On September 6th at 2:45 AM, the UEFA Nations League will kick off with a highly anticipated match as Portugal hosts Croatia. Today, AS Newspaper has reviewed the match history between the two teams’ core players, Cristiano Ronaldo and Luka Modrić.
Despite the fact that both Ronaldo and Modrić have been with their national teams for a long time, data shows that they have only faced each other twice in official matches representing their national teams before this. The first encounter happened during the 2016 European Championship, in the round of 16, where Portugal met Croatia. Both sides drew 0-0 within 90 minutes, but with an assist from Ronaldo, Portugal eventually defeated Croatia 1-0. The second encounter was in the 2021 UEFA Nations League group stage, where Portugal narrowly won against Croatia with a score of 3-2.
At the national team level, Modrić has never beaten Ronaldo. In terms of club level, although both have served Real Madrid for a long period, they also had six encounters at the club level prior to this. When Ronaldo was at Manchester United and Modrić was at Tottenham Hotspur, they met four times, with Ronaldo maintaining an undefeated record of three wins and one draw against Modrić. After Ronaldo transferred to Real Madrid, there were two more encounters between Real Madrid and Tottenham, which were the quarter-finals of the 2010-11 UEFA Champions League season, where Real Madrid swept Tottenham with scores of 4-0 and 4-1 respectively.
Modrić has never achieved a victory over Ronaldo in their matchups, and this match will be their ninth career encounter, third at the national team level. It remains to be seen who will come out on top and whether Modrić can break the jinx, which is highly anticipated.