Luka Modric’s Croatia career wasn’t supposed to end like this
LEIPZIG — At one end of the Red Bull Arena, Croatia‘s fans had been jumping and dancing and singing from the moment they entered the stadium until, almost, the moment that the game had ended. Near enough 1,000 kicks of the ball and only after the last one was their silence. He who cheers last cheers longest.
Croatia are almost certainly going home and with it may go an entire golden era. Even if they do squeak through, via some twists and turns and England walloping Slovenia, the spirit must surely be fractured into pieces. Zlatko Dalic’s side have conceded goals in the 95th and 98th minutes of their last two group games at Euro 2024 and that’s enough to stop anyone singing.
It is tempting to forever see this Croatian generation through the prism of their magnificent captain, but this is his great lament. Luka Modric was making his 35th appearance at a major tournament and Monday night’s draw with Italy looks likely to be his last. What a way to go: villain (penalty miss), hero (goalscorer) and then just broken by the experience at full-time, hands tight around his neck as if wishing himself awake from a nightmare.
The most remarkable thing about Modric then and now is how similar everything is. His European Championship debut came in 2008, a wispy, technical midfielder who seemed to read the game and pick the passes better than anyone else. The only difference is that, in that game, Modric scored his penalty. Even when he misses he is still the hero.
Modric helped Croatia to the quarter-finals of his first Euros in 2008 (Photo: Getty)
This exit is not on him, of course. Dalic had spoken repeatedly about his team sitting too deep and being unable to repel attacks and conceded five goals in their first two games. Croatia were better against Italy, but not when it mattered. They played the final minutes of stoppage time horribly, refusing to keep the ball in the corner. They did precisely the same against Albania.
Italy 1-1 Croatia recap
Croatia are probably eliminated from the European Championship, stranded on two points after conceding a stoppage-time equaliser for the second game in succession. Luka Modric missed a penalty and then scored in what may be his last major tournament match and looked broken at the end.
With him may go an entire era of Croatian football. Italy stutter on, but the defending champions are at least still moving forward. Luciano Spalletti has changed his attackers in search of a new mood, but they remain less than the sum of their parts.
Zlatko Dalic’s team are not quite consigned to their fate yet, but they will require Slovenia to be beaten heavily by England – save your jokes please – as well as other results to go their way. Italy will play Switzerland to set up a potential meeting with Gareth Southgate’s side in the quarter-final – a repeat of the last final. There is a lot for both to do before then.
Presented with a penalty for another of those VAR handballs, Modric’s low shot was saved by Gianluigi Donnarumma. But within the same passage of play, Croatia recycled the ball and fashioned another opportunity. When the ball fell to Modric seven yards from goal and with an open net, he thrashed it high and true and then came close to tears in the celebration.
But Croatia began to sit deeper and invite Italy to finally control possession. A defence that had allowed five goals in two matches began to creak as Luciano Spalletti’s side finally began to get their midfielders closer to the front two. In added time of added time, with all hope lost, Mattia Zaccagni strode forward and curled a sensational shot beyond Dominik Livakovic.
And yet there is something about Modric that, even as a magnificent midfielder, defines this Croatian end game. Their strength is so emphatically in midfield – Modric, Mateo Kovacic, Marcelo Brozovic and Gvardiol pushing up from left-back – that the ball tends to get stuck there too often. All four of their best players touch the ball and you realise it hasn’t actually gone anywhere very quickly.
Modric is at his best not when passing, but when providing for elite forwards; Croatia don’t have any. And so what they are best at also kills them in the process. Croatia had 61 per cent of the ball in the first half and mustered two shots with a total xG of 0.04. It might look quite pretty, but it does nothing but kill time. The irony is that Croatia then failed spectacularly to do exactly that.
We will remember Modric’s career for all that it was, not this: the curled passes that we didn’t even spot from high up in stands with a bird’s eye view, the Ballon d’Or that broke the Messi-Ronaldo duopoly, the journey from a boy practising his touch with a small ball kicked repeatedly against the side of the hotel his family lived in for seven years as refugees who had fled war. They will make a film of it all and they won’t include June in Leipzig.
How Modric must wonder now if he shouldn’t have left it all out there in Qatar, third in the 2022 World Cup and named its third best player after Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe. This is not the way it was supposed to end for this technical magician, who started late (he didn’t break into Dinamo Zagreb’s first team until 19) and then spent the next two decades making up for it in spades.
This has been Modric’s era of Croatian football because it feels like he has been here forever, a pillar of his nation beyond sport and culture – he is Croatia and Croatia is him. But forever is nothing. Time waits for no team, no man and no midfielder; you cannot escape its incessant tide. Not Ivan Perisic, not Domagoj Vida and not Andrej Kramaric, who will surely retire with Modric now.
All have more than 95 caps and all of it is ending here. You don’t always get what you want and you never get to choose your ending, but Croatia’s leaders on the pitch still had a blast putting a country of three million people near the top of the world. Three of them got to play with Modric; he got to control an entire team at its peak. It stings now; it’ll heal soon.
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