Luka Modric has been tormenting England for 20 years. Can he do it one more time?

W hen Luka Modric first played against England, Tony Blair was still in office. Arsenal had just moved from Highbury to the Emirates Stadium, Italy were newly crowned world champions and Pep Guardiola retired as a player after a six-month spell in Mexico with Dorados. Twitter was less than three months old and Facebook had been made fully public earlier that year. Amy Winehouse’s album Back to Black was about to be released, while the much-hyped film Borat was coming to cinemas. Football fans in England – and in Croatia – may recognise which game it was solely from that last bit of pop culture history: the European Championship qualifier in Zagreb on 11 October 2006. At the very moment that Gary Neville sent a backpass to Paul Robinson, Borat’s image appeared on Maksimir Stadium’s advertising boards; the ball bounced awkwardly on the edge of the six-yard box, the England keeper missed it and it went into the net with Sacha Baron Cohen’s grin and moustache in the background, adding to England’s misery. Luka Modric For Modric, who played the whole match that Croatia won 2-0, that was already his 11th cap; his first came that year in a friendly in which Lionel Messi scored his debut goal for Argentina. And so beckoned the Modric era for Croatia, without anyone being aware of it. …