It's the end of a glorious journey

As Luka Modric and Kevin De Bruyne step away, an extraordinary era comes to a close for Real Madrid and Manchester City

- Rudraneil Sengupta

By the time he was six years old, Luka Modric had seen the horrors of war up-close. His grandfather had been shot in front of him by Serbian rebels, who then set fire to his house in the arid village of Modric, then in Yugoslavia. Modric's family fled the region amid the war for Croatia's independence, and lived for a while in a sprawling, dilapidated hotel in the town of Zadar, 700 km down the coast, with hundreds of other displaced families. The parking lot of the hotel became his playground.

In this gravelly square, he thrilled onlookers with his extraordinary talent. He was small and thin for his age, but made up for that with skills he seemed to have picked up all on his own. Even in the midst of a war, it was clear: Modric would be a footballer.

What could hardly have been predicted was that he would become one of the greatest players in the history of the game, a midfield maestro whom the legendary manager Carlo Ancelotti would call "a gift to football".