On Saturday, Modric, at the age of 40 years and 291 days, became the oldest player to record a World Cup assist. <\/p>\n
“He plays as if he were 20 years old. He was incredible. He’s our leader and our best player,” said Petar Sucic, his Croatia team-mate. <\/p>\n
And you only have to look at how Croatia have fared in the past two World Cups to get an understanding of his legacy. <\/p>\n
In 2018, Croatia stunned everyone to reach the final, where they lost to France, and last time around, they came third – with Modric’s display across 120 minutes as a 37-year-old against Brazil in the quarter-final, a clear standout. For a nation of just under four million people, Croatia’s recent World Cup runs are nothing short of remarkable. <\/p>\n
Only five players have made more than Modric’s 22 appearances across five World Cups. He made bow in 2006 and he is another player to have played more than 200 times for his country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Saturday, Modric, at the age of 40 years and 291 days, became the oldest player to record…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":771086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-771085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=771085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/771086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}