Croatia have qualified easily for the 2026 World Cup, and Luka Modric is still at the center of the plan. At 40, he should pass the 200-cap mark in North America, a reminder that Croatia are going into the tournament with their most famous player still pulling the team forward.
That matters now because Croatia’s next test is no longer qualification but whether an experienced side can still handle the sport’s biggest stage. Zlatko Dalic has made clear his contract ends with this World Cup, which means he will not be pushed into a longer decision while the tournament approaches. He has spent almost nine years in charge, long enough to turn continuity into a feature of the team rather than a luxury.
The numbers explain why the discussion keeps circling back to age. Croatia are likely to use a back four, probably in a 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1, after Dalic spent most of his reign with that shape. Yet the core remains old by tournament standards. Mateo Kovacic is 32, Ivan Perisic is 37 and Andrej Kramaric is turning 35, which leaves Croatia among the oldest teams in the field even before the bench is considered. Dalic has still leaned on Modric, who scored his 29th international goal in a warm-up match against Slovenia and has been Milan’s best player by some distance since leaving Real Madrid in 2025.
There is also a tension inside that comfort. Croatia cruised through qualifying, and Czechia was the only opponent to take anything from them, but Dalic’s experiments with three at the back did not stick. He said after the Faroe Islands win in November that he would never try it again, then used it in March friendlies against Colombia and Brazil anyway. Croatia beat Colombia 2-1 and lost to Brazil 3-1, enough to show the old structure still matters but not enough to settle how much more this group can squeeze out of the same veterans. That is where younger names come in, even if they remain less established, because a team this old cannot survive on reputation alone forever.
The next answer will come in June, not in theory. Croatia face England in Dallas on 17 June, Panama in Toronto on 23 June and Ghana in Philadelphia on 27 June, three games that will show whether Modric’s final major tournament can still be built around an aging core or whether the next version of Croatia has to start arriving now.
