Modrić Enters His Last World Cup: The End of the Most Successful Era in Croatian Football

The World Cup is beginning, with the hosting split between the USA, Canada and Mexico. Argentina arrives as the defending champion from Qatar 2022 and with an ambition few have the right to voice - to defend the trophy. In the entire history of the World Cup, only two nations have managed it: Italy before the Second World War and Brazil in the sixties. Everything else is a story that sells well before kickoff.

For the Balkan viewer, though, the biggest story doesn't sit in Buenos Aires. It sits in Zagreb, and it's called Luka Modrić. At 40, Croatia's captain enters his last World Cup, and with him ends the most successful era in Croatian football as a whole. Silver in Russia 2018, bronze in Qatar - a generation a small country holds up where much bigger ones didn't reach.

How many stories like this does the Balkans know? One player who carries the whole team on his back for years, and when he leaves, there's a void that can't be filled with money or desire. Croatia without Modrić won't be the same Croatia - the fans and the opponents both know it.

France, meanwhile, plays under Deschamps for the last time, with Mbappé and Olise in the squad, dreaming of something only Brazil has done - three finals in a row between 1994 and 2002. Morocco, the first African national team to reach a World Cup semifinal, again wants to rattle the favourites who underestimate the teams from the south.

Everyone arrives with a plan, everyone arrives with a fate already told. But football rarely reads the script written for it in advance. In a month we'll know who was telling the truth, and who merely sold themselves well before the start.