Croatia coach Zlatko Dalic believes Luka Modric will be fit to lead his side at this summer’s World Cup after the AC Milan midfielder had surgery on a broken cheekbone.<\/p>\n
The 40-year-old was injured following a clash of heads with Juventus midfielder Manuel Locatelli when their sides drew 0-0 on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Milan said Modric had suffered a “complex, multi-fragment fracture of the left zygomatic bone” and had undergone “completely successful” surgery.<\/p>\n
The San Siro side did not specify how long Modric might be out but wished him “a speedy recovery ahead of the Fifa World Cup”.<\/p>\n
The World Cup starts on 11 June and Croatia open their campaign against England on 17 June.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been talking to Luka and wished him a successful surgery and a quality and speedy recovery,” said Dalic.<\/p>\n
“I am convinced that he will do everything to be ready for the World Cup, and we’ll provide full support.<\/p>\n
“I am confident that the recovery will go according to plan and that Luka, as team captain, will lead us at another major competition this summer.”<\/p>\n
Modric is set to miss the rest of the Serie A season as AC Milan chase a Champions League spot, with four games left to play.<\/p>\n
They are in third place on 67 points, with fourth-placed Juventus on 64 points and Como on 61 points along with Roma.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Croatia coach Zlatko Dalic believes Luka Modric will be fit to lead his side at this summer’s World…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611097,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-611096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}