Ante Budimir sits inside a bigger Croatia picture on Wednesday: Luka Modric, at 40, will lead the side into their World Cup opener against England at 21:00 BST. Modric has 198 caps and is still the central figure in a team that keeps punching above its weight.
Modric and Croatia
Modric made his Croatia debut in 2006 and has built a record that still stretches the frame of one tournament cycle. He has six Champions League titles with Real Madrid, won the Ballon d'Or, captained Croatia to the World Cup final in 2018 and helped them finish third four years ago.
That run has kept him at the core of a national team built around continuity. Croatia were admitted by Fifa in 1992 and by Uefa in 1993, missed qualification for the 1994 World Cup, then reached the quarter-finals at Euro 96 before finishing third at the World Cup in France two years later.
Zadar and the Velebit mountains
The other side of Modric's career is harder and older than the trophies. He was six when his grandfather, Luka, was killed by Serbian forces close to his home near the Velebit mountains, his family home was burned, his father went to war and the family moved to Zadar, where they lived as refugees in hotels.
That background is part of why his longevity reads differently at 40. He played 130 games for Dinamo Zagreb before joining Spurs in 2008, and his national-team total now stands at 198 caps, a level of durability that has carried him from 2006 to this opener against England.
Romeo Jozak and Modric
Romeo Jozak, who worked closely in the development of Croatia's top talent, said about Modric's teenage hair: "I was freaking out," and later added, "Of course, I didn't know he was going to become the Luka Modric down the road." He also said, "There's a respect and I feel it whenever we see each other, even though he's now the superstar."
He added of the wider national mood, "We don't use it as a motivation per se, because that motivation is built within the players," and then pointed to the deeper layer: "[But] some had relatives killed in the war and those things stay inside of you. You take it out of your genes and use it when you need it the most." Croatia enter Wednesday as a country of less than four million people that keeps producing results bigger than its size, with Modric still the reference point and Ante Budimir part of the group around him.
