Luka Modrić and the Hopes of Croatia against Brazil
It was June 18, 2006. The occasion was an almost boring and scoreless game between Croatia and Japan on Matchday 2 of Group F of that year's World Cup in Germany. Both teams would take a point from the encounter, a point that would ultimately prove useless in either side's quest to reach the knockout stages of this tournament. Yet, thinking about it, this game would unexpectedly become an important part of Croatian World Cup history. It was the match where their prodigy, a certain Luka Modrić, set foot on a World Cup pitch for the first time. More than 16 years have passed since then and now, at 37, the wonderkid has become the undisputed leader of his national team. Now that Croatia have managed to overtake the Japanese in the round of 16 of this year's World Cup and are set to face heavyweights Brazil in the quarter-finals, there are fears that this will be the last match of Modrić on the biggest stage in the world.
Modrić has won everything in club football, sometimes multiple times. His trophy cabinet includes no less than five UEFA Champions League titles, four FIFA Club World Cups, four Spanish and European Super Cups each, three La Liga titles… the list goes on. We haven't even begun to mention his individual awards. They include seven Croatian Player of the Year awards, a Ballon'd Or, a UEFA Player of the Year award, as well as a FIFA Men's Best Player trophy.
It's not like Real Madrid just had a lot of success while Luka was there. In fact, he was the driving force behind this success. Modrić was and remains to some extent the unsung hero of this team. Nationally, the situation is different. His name and those of Marcelo Brozovic and Mateo Kovacic – his Croatian midfield partners – are known to virtually every child in the country. Where Modrić goes, so does the national team.
Photo: EFE (Marca)Croatia had heroes before Modric, of course, there was Davor Suker, Robert Prosinecki and the rest of the 1998 World Cup bronze medal-winning squad. football history of the country. But then Russia 2018 arrived. At a time when people believed that the chance of a golden generation Modrić-Rakitić might have passed, they and their teammates ers surpassed the 1998 team and reached the final.
It was a tournament that brought their small population, still hovering around the 4 million mark, to the brink of ecstasy. It was more than joy that filled the streets of Zagreb, Split, Rijeka and beyond. It was a month of watching history write itself in a way it had never been written before. People were witnessing something that was far greater than this...
It was June 18, 2006. The occasion was an almost boring and scoreless game between Croatia and Japan on Matchday 2 of Group F of that year's World Cup in Germany. Both teams would take a point from the encounter, a point that would ultimately prove useless in either side's quest to reach the knockout stages of this tournament. Yet, thinking about it, this game would unexpectedly become an important part of Croatian World Cup history. It was the match where their prodigy, a certain Luka Modrić, set foot on a World Cup pitch for the first time. More than 16 years have passed since then and now, at 37, the wonderkid has become the undisputed leader of his national team. Now that Croatia have managed to overtake the Japanese in the round of 16 of this year's World Cup and are set to face heavyweights Brazil in the quarter-finals, there are fears that this will be the last match of Modrić on the biggest stage in the world.
Modrić has won everything in club football, sometimes multiple times. His trophy cabinet includes no less than five UEFA Champions League titles, four FIFA Club World Cups, four Spanish and European Super Cups each, three La Liga titles… the list goes on. We haven't even begun to mention his individual awards. They include seven Croatian Player of the Year awards, a Ballon'd Or, a UEFA Player of the Year award, as well as a FIFA Men's Best Player trophy.
It's not like Real Madrid just had a lot of success while Luka was there. In fact, he was the driving force behind this success. Modrić was and remains to some extent the unsung hero of this team. Nationally, the situation is different. His name and those of Marcelo Brozovic and Mateo Kovacic – his Croatian midfield partners – are known to virtually every child in the country. Where Modrić goes, so does the national team.
Photo: EFE (Marca)Croatia had heroes before Modric, of course, there was Davor Suker, Robert Prosinecki and the rest of the 1998 World Cup bronze medal-winning squad. football history of the country. But then Russia 2018 arrived. At a time when people believed that the chance of a golden generation Modrić-Rakitić might have passed, they and their teammates ers surpassed the 1998 team and reached the final.
It was a tournament that brought their small population, still hovering around the 4 million mark, to the brink of ecstasy. It was more than joy that filled the streets of Zagreb, Split, Rijeka and beyond. It was a month of watching history write itself in a way it had never been written before. People were witnessing something that was far greater than this...
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