It seems that some important clues have been dropped about where Croatia’s best footballer will continue his club career.
Croatia captain and Real Madrid midfielder Luka Modrić finally held a meeting with Real Madrid’s president Florentino Perez. The details of the meeting revealed that Luka has decided to stay at Real Madrid, with a considerable increase to his annual salary, which will jump from the current 7 to 10 million euro a year, reports Gol.hr on August 11, 2018.
We have finally reached the epilogue (at least we hope) to this weeks-long soap opera about where the Croatian superstar will continue his career. The news of Modrić’s final decision was confirmed by Madrid media giants Marca and AS, the trusted sources that are known to closely follow Real Madrid news and are generally the ones publishing information from the Royal Club.
The saga about Modrić’s possible transfer to Inter started after the World Cup where Luka was named the best player of the tournament. Shortly afterward, we learned that Inter had begun a major operation of bringing Modrić to Italy, and had already established certain contacts with his representatives.
As soon as the story was released and overwhelmed both Spanish and European media, President Perez proclaimed that “Modrić can leave, but for 750 million euro.”
This number should have been the trigger for the Italian club to give up, but they continued to persist and had a plan to bring Modrić simultaneously and comply with financial fair play: they would bring Modrić on a season-long loan, would immediately pay 15 million euro, build the contract, and have the obligation to buy next summer for another 25 million euro.
The football transfer saga unfolded while Modrić was on holiday after the World Cup, and when he returned to Madrid, he knew his meeting with President Perez would be crucial – and even more crucial as we all know Perez was in no position to lose another world-class player after Cristiano Ronaldo went off to Juventus this summer.
Marca and AS have both reported that it was agreed Modrić will stay at Real Madrid for a new, significantly improved contract. Luka’s current contract is valid until June 30, 2020, and the contract should be extended with an annual salary of 10 million euro, the same as Real Madrid captain Sergio Ramos. Gareth Bale is the only other player on the team that has a salary as high.
