Modrić says goodbye as Portugal eliminate Croatia in World Cup thriller

Luka Modrić’s last World Cup ended in tears at Toronto Stadium, where Portugal beat Croatia 2-1 on Thursday and the 40-year-old midfielder stayed on the pitch for a long embrace with Cristiano Ronaldo. The scene gave the knockout tie a finality that reached far beyond one result.

Portugal advanced from the Round of 32 on Gonçalo Ramos’ late winner, after Ronaldo, 41, scored what was described as the first knockout-stage goal of his World Cup career. Croatia pushed to the end, but a late goal was overturned by VAR and the last chance to rescue the match disappeared in the noise of a stunned stadium.

The emotional weight of the night came from the pair at the center of it. Modrić and Ronaldo, former Real Madrid teammates from 2012 to 2018, shared six seasons and 13 titles together, and their embrace before and after the final whistle turned a World Cup elimination into a farewell between two era-defining figures. Their exchange carried the sense of a closing chapter for a generation that had treated midfield control, intelligence and endurance as a form of authority.

For Croatia, the defeat closed a remarkable World Cup cycle. Zlatko Dalić said, “This was probably his last World Cup,” a line that matched the mood of the Croatian bench as Modrić walked off after another night in which he was still the team’s emotional and technical center. Croatia arrived in Toronto as the runner-up from 2018 and the third-place team from 2022, carrying expectations that Modrić had helped build through two deep tournament runs and years of consistency on the sport’s biggest stage.

That is the standard Modrić leaves behind. Croatia no longer enters a World Cup as a sentimental outsider or a one-run surprise. Because of Modrić, the country became a team expected to survive pressure, survive knockout rounds and survive the weight of its own recent history. In Toronto, that legacy was visible in the tears, the embrace with Ronaldo and the VAR decision that made the ending even harder to absorb.