Luka Modric eyes elusive trophy as Croatia face Spain in Nations League final

Veteran midfielder, who has just seen club side Real Madrid sign his long-term successor in Jude Bellingham, played key role in last-four win over Netherlands

Luka Modric celebrates scoring Croatia's fourth goal in their Nations League semi-final win over the Netherlands on June 14, 2023. Reuters

In the last minute of the 76th hour Luka Modric has been active in competitive football this season, he looked down at the penalty spot in Rotterdam’s De Kuip stadium. He glanced up briefly at the target, and with a short, efficient run-up, sent the goalkeeper the wrong way.

The contest was deep into extra-time. Modric’s penalty had completed a comeback from a goal down, and from a 96th-minute Netherlands equaliser. It was Croatia’s fourth goal of a long, warm evening and they had eliminated the hosts of the Uefa Nations League finals.

It means Modric will lead his country into Sunday’s gold medal match against Spain, chasing that elusive international trophy that is the lone gap on his vast catalogue of honours.

It is five years since Modric inspired a nation of less than four million people by leading Croatia to a World Cup final, and six months since Croatia finished third at the 2022 tournament. In less than three months’ time, their captain will celebrate his 38th birthday.

A few hours after Modric’s heroics, Real Madrid, his club, were unveiling Jude Bellingham, their marquee summer signing, hired at an initial €103 million from Borussia Dortmund, a fee that if the midfielder reaches certain targets could rise over the next six years by around €30m.

As it is, Bellingham has become the second most expensive footballer in Madrid’s history, overtaking the sums paid for Cristiano Ronaldo 14 summers ago, and Gareth Bale, Bellingham’s fellow Briton, a decade back.

The club assume their investment in Bellingham, an England international, yields better dividends than the €115m they paid for Eden Hazard in 2019. The Belgian has just left Madrid, contract cancelled, after a forlorn, injury-hit stay spent mostly as a bystander to the gradual transitions Madrid are now enacting with vigour, a generational shift framed by Modric at one end, and Bellingham at the other.

Almost 20 years divide the pair in age. Bellingham is still a teenager, at least for one more week of his fast-tracked life, so precocious that in less than three years since making his senior professional debut for Birmingham City in the English Championship, he had been named Player of the Year in the German Bundesliga. He has already starred at a World Cup. “He will become the best midfielder in the world,” predicts Manchester City’s Phil Foden, Bellingham’s England teammate.

Modric has spent the best part of two decades as a compulsory part of any conversations about who might be the game’s best creative midfielder. But approaching his 39th year, is obliged to wonder for how much longer he remains in that category. He has spent recent weeks contemplating whether or not, with strong interest in him from the Saudi Arabia Pro League, he commits to a 12th season at Madrid, with his contract up at the end of this month.

The expectation is that he will continue in Spain for at least another year. Sunday’s display in Rotterdam confirmed his evergreen quality, replicating the sorts of masterly showings in high-stakes fixtures madridistas regard as standard. It was Modric who was brought down for the penalty that Andrej Kramaric converted to answer Donyell Malan’s first-half strike for the Dutch. Modric was involved in the goal, from Bruno Petkovic, that put Croatia 3-1 up in extra-time.

Zlatko Dalic, the former Al Ain coach who has had Croatia consistently punching above their weight over the last six years, took Modric off once the skipper had sealed the outcome, with a minute left of the two hours of ebb-and-flow – an invitation to the crowd to applaud a genius of the modern game.

Sunday’s final will be Modric’s 70th match, club and country combined since the beginning of June 22, an odyssey that took him across Europe in Madrid’s defence of the Champions League, ending with the semi-final defeat to Manchester City, through seven World Cup games in Qatar, to Saudi Arabia for the Spanish Super Cup, and to Morocco for a victorious Club World Cup.

Modric’s stamina is just one among the many virtues Bellingham yesterday cited as “invaluable”. The Englishman says he intends to stick close to Modric and his long time partner in Madrid’s midfield, Toni Kroos, when Madrid gather for pre-season training. “Their experience and the way they read games is incredible,” said the new signing, the prodigy earmarked to one day fill the role of the peerless Modric.