FIFA World Cup: Croatian midfielder Luka Modric, the superstar who isn't

The celebrity footballers have gone home. And an unassuming, under-appreciated genius will lead his team into the FIFA World Cup final

Where to begin? He was, as always, everywhere. Thirty minutes into the World Cup semi-final between Croatia and England is probably a decent place to start. So just past the half hour on a Moscow evening bubbling with febrile anticipation, Luka Modric received the ball in the opposition box. Space was expectedly tight and Modric tried to ghost past Jordan Henderson, the ever-pugnacious Englishman, who, to his considerable credit, stayed with him. Now confronted with Henderson at the byline, Modric, instead of firing in a low and wholly hopeless cross and winning a corner, pirouetted, sucked Ashley Young into his path and played the ball to an unmarked Ante Rebic. Rebic drilled it in with pace from wide; John Stones lunged and cleared.

To the untrained eye, this was an innocuous, utterly unremarkable passage of play: banal in its construction, lacklustre in its conclusion. Yet, in more ways than one, this was vintage Modric: composure, intelligence, skill, vision, clarity of thought. The move manifested a kind of unique footballing amalgamation that is both deceptive and dazzling at the same time.

“They underestimated Croatia tonight and that was a huge mistake. All these words from them we take, we were reading and we were saying: ‘Okay, today we will see who will be tired.’ They should be more humble and respect their opponents more,” said Modric, 32, of English pundits and journalists, after masterminding yet another victory in extra-time on Wednesday night.

A select few from the jingoistic “it’s-coming-home” gang, disguised as “neutral experts” on the telly, may have dismissed them, but England and Gareth Southgate definitely did not, coming up with a plan to specifically counter Modric. England tweaked their shape somewhat and harried and strangled him, smartly blocking him out of the game early on. And then, like all great players, Modric adjusted.

He dropped deeper and turned Croatia’s half of the pitch into his own personal, immaculately manicured lawn, silkily marauding through the grass, creating, inventing, inspiring and eventually, winning.

As a child growing up during the Croatian War of Independence, Modric and his family had to flee home in 1991. Later that year, his grandfather, from whom he takes his first name, was captured and executed by Serb rebels. And just as he was overcoming the trauma of a childhood spent amid the din of guns and grenades, his coaches told him that he was too frail and too shy to take up football seriously. In 2012, when Jose Mourinho signed him for Real Madrid, he was dubbed the “worst signing at the time”, often finding himself playing only a peripheral role in the team.

On Sunday, the boy from Modrici, the long-haired football angel with an aquiline nose, will lead his country out in the final of the World Cup. 

We love getting drunk on football superstardom. And our closed, superficial world of select idol worship simply does not allow us to even warm to a guy like Modric. He isn’t projected as the saviour of humanity on humongous billboards; he doesn’t pose with goats; he isn’t in the business of growing goatees; and hysterical teenagers do not clutch at his pictures and run to the nearest hairdresser. He just plays football. 

In a tournament where arguably the three biggest “superstars” of the world game initially impressed, then underwhelmed, and eventually faltered, Modric has been an exemplar of major-tournament consistency. His talismanic force has propelled a country of just over four million people into the final of the World Cup, reminding us that the solipsistic streak of the modern-day footballer can be, in fact, hugely damaging to the game.

And unlike Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo or Neymar, Modric does not do unimaginable things on a football pitch — nothing will make you gasp in wonderment or impel you to keep rewinding highlight reels. Johan Cruyff once remarked that “playing football is very simple, but playing simple football is the hardest thing there is”. Modric is so ludicrously good at this that you could actually paste the axiom next to his beaming face on a poster and plaster it all across Zagreb. He does the most ordinary of things in the most extraordinary of ways. It’s so simple you think you can do it, too. Only you can’t. 
 

In club football, this subtle but staggering quality has powered his club, Real Madrid, to three straight Champions League titles, and there is a general consensus that elite European football has long surpassed the level of its international counterpart. What makes Modric’s Russian adventure all the more astonishing, however, is the clear lack of world-class quality around him. At Madrid, his talents are supplemented by the tenacity of Casemiro and the distribution of Toni Kroos, not to mention the glut of attacking flair further up the field. For Croatia, in a much weaker team and at a much higher level of pressure, he only has at his disposal the stability of the supremely talented Ivan Rakitic. 

So how does he do it? Modric is a Swiss knife of a footballer — he can do a bit of everything. He combines the vision of Andrea Pirlo and the passing of Paul Scholes; the grace of Zinedine Zidane and the determination of Daniele De Rossi — the utopian footballer who will most likely win the Golden Ball no matter who prevails on Sunday. Add to that his sheer work rate: Modric won possession 15 times against Russia in the quarter-final, and at 63 km, no player has covered more ground than he has at the World Cup.

Even so, our tendency to under-appreciate won’t just go away. Like two of his iconic midfield predecessors, Xavi and Andrés Iniesta, Modric is unlikely to win a Ballon d’Or even if his team is crowned kings of the world. Modric is not a superstar and our football snobbishness will doubtless ensure he’s not given his due. 

As for Sunday, France will not faze him. Quite the opposite, in fact. The French midfield trio of N’Golo Kante, Paul Pogba and Blaise Matuidi — all terrific players — will be wary of the unique genius that awaits them. After all, stopping France won’t be such a tall order if the diminutive giant from Modrici has one final say.