Luka Modric completes a move to AC Milan on a free transfer until June 2026 after 13 successful years at Real Madrid.

Ballon d’Or winner becomes the latest veteran, after Kevin De Bruyne, to be pulled in by Italian game’s leisurely pace of life Luka Modric will turn 40 in September. He has played 930 games over the course of a career and has won seven league titles and six Champions Leagues. He even broke the Messi-Ronaldo duopoly to claim the Ballon d’Or after inspiring Croatia to the World Cup final in 2018. He rarely lasts a full 90 minutes these days, didn’t start a game during the Club World Cup and was spared the indignity of coming on for his Madrid farewell with the semi-final against Paris Saint-Germain long since lost. He could have retired five years ago and still been one of the most respected players in the history of the game but, his eyes on next summer’s World Cup, when his contract at Real Madrid expired Modric chose to join Milan. Continue reading...

Manager describes 39-year-old as ‘extraordinary player’ Allegri says Maignan and Leão seem willing to stay Real Madrid’s captain Luka Modric will join Milan after the Club World Cup, the Serie A club’s manager, Massimiliano Allegri, confirmed on Monday. The 39-year-old midfielder announced in May that he would be leaving Madrid after the tournament. Madrid face Paris Saint-Germain in the semi-finals on Wednesday, with the final scheduled for Sunday. Continue reading...

Mbappé scores twice in 2-0 win against Real Socidead Ancelotti’s final match as manager, Modric’s last home game Real Madrid gave Carlo Ancelotti and Luka Modric a victory in their final game at the Santiago Bernabéu, with Kylian Mbappé scoring twice in a 2-0 win over Real Sociedad to end their La Liga season. Ancelotti will become Brazil coach after leaving Real, while Modric is set to leave the club after next month’s Club World Cup, which will be held in the United States. This story will be updated Continue reading...

Following Luka Modric's investment in Swansea City, the BBC Sport's Ask Me Anything team looks into why more and more footballers are snubbing management.

With Luka Modric investing in Swansea City, BBC Sport asks why? How did it happen? What will his role be? And what does it mean for the Welsh club?

Midfielder’s contract with Real ends in the summerMajor changes behind scenes at Championship club The Real Madrid midfielder Luka Modric is poised to acquire a minority stake in Swansea. The 39-year-old Croatia captain, who is out of contract at the end of the season, is close to making his first foray into football ownership. His motivations for joining the Swansea structure are unclear. Swansea are fronted by the American owners Andy Coleman, Brett Cravatt and Jason Cohen. Swansea are 12th in the Championship after a renaissance under their caretaker head coach, Alan Sheehan, who succeeded Luke Williams in February. Swansea host Hull on Friday and have taken 17 points from nine matches under Sheehan. He is expected to be a leading candidate to take the job on a permanent basis. Continue reading...

Real Madrid and Croatia legend Luka Modric is set to take a minority ownership stake in Swansea City.

Jude Bellingham was not shocked by Madrid’s display after a campaign littered with defeats and tactical muddle On the way out of the Emirates, someone asked Kylian Mbappé whether Real Madrid could still do this. “Course we can,” he replied, three words and then he was gone. In front of him, Vinícius Júnior left in silence. Rodrygo passed by unnoticed again. Luka Modric didn’t talk, nor did Fede Valverde. Lucas Vázquez and Raúl Asencio did, then Thibaut Courtois and Jude Bellingham. “We weren’t good,” Vázquez admitted. “We forgot to play well,” Courtois said. “It’s not what what we expected,” Asencio said, but it wasn’t unexpected either, which is why it was the description Bellingham didn’t use which said it best. Asked whether he was shocked, Bellingham said: “I don’t know if ‘shocked’ is the right word.” No one who has watched them all year could have truly been shocked by this, except that they’re Real Madrid, stupid, and somehow Real Madrid always seem to find a way. “There is nothing we can draw from external excuses or anything like that; we have to look at ourselves,” Bellingham said. “These are similar sets of themes to when we have dropped points all season. It’s happened again tonight on a larger scale.” Continue reading...

