Luka Modric to play on for Croatia past 41 as Bilic reunion extends golden era

Luka Modric is not finished with international football. Croatia’s captain, who celebrates his 41st birthday on Wednesday, has decided to prolong a national-team journey that began more than two decades ago and will now stretch into the autumn’s Nations League programme.

Confirmation arrived from the Croatian federation, which revealed that its skipper wants to remain available for the forthcoming internationals, a run of fixtures that includes meetings with England. For a player widely assumed to be approaching his farewell, it was a delightfully stubborn twist, according to BBC Sport’s account of the skipper’s choice.

Many expected Modric to walk away from the Vatreni after this summer’s World Cup, where Croatia, then under Zlatko Dalic, fell to Portugal in the round of 32. Instead, the AC Milan midfielder has chosen to carry on, and his timing is no coincidence: Slaven Bilic is back in charge of the national side.

A reunion two decades in the making

There is a neat symmetry to the decision. Modric won his first senior cap in March 2006, shortly before Bilic took the reins for the first time, and the former West Ham manager shepherded the young playmaker through his formative years on the international stage during that initial spell in charge, which ran until 2012.

Two hundred and two appearances later, the pair are together again. Bilic, who has returned to the Croatia dugout fourteen years after his first tenure ended, greeted the news with undisguised delight, describing himself as thrilled that his captain had opted to continue.

The returning coach paid tribute to everything his veteran brings to the squad, on the pitch and within the camp, and spoke of his eagerness to collaborate once more. Both men, he suggested, share the same burning desire: to keep Croatia competing among the elite of world football, toe to toe with the strongest nations on the planet.

A legacy already secure

Whatever happens from here only burnishes a record that needs no embellishment. Modric inspired Croatia to the 2018 World Cup final in Russia, where France proved too strong, and his performances earned him the Golden Ball as the tournament’s outstanding player. Four years later he was part of the squad that claimed bronze in Qatar.

English supporters know him well, and not always fondly. He was in the Croatia side that wrecked qualification for Euro 2008 at a rain-lashed Wembley, the night that sealed Steve McClaren’s fate beneath the umbrella, before helping his country to the quarter-finals at the finals in Austria and Switzerland. Across his 202 outings he has found the net 29 times.

England dates circled

The immediate future offers high-profile tests. Croatia travel to face the Czech Republic on 26 September before visiting Spain three days later. October then brings a double-header with England: the Three Lions journey to Zagreb on 3 October, with the Wembley return staged on 12 November.

At 41, Modric has no business still dictating internationals, yet he keeps doing precisely that. England have been warned.