As the drops of rain hit against the turf in Moscow, France secured a second World Cup victory 20 years after their first, beating Croatia 4-2 in a thrilling final. The individual awards seemed to do justice as well, with Harry Kane winning the Golden Boot, Thibaut Courtois taking home the Golden Glove, Kylian Mbappe securing the Best Young Player award and a saddened Luka Modric picking up the Golden Ball. When Modric went up to receive the award, images of a devastated Lionel Messi collecting the same award in Brazil four years ago is bound to have flashed in the mind of several football fans.
It is a well-known fact that both Lionel Messi and Luka Modric are unquestionable stars for their club teams, Barcelona and Real Madrid, respectively, and they do give their all for their national teams, but their chances of winning an international honour are steadily decreasing. While both of them can take pride in how they led their teams and the performance they put up in 2014 and 2018, respectively, it just ended up as another ‘so near yet so far’ affair and no number of individual honours can soothe that pain. Messi looked lost when he collected the Golden Ball in 2014 while Modric was distraught as he went up the stairs in 2018. Messi returned to Barcelona after the pain on Brazilian soil to win the treble in the 2014-15 season under a new manager. Modric has a new manager to look forward to when he goes back to Madrid in Julian Lopetegui, but will be greeted with the absence of the talismanic Cristiano Ronaldo, who has already landed in Turin, having joined Juventus. The onus will be on the diminutive midfielder to perform just as well as he did in Croatian colours as Real Madrid open up a new chapter in their history: ‘post-Ronaldo’.
