After Ronaldo and Modri\u0107, who comes next?<\/p>\n
This will likely be the final World Cup for Modri\u0107 and Ronaldo. So with the veterans on the way out, which youngsters are ready to carry the torch?<\/p>\n
For Portugal, 21-year-old Jo\u00e3o Neves, 24-year-old Nuno Mendes, 26-year-old Vitinha and 26-year-old Pedro Neto will be expected to make the team theirs in the post-Ronaldo era.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The first three are already two-time UEFA Champions League winners with Paris Saint-Germain \u2014 and some of the best players in their positions. Neto is coming off a season where he scored a career-high 10 goals for Chelsea mostly as a winger.<\/p>\n
On the Croatian side, 22-year-old Petar Su\u010di\u0107 and 23-year-old Martin Baturina have already shown the country’s midfield is secure after Modri\u0107 retires. They’ve both already scored in this World Cup, with Su\u010di\u0107 also registering an assist.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Baturina has looked particularly impressive in all three group stage games and could be key in countering Portugal’s all-star midfield trio today.<\/p>\n
All that’s to say, while Ronaldo and Modri\u0107 are certainly the well respected leaders of their sides, both Portugal and Croatia will be in good hands when the legends walk off into the sunset.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After Ronaldo and Modri\u0107, who comes next? This will likely be the final World Cup for Modri\u0107 and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":776453,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[49,48,3302],"class_list":["post-776452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776452","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=776452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}