Luka Modric faced the Spanish team for the first time on June 7, 2006. At the age of 21, he had been installed in the Croatian soccer elite for just over a season when Zlatko Kranjcar, a former Dinamo Zagreb legend, called him ranks at the beginning of the second part of the friendly that measured the checkers with La Roja commanded by Luis Aragonés. An own goal by Pablo Ibáñez had put the Balkan team ahead shortly after the start of the game, but Spain came from behind in the second half with goals from Mariano Pernía and Fernando Torres to claim victory in a match played by the Swiss Stade de Geneve. It was the fifth international cap for the little genius from Zadar, whose premiere had taken place three months earlier in a ‘in extremis’ victory over Leo Messi’s Argentina.
On that date, Rodrigo Hernández was fifteen days away from reaching his first decade of life, but he was already dreaming of wearing the Atlético de Madrid shirt. A club whose youth academy he entered the following year and which he left just over five years later to Villarreal, after seeing how the coaches relegated him to the lower categories appealing to his lack of physique.
Tonight, that short kid who has grown to become one of the most powerful midfielders in Europe will challenge the incombustible ’10’ of the ‘Vatreni’ as a beacon of the Spanish team in a final of the League of Nations that is marked by the different states of assemblage in which Spain, which aspires to fasten a title that would bathe the dawn of the new stage under the aegis of Luis de la Fuente, and Croatia, whose success could represent the glorious evening of an unforgettable generation, find themselves in. who has not gotten off the podium in the last two World Cups, but who is running out of gasoline, although more slowly than expected.
“Winning would be crowning the successes of this generation,” acknowledges Zlatko Dalic, a coach that almost no one remembers far from Croatia except when the big national team tournaments arrive. Despite the fact that all the spotlights always point to Modric, Perisic, Brozovic, Kovacic or a Gvardiol absent in the Netherlands due to injury, a lot has to do with the hand of the discreet coach born 56 years ago in the territory of what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina with the admiration caused by a team that never gives up, no matter how tortuous the undertaking may seem.
A precedent to dream
Denmark, Russia and England can testify to this, defeated five years ago in the World Cup in Russia by a Croatia that explored the limits of resistance by becoming the first team to play and beat with extra time, including three consecutive World Cup qualifiers. World. Only France could prevent Modric from lifting the trophy at the Luzhnikí in Moscow. This is also attested by Japan and Brazil, victims of the battle-hardened Balkans in two games resolved in a penalty shootout within a journey in Qatari lands that stopped the eventual champion Argentina in the semifinals. And Spain itself also bears witness to this, as it was the last team to achieve the feat of defeating the tough Croatians in extra time in a major tournament.
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It happened at the Eurocup held in 2021, when goals from Morata and Oyarzabal sealed the passport for the quarterfinals of the soldiery under Luis Enrique. Of that troop there are seven survivors in the expedition that Luis de la Fuente took to Rotterdam: Unai Simón, Jordi Alba, Laporte, Rodri, Morata, Fabián Ruiz and Dani Olmo.
Ten remain in Zlatko Dalic’s ranks from that match held at the Parken in Copenhagen, including the three who have a guaranteed place in the midfield: Modric, Brozovic and Kovacic. Despite Rakitic’s goodbye to the team three years ago, no other line better exemplifies the resistance to the passage of time of a block that feeds with its indefatigable legs the dreams of greatness of a country of less than four million inhabitants. Some desires that Spain needs to destroy to dye the new cycle with hope in De Kuip, after a very long journey through the desert.
-Probable alignments:
Croatia: Livakovic, Juranovic, Sutalo, Vida, Perisic, Modric, Brozovic, Kovacic, Pasalic, Kramaric and Ivanusec.
Spain: Unai Simón, Carvajal, Le Normand, Laporte, Jordi Alba, Rodri, Mikel Merino, Asensio, Gavi, Dani Olmo and Morata.
Referee: Felix Zwayer (Germany).
Time: 8:45 p.m.
Stadium: De Kuip.
TV: 1.
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