Modrić: The Refugee Who Changed Football

There are footballers who exit the World Cup without much ado and there are those for whom the entire world seems to pause, if only for a moment, to bid farewell.

Luka Modrić’s farewell came on 2nd July in Toronto, in the cruellest manner: a stoppage-time dagger to the heart killing all hope, followed by the ecstasy of an even later equaliser. All this only to be disallowed—another dagger to the heart, as if the first one was not enough. Then, the slow walk of a man who had given everything to this match and even more to the game of football.

Portugal beat Croatia 2-1. Modrić played, what is likely to be, his last World Cup game.

Yet, even in defeat, even aged 40, Modrić did what Modrić has always done. Against arguably one of the best midfields in the world—João Neves, Vitinha, Bruno Fernandes—and Portugal’s modern machinery, he made the match feel old-fashioned. The match felt deeper, more thoughtful and, in a way, more human. As Portugal, backed by data-led game plans, pushed on, Modrić intercepted and escaped intuitively. Watching him play this match, one was reminded:

Luka Modrić was not supposed to get here at all.

Born in Zadar in 1985, Modrić’s childhood was shaped by the Croatian War of Independence. In 1991, following the escalation of the war, his family fled their village, after which their home was burnt down. His grandfather Luka, the man whose name he carries, was executed by Serb rebels. For years, Modrić lived as a refugee, kicking a ball in the parking lots of hotels where his family sought refuge, while the city around him trembled with explosions and chaos.

That is where his story starts: a child playing football in borrowed spaces, because everything permanent had been taken away. A childhood of displacement and war anxiety became the reason why he has never needed to dominate a pitch loudly; from a young age he had learnt that survival could also be quiet. In fact, sometimes it had to be.

However, even though he loved football, the game took its time loving him back. Modrić was supposedly too small, too slight, too frail, too easy to dismiss. He grew up where boys were measured not only by talent, but by whether they looked capable of surviving the physical demands of football. In this environment, he was often doubted, even as he was being admired for his skill in the same breath.

Eventually, a 16-year-old Modrić was signed by Dinamo Zagreb—a not so glamorous start to his career, but a start nonetheless—who subsequently loaned him to other clubs. Zrinjski Mostar in Bosnia. Inter Zapresic in Croatia. Places where technique alone was not enough, where a slight midfielder either learnt to protect the ball or was kicked around into submission. When he returned to Dinamo, he returned as a player who despite all this still kept his unique touch and vision.

Seven years after starting with Dinamo Zagreb, a transfer to Tottenham Hotspurs took him to England, in 2008. The Premier League, he was told, was too physical, fast and brutal. A league of collisions, second balls, elbows and midfielders who would not let him pass. Modrić, though, did not become English football’s idea of ‘strong’; he changed the definition. He played with the heart of someone who grew up dribbling a ball, even while a war waged around him. Strength was no longer only shoulder-to-shoulder. It was receiving on the half-turn, with someone breathing down your neck; it was seeing the pass before the tackle arrived and knowing that the safest place on a football pitch is sometimes the most dangerous looking one. Eventually, the Premier league had to adjust to Modrić, not the other way around.

Then came Real Madrid and, believe it or not, ridicule.

In his first season with the club, he was voted La Liga’s worst signing in a Marca poll. Football, especially at the top level, does this sometimes. It mistakes adjustment for failure, grace for softness, time for absence. It remains one of the funniest mistakes the Spanish press have ever made. And they have made plenty.

Modrić did not fail in Madrid though. He became Madrid. It was his corner-kick assist that won La Décima for Real Madrid. His move to Madrid happened in an era when Barcelona had turned midfield into an art form that had never been seen before in football. Xavi, Iniesta and Busquets were not simply winning games, they were redefining how games should be won, by turning possession into pressure, pressure into control and eventually control into humiliation. Ask Manchester United and Sir Alex Ferguson.

Modrić faced that squarely and did not shrink from the challenge. He did not copy them either. With Toni Kroos and Casemiro, he formed one of the great midfields of club football history.

Naturally, the trophies and laurels began pouring in: six European Cups; twenty eight trophies with Real Madrid; the Ballon d’Or, FIFA and UEFA Player of the Year in 2018. The Golden Foot in the following year. Not to mention innumerable accolades in his home country. A career that began with questions about physicality had bent football’s own logic to make room for Modrić.

But Modrić, however, was never just his laurels. And this is very important to remember. To think of Luka Modrić in terms of trophies won will not only be reductive, but also disrespectful to his artistry.

Modrić constitutes moments. He was nowhere yet everywhere. He was quiet, but then he was loud when no one expected him to be. The pass to Rodrygo against Chelsea in 2022 outside of the foot, through panic, into possibility. When Madrid was dying Modrić resuscitated them, another impossible European night of many.

The comeback against PSG that same season carried a similar feeling. Madrid almost preparing for an exit, getting ready to welcome Mbappe and suddenly, Modrić bursts through the midfield, refusing age and now the Bernabéu refusing reality. Those nights made no tactical sense, if viewed only through numbers. They made perfect sense if you understood Madrid and Modrić as accomplices in the art of disbelief.

And then there is Croatia. A country of fewer than four million people does not reach a World Cup final by coincidence, and it certainly does not return four years later to reach another semi-final just because of luck. Croatia did it because they placed him at the centre of it all. Modrić was captain, conductor, compass and, above all, calmness. In 2018, he took them to the final and won the World Cup Golden Ball. In 2022, when everyone assumed the story had already peaked, he took Croatia to the semi-final and won the Bronze Ball.

And now, 2026 brings the likely end. The last World Cup game. The last walk. The last time Croatia looked at that thin frame, the No.10 shirt and that familiar little adjustment of the body before receiving the ball and believed that all was under control.

Football will continue, it always does. It may produce stronger and faster players, ones who are more data-friendly, higher pressing and more structured midfielders. But it will not produce another Luka Modrić.

He feels like the last of his kind: the old conductors; the midfielders who made control feel romantic. The last of the players who could make a stadium hold its breath not with a sprint or a shot, but with the drop of a shoulder before a pass.

His legacy is not only that he won. It is that he made winning beautiful. He is not built like a machine—with his slender figure, he looks like a mere mortal, but one who leaves an immortal legacy.

And in the end, even defeat cannot diminish him. Even though Portugal has advanced and Croatia is to go home this year, we saw Cristiano Ronaldo embrace him at the end. Because you can’t love football and not appreciate Modrić. That is his genius, loved by opposition and teammates alike.

History will remember that Luka Modrić played football as if the ball was an idea. That he carried a small nation to impossible places, defying all odds. He created art that may never be seen again. When the final whistle came, it did not feel like a player had lost a game. It felt like football may have lost a language.