Luka Modric’s 200th Cap: Croatia Defeats Panama to Revive 2026 Hopes
The numbers say 200. The feeling was something closer to forever.
On a tight, anxious night in Toronto, Croatia’s campaign flickered back into life, carried once again by the man who has come to define an era. Luka Modric, 40 years old and still at the heart of everything, stepped into the rarest of company with his 200th senior international appearance, joining Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Bader al-Mutawa in football’s most exclusive club.
There were no fireworks from him, no grand gestures. That is not his way. The tributes came from those around him instead. After the final whistle, Zlatko Dalic’s voice told its own story as he praised a captain who, even now, still bends matches to his rhythm and still sets the standard in a dressing room that has grown up in his shadow.
On the pitch, his teammates made sure the milestone meant something tangible. In the post-match celebrations they pulled on black T-shirts emblazoned with “Infinite Legacy” and the number 200, a simple message for a player whose influence has rarely needed words.
Croatia crack the code
For 45 minutes, though, Modric’s landmark looked destined to be remembered for frustration rather than fulfilment.
Panama arrived with a clear plan and the discipline to carry it out. Thomas Christiansen’s 5-4-1 locked the central lanes, squeezed space between the lines and left Croatia passing in front of a red wall. Every Croatian touch in the final third seemed to meet two, sometimes three, Panama shirts. The rhythm slowed. The anxiety grew.
Dalic did not wait to see if the pattern would break on its own. At half-time he changed the picture, sending on Ante Budimir to give Croatia a focal point in the box and a body to occupy Panama’s centre-backs. One tweak. One target. The game tilted.
The pressure finally told in the 54th minute. A neat move down the right ended with Marco Pasalic producing a deft backheel into the path of Josip Stanisic, who had timed his run perfectly. Stanisic drove a low ball across the face of goal, and there, ghosting in at the back post, was Budimir. Osasuna’s all-time top scorer didn’t snatch, didn’t rush. He simply opened his body and steered the ball home.
The finish was calm. The reaction was anything but.
The Croatian end exploded, red and white flags whipping in the Toronto night as a match that had felt suffocating suddenly opened up. The goal did more than change the scoreline; it loosened legs, cleared heads and reminded a side bruised by defeat to England that they still know how to impose themselves when it matters.
Panama’s resistance, Croatia’s release
With the deadlock broken, space finally appeared. Confidence, too.
Pasalic soon found himself with the chance to put the game to bed. Slipped through one-on-one, he went for power but met a strong hand from Orlando Mosquera. The rebound fell kindly, the net gaping, yet the ball flew over the bar. A huge let-off for Panama, and a reminder that Croatia’s margin for error in this group remains thin.
Panama, though already on the brink of elimination, refused to fold. They had threatened even before the goal, most notably when Jose Luis Rodriguez saw a first-half header flicked onto the underside of the bar by Dominik Livakovic. That moment summed up their tournament: close, but not quite.
They kept coming. Seven corners, a flurry of set pieces, and several sharp interventions from Livakovic during a frantic spell after Budimir’s strike. The Canaleros chased, pressed, hurled bodies into the box, but the final touch deserted them again. No goals, no points, and now no route to the last 32.
Christiansen could still look his players in the eye. He spoke of hunger, dedication, spirit. Of a team that had forced Croatia into uncomfortable moments and restricted them to two efforts on target, one of which decided the match. The margins at this level are unforgiving. Panama found that out the hard way.
Group L thrown wide open
The significance of Budimir’s goal stretches far beyond one tense evening in Toronto.
England’s goalless draw with Ghana earlier in the day had already blown Group L open. Four points for England, four for Ghana, Croatia now right behind them on three. Panama stranded at the bottom with none.
The scenarios are brutally simple. Beat Ghana in Philadelphia and Croatia are through to the last 32. Anything less, and they are at the mercy of others. England, by contrast, only need to avoid defeat against an already-eliminated Panama to book their own passage.
No one in the Croatian camp is pretending the pressure has gone. But the mood has shifted. Pasalic admitted as much, speaking of a team fully aware of both its quality and its precarious position, a team that finally did in the second half what it failed to produce in the first.
The burden, for now, feels lighter.
And at the centre of it all, still, is Modric. Two hundred caps behind him, another knockout push in front of him, and a legacy his teammates have already branded infinite. The question now is not how long he can keep going, but how far this Croatia side can ride his enduring brilliance one more time.
