The King of Croatia

I don’t think I will ever entirely erase the image from my mind. It’s the 98th minute against Italy and Croatia are poised to join the Euros 2024 last sixteen party only for Mattia Zaccagni to equalise. The camera pans to Luka Modric, the Croatian midfield genius sitting in the dugout after being substituted. It was Modric’s goal which had given his team the lead after he had earlier missed a penalty. His face appears stunned and ashen, cut with the disbelief of a man who was flicking through his mobile phone checking his home security cameras after going on holiday only to find that he has left his front door open! A legendary international football career wasn’t meant to end like this. This isn’t how the Gods of football treat one of their own.
Alas, we are reminded that amongst those rare days of glory there are many sad things in football, and all of us could no-doubt nominate our own particular moment when we felt as if our football world had ended. A semi-final or final defeat, relegation, a points deduction or worse, going into administration or the crushing news that Jose Mourinho has just been appointed your club’s new manager.

And yes, to cite an annoying cliché’ there is more to life than football blah de blah. But when it comes to this particular brand of fanaticism, I am here to report that the dark cloud on the football horizon is drawing inevitably nearer. As the shadows lengthen over the career of, to my mind the greatest midfield player of his generation and one of the all-time greats, Luka Modric, one should truly reflect on the utter genius this man has brought to the game and the sheer delight in watching it in action wherever and whenever it is displayed. At 38 years of age, he has just won the Champions League for a record sixth time alongside teammate Dani Carvajal and is routinely, and correctly, described as the greatest Croatian player of all time. Honestly, the man has more legs than an Olympian relay team. It ain’t easy, but just how do you pay tribute to a legend such as he? I’ll give it a shot.

A FOOTBALLING GENUIS.
Luka Modric. That soccer genius and ethereal virtuoso, a preternatural maestro who navigates the pitch with balletic legerdemain. His every manoeuvre is an arabesque of cunning stratagems, a chiaroscuro of kinetic sagacity, orchestrating the game’s cadence with symphonic precision, transmuting the banal into the sublime through pyrotechnic dexterity and kaleidoscopic vision. His prowess is an enigmatic confluence of cerebral alacrity and corporeal poetry, rendering the ordinary arcane and the predictable ineffable. But he’s also a man of appreciation and generosity. When he was awarded the Ballon d’Or in 2018 Modric shelled out on 50 Rolex watches not only for his teammates but for the backroom staff at both Real Madrid and Croatia as a thank you for their tireless backing that helped him win the most prestigious individual accolade in world football. Even when he’s not playing, class just oozes out of him! Ronaldo conversely probably presented every one of his Portuguese teammates and back-room staff etc with a signed photo of himself. Modric doesn’t cry either. When he missed the penalty in the aforementioned game against the Italians, he didn’t collapse into a sea of self-pity with a tearful eye on his personal stats. He got up, and within four minutes had put his country ahead.

FROM WARZONE TO FOOTBALL LEGEND.
The great man got his name from his grandfather, Luka Modric Snr, who sadly was brutally executed by Serbian Militants when Luka junior was barely six years old. We can all only imagine at such a traumatizing childhood which he had to endure. At that stage in his life, I doubt whether he would have in any way fully understood that he was destined to go on to become one of the greatest midfield footballers that ever shoved a pair of shin guards down his socks. And yet the boy did just that and some. And who knows? Maybe it was due to that very childhood trauma that contributed to making Modric so special then and now. And as his career progressed, Modric surpassed every contemporary with whom he was compared. And even as I concoct this little tribute, I cannot think of team anywhere which he wouldn’t waltz into. From the carnage of war arose one of Real Madrid’s, and football’s, greatest all-time midfielders, still playing like a fifteen-year-old at an unbelievable level at an age when most ex-players have already had at least three failed managerial appointments or have taken to airwaves to prove that although they were decent players they’re no better than the rest of us when it comes to punditry. But to draw just a minor comparison, Modric is fourteen years older than current England and Chelsea midfielder Conor Gallagher who is lauded by fans for his energy, and his non-stop running away from the lion that is obviously on the pitch at the same time as he is. And yet Modric’s footballing brain can cover more ground in a nano-second that Gallagher’s legs can carry him for a complete ninety minutes. This is in no way meant to be disrespectful of Conor Gallagher who is a decent player. But it truly is remarkable what football intelligence does for the legs!

WHAT MAKES HIM SO GREAT?
Modric’s footballing uniqueness is not based upon any single identifiable trait. He is not defined by those seemingly nonchalant, outside-of-the-boot passes, or by mere outrageous talent, which is something many players also possess. Even at his current age he still possesses drive, and persistence. The man is a footballing will-o’-the-wisp who is rarely if ever injured which itself is a minor miracle given his physicality because he has the mental willpower to always take care of his body, plus it’s virtually impossible to get the ball off of him. As such, Modric doesn’t compete with others, but with himself. But when you put the great man under the microscope it becomes a little more apparent as to why he is the player he is. He isn’t just a central midfielder; he is the central player more often than not in every game in which he starts. His ability to link play so effectively and be both protector and supplier is borne out of his immaculate technical ability. For as long as I have watched him play, Modric has retained that vision and ability to pick passes between the lines as he ghosts into various areas of the pitch which always seem full of space. Moreover, his uncanny ability to maintain such a high level in the final third, without it negatively affecting his defensive duties, is part of what makes him such an asset to both club and country. Whenever he plays, he is usually Real’s instigator of attacks, the dictator of tempo and a player who possesses a symphony of long and short-range passing as well as the ability to smash one in from anywhere outside the penalty box. Yet what makes him truly amazing is that spends almost one hundred per-cent of the entire ninety minutes behind the ball, available for receiving a pass but also available to shift across and close down passing channels should Real’s own attacks break down. And whenever Real lose the ball high up field, and the initial line of forwards either don’t challenge or don’t win back the ball quickly, Modric is often the one to break out of his middle line and attempt to force the opposition sideways or backwards. And it remains uncanny how, unlike so many of the world’s midfield players who move away from the man on the ball to receive it, Modric is without exception aways moving towards his teammate to receive it and yet every time he does it he finds himself in what looks like acres of space. Granted, there are many Central midfielders who possess the technical and physical prowess to play both offensively and defensively. There are few, though, who can match Modric for the capacity to do both simultaneously on account of the intelligence of his movement and his unrivalled reading of the game. And of course, there are even fewer who match him for an ability to be a match-winner, thanks to his relentless ability to see a pass and pick it out from any angle on the pitch.

So, there you are. Luka Modric. For my money, the greatest midfielder of his generation.
But I think it only fitting that the last word on the great man be left to his manager who knows him better than most. For the rest of us we can all take pleasure in the fact the when Modric bestrode the midfield world ‘we were there.’