Ferenc Puskas played pregnant, teammate Amancio Amaro liked to say. The day he arrived at Real Madrid in 1958, he was 31 years old, 18kg overweight and, banned by Fifa for defecting after the Hungarian uprising, hadn’t played football for two years. He couldn’t possibly go on a pitch like this: signing me is all well and good, he told the club’s president Santiago Bernabéu, but have you seen me? “I was the size of a large balloon,” he recalled and the coach, Luis Carniglia, didn’t know what to do with him either. That, Bernabéu replied, was their problem not his. As it turned out, blessed with a left foot like no other, 242 goals followed, the only problem that he hadn’t come sooner.

Most called him Cañoncito pum! (Little Cannon Bang!), although Alfredo Di Stéfano called him little cannon big belly. That summer Puskas trained wrapped in plastic and woolly jumpers. By the season’s end, he had scored the goal that took Real Madrid to the European Cup final; a year on, he scored four in the final but gave Erwin Stein the match ball. Old when he came, supposedly finished, he helped Madrid reach three more. He scored a hat-trick in 1962 and played in 1964 but when the 1966 final arrived, eight years after he had, it was over. Left behind while they travelled to Brussels, he was in a makeshift cup team facing Betis three days before and 1,000 miles south.

It was 8 May 1966 and it was Puskas’s last game. He was 39 years and 36 days old. No one older had played for Madrid until this Saturday when, an hour into their visit to Vigo, Carlo Ancelotti called over Luka Modric. His mission: to do what he does, what he had done so often, and take control. Williot Swedberg had scored an equaliser to make it 1-1, leaping over the advertising boards and into the arms of the ballboys, Balaidos going wild, and Celta were everywhere. Madrid were overwhelmed. But then Modric stepped into the fray. One hundred and 53 seconds later, Madrid led again and Vinícius Júnior was running towards the corner, pointing back at the old man, saying: “What a pass, what a pass!”

This wasn’t done yet – Celta were superb again and deserved more – but ultimately another match had been taken back. “Celta play, Madrid win,” AS’s headline read. A few flashes had been enough, Kylian Mbappé’s right foot providing a belting opener, Thibaut Courtois’ left making two superb saves and Vinícius’s finish delivering a winner, supplied by Modric, who was handed a Madrid shirt after the game with 250 on the back, one for each win he now has with them when it really should have said 39 40, years and days. Maybe that wouldn’t fit or perhaps they were worried about annoying him. “I don’t like being reminded of my age,” he said afterwards, “but it’s amazing.”

Necessary too, Marca’s headline calling him “the eternal solution”. There is a reason Luka Modric is still around and it’s not nostalgia, not the fact that the player who wasn’t a guaranteed starter when he joined 12 years ago and became the best midfielder to ever play for the biggest club of them all. Not the 547 games played or the 27 trophies won, even if that is more than anyone. It’s not the Vicente Calderón’s last night in Europe, when he calmly guided them through a biblical storm, an exhibition of superiority and supranatural serenity, that could be titled leave it to me; not the delivery for la décima; not that ridiculous pass to Rodrygo against Manchester City, or the one against PSG you can’t even see if you pause the video at exactly the right point. It’s not the moments or the music, joy in how he played, the outside of his boot, a magician’s wand, or the unique, understated simplicity of it all, although all that is there and always will be. It’s something simpler: he’s still got it.

There have been times when there didn’t seem to be long left – how could there not be closing in on 40? – and moments when it might have gone some other way, when Modric might have done too. In 2018, he had negotiated with Inter. A World Cup finalist, he had just won a third Champions League in a row and was about to claim the Ballon d’Or. After six years in Madrid, about to turn 33, it was time, he thought; it’s not an idea he has wanted to entertain since. Madrid blocked that move, insisting he would only go if someone paid his €750m buyout clause, and six years later the man Rodrygo calls dad, only a year younger than his actual father, is still rightfully around.

