Luka Modric was asked this Sunday about his “brother” Sergio Ramos and the Croatian took advantage of the trip, and the excitement of his decisive goal against Sevilla, to also claim his own: “He is a great player. Even though everyone wants to tell us the ages, he continues to show that he is at a very high level,” he said with his Balkan language, including himself in the equation to remind us again that one should not look at the DNI when deciding on a renewal (he turns 39 in September and the Andalusian, 37 in a month). An old personal request that he now feels very strongly about his future at Real Madrid, where his contract expires at the end of this season.
Since 2021, the midfielder has been renewing from year to year, a possibility that is currently very much up in the air. “There are several players who finish this year. These things are always dealt with when the season is close to ending. It is a situation that is not going to be addressed today, tomorrow or the day after,” they point out from Valdebebas in a generic way about Modric, Kroos or Nacho. The speech is not so different from previous campaigns, but the signs that exist today around the specific case of Modric, different from the start to that of his two colleagues. His age (he would start the next season at 39), the significant weight loss on the field suffered this year and his known difficulty in assuming a more secondary role have raised doubts about his continuity.
“It is a technical issue that the club will have to fix,” Ancelotti tried to resolve.
“It is a technical issue that I do not go into. The club will have time to fix all this in the coming months,” Carlo Ancelotti finally tried to limit on Sunday after saying that everything was “in Luka’s hands.” Requirements and juggling of a technician who every week is forced to bring out the best of his repertoire in front of the microphones to face the insistent and always delicate question of the Croatian. “I spoke with him a month ago and everything was quite clear between the two,” he commented recently, without offering more details about a case in which the club keeps the casting vote.
The Modric affair places the entity, the player and the coach before the complex scenario of closing in the best way the career at the highest level of a leading footballer, the most acclaimed at the Bernabéu and, above all, who resists to the loss of prominence. The disconnection process began some time ago and increases in volume as the outcome, still unclear, approaches. Even more so if the player is still capable of winning games like the one against Sevilla.
At the beginning of last season, in the summer of 2022, Ancelotti already announced to the three classics in the middle (Modric, Kroos and Casemiro, shortly before leaving for United) that there was a transition underway to make way for the youngsters and that they would have to give up minutes. Even so, the Croatian and the German maintained their status in important events. But before the start of this season (and with City’s 4-0 decline), the club told the coach that he should take another step in that relief. The two started the campaign on the bench, a situation that Kroos took little time to reverse. Modric, on the other hand, has verified to his great annoyance that his role this year would be that of a regular substitute.
Kroos is not the same
Although the two end their contracts this June, Madrid sees their cases differently. Mainly, because of the four and a half years that separate them (Kroos turned 34 in January). And they also conceive their epilogues in a disparate way. While the Croatian has never hidden that he intends to extend his time in the elite to the maximum, the German has warned of the opposite, of wanting to retire at the top in the near future. A warning that has Madrid in suspense. “We think different things about the future,” the German confirmed two weeks ago, shortly before announcing his return to the national team in the Euro Cup, where he could face the Croatia still led by Modric.
The Balkan’s discomfort due to the loss of prominence has been evident in Valdebebas’ day-to-day life since the beginning of the course. For some time now, Ancelotti has not even denied in his public responses the player’s displeasure at seeing himself almost always out of the eleven. In his case, the transition has had an abrupt point: in just one summer, he has gone from being irreplaceable in key days to a substitute in this year’s two classics. His minutes figure has decreased from 57% the previous season to 43% this one. “Quality is more important than quantity,” Carletto has tried to console him on several occasions, an insufficient detail for the Balkan, who even on his best days did not like to rest and who always despised golden retreats.
The transition has been abrupt for the Balkan: from 57% of minutes to 43%
The bitterness over this step into the background was soon expressed in his country, a classic of this type of process. “They wanted me to stay and I had the same desire. My only condition was that they treat me as a competitive player and that they not keep me based on past merits. “They told me that nothing would change in my status, and that’s why I signed,” she said last September in the media. Sports news.
In a locker room that is almost always at peace, benefiting from good results, the Modric case is probably the most thorny one that Ancelotti addresses, as he sees the Croatian and, in some way, feels reflected in him. “I have spent the last year of my career in my own skin. It is very complicated to manage. I understand perfectly what Modric can think when he doesn’t play. Everyone thinks it’s the end of his career, but the one who doesn’t think it’s the end is him. He doesn’t look 39 years old. [aún tiene 38]”, the Italian closed on Sunday after the Croatian’s key goal, congratulated one by one by his teammates upon entering the locker room after celebrating wildly on the field.
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