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.
It’s not just a significant move for Modric. It also confirms Serie A as the undisputed home of the (gifted) senior citizen. Next season, Kevin De Bruyne, at 34, will be lining up for Napoli after his move from Manchester City, while the 37-year-old Francesco Acerbi and the 36-year-old Henrikh Mkhitaryan are still at Inter and the 34-year-old Marten de Roon continues to anchor Atalanta’s midfield with Juan Cuadrado, at 37, on the flank. The average Serie A player is 14 months older than the average of Europe’s top 31 leagues.
Football, increasingly, is a young man’s game. There is a wealth of evidence that the intensity of the modern pressing means players reach their peaks earlier. Over the past decade the number of players aged 23 and under who have played more than 900 Premier League minutes has increased by 32%. At the same time, every Ballon d’Or winner since Kaká in 2007 is still playing.
That is probably the result of two factors. Physical conditioning has never been so good. Footballers live healthier lives. Their diets are more closely monitored and understanding of nutrition and recovery is better than ever before. There have never been fewer bad tackles; and even if that benefit is offset by the gruelling nature of today’s pressing game, modern sports medicine means broken legs and cruciate ruptures are no longer the career-ending injuries they once would have been.
At the same time, there is now a penumbra of leagues outside the elite that demand star players and can afford to pay them, while offering an environment when the football is of a reasonable level but less demanding than in, say, the Premier League. Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo benefit from the salaries and exposure of the United States and Saudi Arabia, while MLS and the Saudi Pro League benefit from their celebrity. They are far from the first two leagues that have offered a mutually beneficial late-career payday, but they are perhaps better established, more visible and more attractive than ever before.
Luka Modric played his last game for Real Madrid at the Club World Cup. Photograph: Justin Setterfield/Fifa/Getty Images
Which brings us to Serie A that, while still ranking far higher than MLS or the Saudi Pro League, has clearly fallen a long way from its 1980s and 90s heyday. It is a competition replete with stars, but they are stars a few years beyond their peak. While every league would probably like to be financially dominant, there is no great harm in that – or at least there shouldn’t be. As football’s economics become increasingly stratified, every league has had to find its niche.
Sweden – almost despite itself, given the clubs would almost certainly vote for video assistant referees were they not mandated by their members not to – has become celebrated for its “authenticity”, with a lively ultra culture and a retro vibe. Germany is the home of thrusting young coaches with iPads and new pressing models. Spain has the clásico and France has PSG. Italy has to face the reality that it is no longer hegemonic.
There are no Italian clubs among the top 10 wealthiest. Although Juventus and Inter have lost in two Champions League finals since, no Serie A side has won it since the latter in 2010.
Serie A has become a league where the pace is a little slower, where veterans can be effective – and there is a charm in that. Just as there is something comforting – from the point of view of the casual audience if not the administrators – in the way so many of the best players in snooker are the same as they were a decade or two ago, so Serie A is increasingly becoming a showcase for the familiar, from Romelu Lukaku to Scott McTominay, from Stefan de Vrij to Ruben Loftus-Cheek.
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Kevin De Bruyne is the newest star in Naples. Photograph: ANSA/EPA
Inter, Milan, Juve and Napoli still have a cachet. It’s easy to understand why De Bruyne, once Manchester City had decided they did not wish to offer him a new deal, preferred to join Napoli than to scrap on in the hurly-burly of the Premier League for an aspirant mid-table side. Or why Modric has gone there rather than flogging himself around the US. Not everything has to be done at a ferocious tempo. Not everything even has to be the best.
Since Juventus’s years of domination came to an end, there have been three champions in five seasons and six sides finishing in the top three, including Napoli and Lazio, both of whom had won the league only twice before that spell, and Atalanta, who have never won Serie A. That suggests a healthy level of competition and a pleasing mix of grand old names and teams elevated by sensible investment and/or inspirational management. In a world that wasn’t obsessed by growth, week-to-week intrigue would be more than enough.
But modern football is a world obsessed by growth, thanks to the widespread involvement of private equity firms, many of them American. Eight Serie A teams are majority-owned by US companies. A popular league blessed with veteran stars is not enough, which is why Milan’s home game against Como next season could be played in Perth, Australia.
Perhaps it’s the constant drive for more than inspired progress, but it often feels the beauty of what already exists can be missed; and the prospect of Modric playing for Milan, producing another season of those passes with the outside of his right foot, is worth celebrating.