. “If that’s the way you want to express yourself, then why not. If not, I understand that too.“. Her motto has always been to ”Think outside the box” and thanks to it she has managed to be successful in this hard world of sport. “Maybe I wouldn’t have been where I am today, if I was mainstream. Maybe I wouldn’t have been interesting enough. You never know what life has in store for you, but you have to take risk to gain something and you have to dare to be yourself to 100 percent”.

xoxo,  
Vicky