Ronaldo, Modric face potential World Cup farewell in 2026 tournament

Cristiano Ronaldo and Luka Modric are in line for a potential World Cup farewell in Toronto as FIFA’s 2026 tournament runs across 104 matches in 16 host cities in Canada, Mexico and the United States. The matchup hanging over the knockout stage gives this World Cup a generational edge: it is not just another championship, but a likely handoff from two of the defining figures of the modern game.

Ronaldo is 41 and said before the tournament that he hoped his latest knockout match would not be his last World Cup appearance. Modric is 40 and has made 200 international appearances for Croatia, a career that has already carried the country to runners-up in 2018 and third place in 2022. FIFA has described both men as part of a possible “last dance” group alongside Lionel Messi and Mohamed Salah, a framing that reflects how long they have sat at the center of the sport’s global stage.

The backdrop matters because these players have been more than elite performers. Ronaldo and Modric became commercial reference points for an era in which the World Cup was not only a tournament, but a worldwide entertainment property built around recognizable names, repeat appearances and massive television audiences. The 2022 final between Argentina and France at Lusail Stadium drew an estimated 1.5 billion television viewers, showing the scale on which their generation helped sell the sport.

For Ronaldo, the emotional stakes are familiar. Portugal were eliminated by Morocco in the 2022 quarterfinals, and Ronaldo was shown in tears afterward. Modric’s Croatia left Qatar with a different result, beating Morocco 2-1 in the third-place match, a finish that left him widely viewed as having likely played his final World Cup game. Yet both returned, defying the repeated “last chance” label that pundits and FIFA coverage had attached to them before previous tournaments.

That persistence is what makes the current tournament feel like a hinge moment rather than a simple farewell tour. FIFA’s own coverage has pointed to Portugal against Croatia in Toronto as the kind of match that could decide whether Ronaldo or Modric goes out on this World Cup. If either does, the exit would close out a stretch in which a single cohort, shaped by Ronaldo, Modric, Messi and Salah, defined the game’s commercial peak and cultural reach before the next generation, with names like Jude Bellingham, fully takes over.