There must have been times during his first season at the Bernabeu when Luka Modric wondered if joining Real Madrid was a huge mistake.
The diminutive Croatian midfielder struggled during his first six months with Los Blancos and was infamously voted as the worst signing of the season, alongside Barcelona’s Alex Song, by readers of Spanish newspaper Marca in December 2012.
Modric joined Madrid in a £30 million from Tottenham, where he had consistently impressed over four seasons, but initially found life hard under Jose Mourinho’s at arguably the biggest football club on the planet.
“This is Real Madrid, I know the huge media pressure on transfers,” Modric commented, per the Daily Mail, following the embarrassing Marca episode. “I’m not looking for an alibi, I'm not that guy, but it's very demanding to adjust to a huge club like Real Madrid.
“I have had a number of solid performances, I failed in some but overall I proved I can offer something.”
The turning point for Modric
The turning point for Modric’s Real Madrid career came at Old Trafford in March 2013.
Modric came off the bench in the second half and scored a superb equaliser against 10-man Manchester United to help Madrid eventually secure their place in the Champions League quarter-finals.
Without that goal, which undoubtedly had a huge impact on Modric’s confidence, there’s every chance he would have been sold at the end of that season.
Selling Modric would have been a huge mistake
But what a mistake that would have been.
Modric is now, in the eyes of many football fans across the world, the best central midfielder on the planet.
Without the technically gifted 31-year-old, it’s safe to assume Real Madrid wouldn’t have been quite so successful over the past few years.
His performance in the recent Champions League final was exceptional and confirmed what many of us already knew: Modric is the heartbeat of Zinedine Zidane’s side.
Footage emerges that proves Modric is a genius
Modric has always been a fantastic footballer, as this brilliant footage from his Dinamo Zagreb days proves.
The video - brought to our attention by Sport Bible - shows Modric performing back-to-back dummies within the space of five seconds and taking out three opponents in the process.
Watch it here...
It’s a remarkable piece of footage which indicates that Modric was on a totally different level to every other player in his native Croatia before joining Tottenham in 2008.
Luka, we salute you.