Luka Modric will lace up his boots for Croatia’s group stage match against Panama on June 23 in Toronto, and when he steps onto the pitch, he’ll become just the fourth male footballer ever to earn 200 international caps. The company he’s joining: Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, and Kuwait’s Bader Al-Mutawa.
At 40 years old, this is his fifth World Cup, a tournament span that stretches back to 2006.
A career measured in World Cups
Modric has 199 caps and 29 goals heading into the Panama match. His first World Cup appearance came in 2006 in Germany. He missed 2010 when Croatia failed to qualify, but returned for 2014 in Brazil.
In 2018 in Russia, Modric captained Croatia all the way to the World Cup final, where they fell to France. That tournament earned him the Golden Ball as the competition’s best player, and later that year, he broke the decade-long Ronaldo-Messi stranglehold on the Ballon d’Or. In 2022 in Qatar, he led Croatia to a third-place finish.
