Luka Modric has been tormenting England for 20 years. Can he do it one more time?
From Zagreb to Wembley and Moscow, the Croatia great has derailed the Three Lions on many occasions. Now he’s ready for one last dance in Dallas
When Luka Modric first played against England, Tony Blair was still in office. Arsenal had just moved from Highbury to the Emirates Stadium, Italy were newly crowned world champions and Pep Guardiola retired as a player after a six-month spell in Mexico with Dorados. Twitter was less than three months old and Facebook had been made fully public earlier that year. Amy Winehouse’s album Back to Black was about to be released, while the much-hyped film Borat was coming to cinemas.
Football fans in England – and in Croatia – may recognise which game it was solely from that last bit of pop culture history: the European Championship qualifier in Zagreb on 11 October 2006.
At the very moment that Gary Neville sent a backpass to Paul Robinson, Borat’s image appeared on Maksimir Stadium’s advertising boards; the ball bounced awkwardly on the edge of the six-yard box, the England keeper missed it and it went into the net with Sacha Baron Cohen’s grin and moustache in the background, adding to England’s misery.
For Modric, who played the whole match that Croatia won 2-0, that was already his 11th cap; his first came that year in a friendly in which Lionel Messi scored his debut goal for Argentina.
And so beckoned the Modric era for Croatia, without anyone being aware of it. The young midfielder did not quite have a key role in the team just yet – he would assume it years later – but in retrospect the win marked the beginning of a long process that would transform the national team of a tiny country into one of the most successful in the world.
It really is an era, because there is no Modric generation; the players have come and gone, with only himself remaining as a constant, like a traveller who intervenes in the past and in the future, defying the linear nature of time.
At some point – and no one can tell when exactly it was any more as it seems to keep changing – he made the team his own, not only through his leadership but also in terms of his indestructible never-say-die mentality. At the past two World Cups combined, Croatia won no less than seven knockout round games without beating or even outplaying anyone in 90 minutes before succumbing to the eventual winners on both occasions.
England played an important role in building the team over the course of that era. Since that first match in October 2006, they played eight more times; there were wins, losses and draws, with Modric missing only one, due to a broken fibula – the 5-1 defeat at the hands of Fabio Capello’s team in 2009 – but two of those were key.
A year after the surreal Borat incident, there was the infamous “wally with a brolly” game at Wembley. Croatia had already qualified for the Euros and had nothing to play for, while England needed only a draw to do the same. But the visitors, led by Slaven Bilic, proceeded to beat them only because they could and that win soon became legendary, psychologically shaping the team and giving them a massive confidence boost.
Croatia performed well at the tournament, but still lacked the Modric mentality. Maybe Modric, who agreed to a transfer from Dinamo Zagreb to Tottenham before the Euros, lacked it himself back then. Croatia stormed through the group with three wins but they were eliminated in the quarter-finals by Turkey in the most shocking of ways, taking the lead after 119 minutes only to concede a last-moment equaliser and lose on penalties, with Modric missing.
The other important game was the 2018 World Cup semi-final, when Croatia overturned an early England lead to beat them in extra-time at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow to reach the final against France. Modric didn’t seem to have a key role in that match either but, by that time, he was already a decorated leader who had carried the team through years of ill-advised coaching appointments and bitter underachievement. In Russia, Croatia were managed by Zlatko Dalic, who was the first national team coach to really connect with Modric.
Now, almost 20 years after they first met, the 40-year-old playmaker is ready to face England again. It will be his 199th appearance for his country.
On the surface, he’s not what he once was and neither are Croatia. If the World Cup warm-up defeat by Belgium was any indication – and they were specifically chosen as preparation for Thomas Tuchel’s team – Croatia will play a back three and sacrifice their own attacking capacity for defensive stability. But they look likely to struggle with England’s speed and energy.
Modric will be 41 in September. He won’t say it, but he is likely to retire after the World Cup. Can he inspire his team to provide one more knockout blow to England in Dallas? With his history against the Three Lions – and his pedigree – no one will bet against him.