Luka Modric

Croatia

“What people don’t realise about Luka,” said the late Tomislav Basic, one of Modric’s early coaches whom he called his “second father”, “is that he is largely self-taught. For many days and months, this under-nourished, small kid played with the ball by himself at a refugee hotel’s parking lot, banging it against the wall and then controlling it with the half-turn that would become his trademark move...