That requires a talent that sets him apart and a temperament that does too, an enthusiasm for the game and a determination that goes with it. This isn’t the football Puskas played. Modric is a tough little bastard with calves like cannon balls, a face that is sharp and worn, not an ounce of fat on him, a glimpse of his attitude as well as his art. “I’m very proud to have done this and to continue at the best club in the world,” he said on Saturday, and that pride is part of it. “He is an extraordinary professional who has character,” Ancelotti said, and he knows; this isn’t someone who welcomes the chance to sit it out for a few minutes, still less allow others to tell him when it’s time to leave, and managing that has not always been easy.

Transitions were left incomplete, the predicted decline postponed, any withdrawal put on hold. MLS was an idea floated for a while, not sure that an extension would be offered at the Bernabéu, but which was packed away again, his determination to fight only strengthened. Martin Ødegaard returned early from a two-year loan at Real Sociedad, a pathway opened for him but Modric closed it. The third-fourth playoff at the last World Cup was worth going to if only because surely it was going to be his last, only it wasn’t: last week he played twice for Croatia, taking his caps to 182. Ivan Rakitic went; Modric went on. “He is a lesson for us all,” his countryman said.

After Manchester City beat Madrid 4-0 in the Champions League semi-final in May 2023, it seemed it was goodbye. The year before, as they won the most miraculous title of them all, there had had been a glimpse of the transition already coming, captured in part in a gorgeous photo of Modric and Kroos, two men who had done it all sitting on a bench, spent, watching the kids play. “I have had to ask the younger players for patience and the older players for understanding,” Ancelotti said. He knew it wasn’t easy but defeat at the Etihad meant accelerating that generational change, ushering in a new era, a new style: a shift to something more dynamic, more “modern”.

Except that an eternal, universal truth got in the way: the ball. Ancelotti soon modified his athletic approach in search of control. He would need his veterans after all, although he decided that one would be enough. Thirty-eight and withdrawn at half-time in last September’s derby, Modric didn’t play the next two league games and it was more often Kroos, the last season of his life also the best, that would provide the timing, the vision, the authority that Ancelotti sought. From nine Champions League starts the year before, Modric made just three last season. He wasn’t happy and at times it showed, but there was still a role – eight European games as a sub, 32 league matches, 18 as a starter – and it seemed that every time he came on, Madrid got better. A season that seemed likely to be his last, right up to the final days when fans sang for him to stay, offered the perfect end with his sixth European Cup. No one has won more, not even Puskas.

Instead, it was Kroos who walked away at 34, five years younger, the timing as impeccable as ever. For him, anyway. And, it turned out, for Modric too, any doubts about his continuity that Madrid might have had swept away, which is what he had wanted, whatever it cost. “Luka and I have different views on how to end our careers,” Kroos said. “I always wanted to end on a great moment, with my body still working well.”

“I feel good mentally and physically. I’m playing, and that’s all I want,” Modric said on Saturday. He has started five of the 10 games so far, but has had minutes in them all, and Vigo reflected a reality that remains: he is still just, well, better than anyone else, still has things Aurélien Tchouaméni, Fede Valverde, Jude Bellingham and Eduardo Camavinga don’t. “I always tell Vini to run into the space; if he does, the ball will come,” he said at Balaidos, which is true – if he’s the one that has it. Only he could have played the pass; only he would have seen it. As the game slipped from Madrid, there was no one else they would have rather called upon. “He’s unique in football and in our squad,” Ancelotti said.

And so, 60 years after Puskas went to Seville with the subs and lost, a legend’s last game ending in defeat having defied time and expectation for longer than anyone could have ever imagined, there was Modric ensuring that neither fate would befall him just yet, grasping another game, ensuring another win. “Luka changed the match,” Ancelotti said. “He came on at a very difficult moment and brought control. He has such quality that he always helps us. We’re are lucky to have him.”