Previously, you might not have even labeled Luka Modric as ‘one to watch’. The midfielder was in Germany in 2006 for his first major tournament, but had only just been included in the World Cup squad. If you had to pick a rising star from Croatia’s squad, you probably wouldn’t have gone with him.
Modric was 20 and had settled at Dinamo Zagbreb after loans with Zrinjski in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Premijer league and Inter Zapresic, a small club from a western suburb of Zagreb. He made his Croatia debut in March that year in a 3-2 friendly win over Argentina, but anyone trying to identify the country’s next great player would probably have settled on Niko Kranjcar.
Related: Team guides for Euro 2024 part six: Croatia
Kranjcar was a year older than Modric and a regular starter in a Croatian team led by his father, Zlatko. While Kranjcar played all 90 minutes of the opening World Cup match against Brazil in Berlin, Modric remained on the bench hoping for a cameo role in the next match against Japan.
When Croatia were pinned by Japan in Nuremberg, Dario Simic, a rare holdover from the bronze-winning team of eight years earlier, made his 82nd appearance and became Croatia’s most capped player. The song seems funny now. Modric, who replaced Kranjcar after 78 minutes that day, more than doubled it. He is set to make his 176th appearance against Spain on Saturday. Back in Germany, 18 years later.
All other players from the 2006 squad have long since retired. Even Kranjcar stopped playing more than six years ago. Some, like Niko Kovac and Igor Tudor, are coaches with a lot of experience; Others are football managers and some, including Kranjcar and the talismanic striker Dado Prso, are more comfortable as far from the public eye as possible. Many others have since come through the team and many of them have retired as well.
But Modric is ready for his fifth European Championship and ninth major tournament. It will undoubtedly be his last. “I don’t dare bet on that,” says Slaven Bilic, who worked for Modric as Croatia manager between 2006 and 2012 and before that for two years with the under-21s. “With Luka you never know.”
Bilic made Modric a key player almost immediately after taking charge following Croatia’s poor World Cup result as he began rebuilding the team. Although none of the other original Bilic boys, as they were affectionately known, are active for the Vatreni – Ivan Rakitic is still playing, but retired from international football five years ago – it feels like that was the start of the ‘Modric- generation’ that brought enormous success to a small country on the world stage.
In fact, forget generation; a Modrian era is what it is because it seems like he has always been there and everything revolves around him, regardless of the managers or teammates that come and go. There were – and still are – other great players, but he has become almost synonymous with Croatia.
The period had both ups and downs. The 2008 European Championship was the summer of love in Croatia. Never before or since have they looked so cool and sexy, a young and powerful team crushing England’s hopes of qualification by beating them at Wembley even though their own place in the final was secured; to beat them just because they could. Croatia started the tournament brilliantly, winning all three group matches, with Modric shining brightest. It ended in deflation against Turkey in the second round.
The 2012 tournament was difficult, especially after the failure to qualify for the World Cup two years earlier and the backlash that ensued at home. Modric played in a much more withdrawn role and although a weakened team fought valiantly against two of the opponents they will face again at Euro 2024 – Italy and Spain – and almost made it through the group, it was not to be.
Although the 2014 World Cup in Brazil under Niko Kovac was largely forgettable for Modric and Croatia, some signs of hope began to emerge from the chaos of 2016. The team lost to Portugal in the second round, but more important were fan unrest and protests against alleged corruption within the national federation that threatened to overshadow and undermine efforts on the ground.
What followed was the “Russia of our dreams” – the title of coach Zlatko Dalic’s book about Croatia’s road to the 2018 World Cup final – marked by peak Modric, who later won the Ballon d’Or. By then he was 33 and it almost felt like a lifetime award. He long thought about retiring from the national team, especially after facing the threat of perjury at home in connection with the trial of Zdravko Mamic, a former director of Dinamo Zagreb, who was found guilty of embezzlement and tax fraud.
But he soldiered on, playing in another European Championship, winning another medal-winning World Cup, performing admirably and refusing to give up, even when age finally caught up with the maestro. And now he’s ready to do it again.
At home he is an icon, albeit a tainted one due to the court ruling in the Mamic case that he unlawfully received 50% of the transfer fee Dinamo received for him from Tottenham and redirected most of that money to Mamic and Mamic’s family. After the Supreme Court upheld Mamic’s sentence in 2021, the court has yet to decide whether to charge Modric with perjury over statements he made in that case.
It reminds us that there is a dark side to all this extraordinary success, even if many people choose to ignore it. The war child who, as one of his early coaches, Tomislav Basic, said “was largely self-taught,” hit the ball against the wall in a refugee hotel parking lot and practiced the half-turn that would become his signature move, has become a of the best midfielders of all time and marked an entire era in Croatian football.
“It’s not about being skeptical, it’s about being realistic,” says Bilic. “The decline will come and is inevitable. If Luka leaves, it will be an irreparable loss for the team.”
It’s been 6,571 days since Modric’s debut at a major tournament; 6,680 since his debut for Croatia. He turns 39 in September and recently signed a one-year contract extension with Real Madrid.
So don’t ask him about swan songs and hanging up his boots until it’s all over, because there’s work to be done.