Rodri is looking for his fourth title this year

Luka Modrić faced the Spanish team for the first time on June 7, 2006. At the age of 21, he was included in the Croatian football elite for a little over a season when Zlatko Kranjčar, former legend of Dinamo Zagreb, invited him to the ranks at the beginning of the second part of the friendly a match that weighed square with Spain commanded by Luis Aragonés. An own goal by Pablo Ibáñez put the Balkan team in the lead shortly after the start of the match, but Spain overcame the deficit in the second half with goals from Mariano Pernía and Fernando Torres to win the match played at the Swiss Stade de Geneve.

It was the fifth national team for the little genius from Zadar, who made his debut three months earlier in the victory over Leo Messi’s Argentina. On that date, Rodrigo Hernández was fifteen days from his tenth birthday, and he was already dreaming of wearing the jersey of Atlético de Madrid. The club whose youth academy he entered the following year and which he left just over five years later for Villarreal, after seeing his coaches relegate him to the lower divisions appealing to his lack of physique. Tonight, the short kid who has grown into one of the most powerful midfielders in Europe will challenge himself as the team’s beacon. With Spain, Rodri wants to crown the whole year for himself, in which he won the triple title with Manchester City, whom he pushed past in the final of the Champions League.

Rodri knows what it means to win titles. And he appealed to that mentality in the previous one. He reminded that only two of the 23 Spanish national team members who are in Rotterdam for the League of Nations final against Croatia know what it means to win with Spain. “Only two have lifted the title. You need to create a winning culture for future tournaments. We already experienced that against France two years ago and now we have a new opportunity. You have to bring Spain back to the top,” remarked the midfielder. Asked if it was the best moment of his career, Rodrigo Hernández agreed. “At the level of football and titles, it is.”

On the other hand, to avoid their fourth title this year, it will be Croatia, which only France managed to prevent from lifting the trophy at Moscow’s Luzhniki. Spain was the last national team that managed to defeat the tough Croatians in overtime of a major tournament. It happened at the European Cup held in 2021, when Morata and Oyarzabal’s goals sealed the passport to the quarterfinals.

Of that troop, seven survived the expedition that Luis de la Fuente led to Rotterdam, and one is Rodri. There are ten left in Zlatko Dalić’s ranks, including three who have a guaranteed place in the midfield: Modrić, Brozović and Kovačić. Despite Rakitić’s farewell to the team three years ago, no other line better depicts the resistance to the passage of time of the block that with its tireless legs feeds the dreams of greatness of the country with a population of less than four million. Some desires that Spain must destroy in order to color the new cycle with hope in De Kuip, after a very long journey through the desert.