People have been trying to retire Luka Modric for more than six years. It was in the aftermath of the 2018 World Cup that friends first gently began to broach the subject: his contemporaries Mario Mandzukic and Vedran Corluka had called it a day after Croatia’s defeat in the final, and Modric himself knew there would be a certain elegiac poetry in taking his curtain call at the moment of his country’s greatest achievement. Plaudits ringing in his ears, the Golden Ball in his grasp. Leave them wanting more, and all that. But still, something in him rebelled.
“My heart told me to stay,” he later wrote in his autobiography. “Playing for your national team is one of the most fulfilling experiences; I still want to feel it. I feel fit and motivated. It’s true that retiring after the silver medal in Russia would have left the biggest impression. But I don’t care much about impressions.”
And so, here he is again: reporting for duty in Zagreb this week, a few new faces to greet but mostly the same old mob. Mateo Kovacic gives him a hug that could warm coal. Luka Sucic, the Real Sociedad midfielder who was three years old when Modric made his Croatia debut, wraps him delicately in his arms as if he were a favourite grandmother. The 2018 World Cup was four tournaments ago, Croatia’s golden generation are gently disappearing over the vanishing point, and even back then Modric was the second-oldest player in that squad.
He will be 39 on 9 September. What is he still doing here? There has been vague talk in Spain that Modric’s decision to prolong his international career has not gone down with unanimous acclaim at Real Madrid, who might have assumed when they offered him a one-year contract extension in July that they would finally be getting him to themselves. But then anyone who knows Modric would have told you that this is a man who will carry on for as long as his legs can bear his weight and the ball still dances to his tune.
Domagoj Vida and Marcelo Brozovic were the latest to step away after the disappointment of Euro 2024, the latter choosing to remain stranded on 99 caps. Kovacic is still a force, while Ivan Perisic is still just about hanging on. And for a coach approaching his eighth year in the job, Zlatko Dalic feels the weathering passage of time better than most. “We are without two senators, but happy that our captain remains on board,” he said on announcing the squad last month. “Luka is our great strength, both on and off the field.”
Through this seemingly endless career autumn, Modric has come to embody something larger than himself, larger even than the nation he leads or the club he represents. You may remember the viral video of the journalist at Euro 2024 who begged Modric to “never retire”. Almost invariably these days, opposition fans rise to give him a standing ovation, from Anfield last year to Las Palmas last week. On some level you sense football is almost willing Modric to keep playing. Which is doubly interesting when you consider the player he comes up against in Lisbon on Thursday night.
Cristiano Ronaldo was 39 in February and has also decided to continue his international career, and yet this particular decision feels far more contested. “When the time comes, I’ll move on,” Ronaldo announced this week before Portugal’s Nations League double-header against Croatia and Scotland, as if this were a decision for him and him alone. Which it probably is: even after a disappointing Euro 2024, Roberto Martínez has shown no inclination to respond to the growing wave of public opinion within Portugal urging him to move Ronaldo on and build a new team around his ridiculously talented core of peak- age players.
For a man he played with at Madrid for six years, winning pretty much every pot in the sport, Modric has curiously little to say about Ronaldo in his autobiography. There is naturally a deep mutual admiration there, a faithful rendering of feats and achievements, the odd supportive word exchanged over the years, but reading between the lines the bond between them appears to be professional rather than personal. As teammates they are solemnly locked together in a shared mission. As people, they could scarcely be more different.
Perhaps the divergence in outlook is most apparent in late 2018, when Modric arrives at Fifa’s The Best awards in London to find Ronaldo’s assigned seat lying empty. With Modric widely tipped to win the main award, Ronaldo and Lionel Messi – invited to the ceremony as members of the World XI – have decided to give the evening a miss. Modric understands why. Even so, he finds it hard to hide his disappointment.
“I was sorry they weren’t part of that unforgettable evening,” he will later write. “I think it would have been much more elegant if they had showed up, even if they did not win. This would have shown respect for all the people who had voted for them in the past, but also for the footballing movement as a whole.”
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But then, Ronaldo’s fans would probably argue that disrespect has pretty much been the foundation of his success: disrespect for conventions and traditions, disrespect for records, a magnificent disrespect for critics and centre-halves alike. Disrespect helped Ronaldo to break barriers. But it is also why his own extended retirement tour attracts only a fraction of the adulation and affection Modric seems to inspire everywhere he goes.
Modric has won it all in the club game. He is the most decorated player in Madrid history. Next month he will almost certainly break Ferenc Puskas’s record as the club’s oldest player. But of course an international trophy continues to elude him. He must sense, as we all do, that 2018 was his best chance, that 2022 was his last chance, that 2026 – when he will be 40 – is a long shot. But the Nations League, a tournament which Croatia came within a penalty shootout of winning last year – this can be his final crowning glory.
And if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. Perhaps the battle is enough. Perhaps the shirt is enough. Perhaps love is enough: love of the ball, love of the game, love of the opponent. A country he would die for and a family that will suffer with him. What is he still doing here? Perhaps we need to turn the question around. It’s international week. Where else would Luka Modric be?