MODRIC OPERANDI
Midfield star fuels Croatia’s golden moment
MOSCOW— Luka Modric likes to do things quietly.
Arguably the most consistently brilliant midfielder in the game over the past decade, Croatia’s captain and playmaker has never attracted the sort of noise that envelops Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi or Neymar.
Modric is five-foot-eight and 66 kilos soaking wet. As he racks up miles marshalling the middle of every contest he graces with his presence, whether for Croatia or Real Madrid, Modric moves as though he’d prefer to leave no physical imprint on the place. He wears Nike Mercurial Vapor boots, but you sense he could be just as effective in a pair of moccasins as he cushions his way from box to box, caressing perfect passes this way and that.
Even when he unleashes the kind of thunderbolt long-distance goal that he scored against Argentina last week, it doesn’t come with the oomph you’d expect. Modric wraps his foot around the ball and instead whispers it off to nestle in the corner he has it earmarked for.
But the silence has been interrupted in Russia this summer. As World Cup 2018 exploded in cacophonous chaos, Modric and Croatia have stood out as the tournament’s most steadily impressive side. One of just three teams to have carried a perfect record out of the group stages, Croatia faces Denmark in the last 16 Sunday with the volume very much raised.
While it was France that landed the final blow on Lionel Messi and Argentina on Saturday, the beginning of the end had come against Croatia in arguably the most impressive team display of the tournament. Modric scored once, his midfield sidekick Ivan Rakitic grabbed another. The final scoreline was 3-0, but it could just as easily have been twice that.
It was the sort of performance that Croatia has been waiting for from its golden generation for years now. The hope that has too often been dashed grows again, perhaps stronger than ever before, a hope that they are ready to back up that kind of performance with more of the same.
In its first performance on the game’s grandest stage, Croatia announced itself in startling fashion, making it all the way to the semifinals of France 1998. Not yet in his teens, Modric watched in his homeland and dreamed a dream that he may now be closer than ever to fulfilling — matching, or even bettering, the boys of ’98.
“It was a huge advert for Croatia,” Modric has said of that achievement. “All the world finally knew about us. I began dreaming about trying to reach that level one day.”
The golden generation — with Modric, Rakitic and striker Mario Mandzukic as its pillars — have more often watched such efforts go up in flames. Four years ago in Brazil, they didn’t make it out of the group. Four years further back they didn’t even qualify. Their last run at a major tournament, at the 2016 European championship in France, was blighted by crowd trouble that erupted when fights broke out between Croatian fans and flares were thrown on the field during a game against the Czechs. Those disruptions were aimed at embarrassing a national federation that was mired in a financial scandal and followed similar protests and dark moments. Dysfunction has been a close cousin to Croatian soccer.
Modric still remains mired in that same financial scandal, which centred on embezzle- ment and tax fraud charges against Zdravko Mamic, one of the most prominent powerbrokers in the Croatian game. The captain has been charged with perjury in relation to evidence he gave in the Mamic trial and could face a five-year sentence if found guilty. When pressed on the case in recent weeks here in Russia, Modric sounded like a man eager for the silence to fall again.
“Have you nothing smarter to ask?” he responded. “It’s a World Cup, it’s not about other things.”
In spite of his on-field exploits here in Russia and in all the years that came before, he remains unloved by pockets of Croatian supporters, those offfield ties tarnishing the 32year-old’s standing for many. Rakitic, for instance, finds more favour among the armies clad in trademark tablecloth red and white.
The dysfunction that has been just as much a trademark has been absent in Russia, however, and that’s helped mark Croatia as one of the growing threats to the rest.
This is already a World Cup that has served up some of the most chaotic, dramatic moments in the tournament’s history. But Russia has been blessed with some beautiful football too. Amid it all, Modric and Rakitic have stood out as the most elegant axis here.
The innate understanding between the pair is the result of a lifetime together on the world stage. Rakitic is two years younger, but the duo are much closer in international caps (Modric has109, Rakitic 95) and international goals (Modric has 14, Rakitic 15). They are arguably the best midfield pairing the international game has seen since Xavi Hernandez and Andres Iniesta spearheaded Spain’s glorious World Cup triumph in 2010. While Modric racks up Champions League crowns at Madrid, Rakitic plunders plenty of silverware of his own at Barcelona — alongside Iniesta.
Rakitic was asked this week about the similarities between the two pre-eminent playmakers of this generation.
“Both of them are among the best players ever in their positions. It has been a great honour to play with Andres in the last four years at Barcelona and with Luka for the last11years for Croatia,” said Rakitic.
“It’s very difficult to compare them. It seems like both of them are from different planets and they came to play football with us mortals here.”
With their own chaos quietened for now, Croatia and their superhuman captain will look to make all the right noises against Denmark Sunday. For the golden generation, now is the real time to shine.
“It seems like both of them are from different planets and they came to play football with us mortals,” CROATIA’S IVAN RAKITIC COMPARING LUKA MODRIC TO ANDRES INIESTA