Mario Mandzukic's tattoo is written backwards and grammatically wrong after Hebrew scroll spotted during Madrid derby

The Atletico striker endured a difficult game during the 0-0 draw with Real Madrid that left him bloodied and bruised

A close up of Mandzukic's tattoo (AP)

Mario Mandzukic didn’t have a great evening on Tuesday night. The Atletico Madrid striker failed to score against rivals Real Madrid, he was left with a bloody face after a clash with Sergio Ramos and had to deny being bitten on the arm by Daniel Carvajal the following day.

However, it gets much worse for the Croatian, after it was revealed that the tattoo on his back – written in Hebrew – is both incorrect and written backwards.

Mandzukic’s tattoo was in clear view when the striker fell to the floor during Tuesday’s Champions League quarter-final first leg, and it soon had fans searching the internet to see what his Hebrew script translated to.

Unfortunately for the 28-year-old though, Stuart Winer of The Times of Israel explained that the script was both incorrect grammatically and written backwards, given that it should have read from right to left. Because it read left to right, Winer said that the tattoo appeared like a mirror-image, which would either take a genius tattoo artist or, in his words, a “hopelessly incompetent” one.

“The text was written from left to right instead of from right to left,” Winer writes on The Times of Israel website. “In addition, the letters themselves were facing the wrong way, giving the slogan the appearance of being in mirror writing, and suggesting that the tattoo artist was either an aspiring Leonardo da Vinci, who wrote mainly in mirror-image cursive, or hopelessly incompetent.

Atletico Madrid striker Mario Mandzukic (AP)

Mandzukic's tattoo actually reads (backwards): 'Which doesn't to kill me, makes me stronger' (AP)

“Once the bizarre lettering had been sorted out, it emerged that the tattoo aimed to proclaim "What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger," although spelling errors rendered the actual translation closer to the grammatically awkward "Which doesn’t to kill me, makes me stronger.”