El clásico kicks off at 8pm (BST) at the Santiago BernabéuReal Madrid and Barça meet in clásico like those of oldShare your thoughts with Scott via email “These two might, just might, actually be the best teams in Europe again; this could be a battle the way it used to be, closer and more competitive than anyone anticipated … a clash of styles and identities … a clash of titans.” Allow the good doctor to set the scene. The reigning champions Real Madrid are without Rodrygo and Thibaut Courtois, both of whom are injured. They’re two of three changes to their starting XI after the 5-2 comeback win over Borussia Dortmund, with club captain Luka Modrić dropping to the bench; Aurélien Tchouaméni and Eduardo Camavinga step into the midfield, while Andriy Lunin is in goal. Continue reading...

It’s not the moments or the music, the joy in how he plays. It’s something simpler with ‘the eternal solution’ Ferenc Puskas played pregnant, teammate Amancio Amaro liked to say. The day he arrived at Real Madrid in 1958, he was 31 years old, 18kg overweight and, banned by Fifa for defecting after the Hungarian uprising, hadn’t played football for two years. He couldn’t possibly go on a pitch like this: signing me is all well and good, he told the club’s president Santiago Bernabéu, but have you seen me? “I was the size of a large balloon,” he recalled and the coach, Luis Carniglia, didn’t know what to do with him either. That, Bernabéu replied, was their problem not his. As it turned out, blessed with a left foot like no other, 242 goals followed, the only problem that he hadn’t come sooner. Most called him Cañoncito pum! (Little Cannon Bang!), although Alfredo Di Stéfano called him little cannon big belly. That summer Puskas trained wrapped in plastic and woolly jumpers. By the season’s end, he had scored the goal that took Real Madrid to the European Cup final; a year on, he scored four in the final but gave Erwin Stein the match ball. Old when he came, supposedly finished, he helped Madrid reach three more. He scored a hat-trick in 1962 and played in 1964 but when the 1966 final arrived, eight years after he had, it was over. Left behind while they travelled to Brussels, he was in a makeshift cup team facing Betis three days before and 1,000 miles south. Continue reading...

Composed midfielder demonstrated the ability to do the right thing again and again that is vital to his position The English Toni Kroos does not exist. Nor does the English Andrea Pirlo, the English Luka Modric, the English Rodri. Instinctively, everybody knows this. England doesn’t have earthquakes, England doesn’t grow citrus fruit and England doesn’t produce technical central midfielders who can control a game and dictate the tempo of play. That’s just the way it is. And so on a clear and bracing Helsinki night, into this paradox steps Angel Gomes. Paradoxical because in many ways the player Gomes is trying to be, the role he is being fitted for, is something that doesn’t actually exist. Naturally, because football fans are impatient and adore the dopamine rush of making instant sweeping judgments, the impulse is to measure him against this stratospheric, borderline-impossible standard. He’s either the English Pirlo. Or he isn’t. Good luck. Continue reading...

Croatia’s and Portugal’s greatest face each other in Lisbon with neither yet ready to tear himself away from international football People have been trying to retire Luka Modric for more than six years. It was in the aftermath of the 2018 World Cup that friends first gently began to broach the subject: his contemporaries Mario Mandzukic and Vedran Corluka had called it a day after Croatia’s defeat in the final, and Modric himself knew there would be a certain elegiac poetry in taking his curtain call at the moment of his country’s greatest achievement. Plaudits ringing in his ears, the Golden Ball in his grasp. Leave them wanting more, and all that. But still, something in him rebelled. “My heart told me to stay,” he later wrote in his autobiography. “Playing for your national team is one of the most fulfilling experiences; I still want to feel it. I feel fit and motivated. It’s true that retiring after the silver medal in Russia would have left the biggest impression. But I don’t care much about impressions.” Continue reading...

Our picture editor, Jonny Weeks, chooses his favourite images from Germany including a distraught Luka Modric and delighted Jordan Pickford Continue reading...