CROATIA

Not even the most famous footballer in his (wider) family; through his mother Manuela he is related to Josip Skoblar, the 1971 European Golden Shoe winner, who scored 44 goals for Marseille that season. As Dominik, who also played basketball as a kid and had enrolled at a university to study international relations, was making his way in senior football, his father Zdravko — a politician and state secretary at the time — spent five months in detention for his alleged involvement in a big corruption case. In 2022, Livakovic became only the third goalkeeper in World Cup history to save three penalties in a single shoot-out; then he also saved Rodrygo’s shot in another shootout against Brazil in the quarter-finals.

Two decades with the national team the once-generational player is closing in on 200 caps - an obscene number. The captain has still got it, at the age of 40, and has been a key player for Milan this season. The national team coach, Zlatko Dalic, calls him “the engine of this team”. Also the most-decorated player in Real Madrid’s history, having won 28 trophies despite only joining them shortly before his 27th birthday. Modric really is larger-than-life and his personality is complex and layered, from the war child-come-Ballon d’Or story to his legal troubles. “What people don’t realise about Luka,” said the late Tomislav Basic, one of Modric’s early coaches whom the player called his “second father”, “is that he is largely self-taught. For many days and months, this under-nourished, small kid played with the ball by himself in a parking lot by a refugee hotel, banging it against the wall and then controlling it.” This was where his trademark moves, like the outside-of-the-foot trivela or the half-turn when receiving the ball, came to be.

Two days after his 16th birthday, he made his senior debut for Hajduk Split in the derby against Dinamo; a week later, he scored his first goal. He has always been effortlessly dominant among older players that his Croatia debut at age 18 already seemed overdue. A true force not only in defence but also in build-up play and in attack, he scored seven goals in Belgium last season and five for HSV since last summer; among them the 2025 Bundesliga Goal of the Year, a spectacular scorpion kick finish. Coming from a multi-generational football family — his brother Mario is also a HSV player — Vuskovic is now finally ready to introduce himself at the big stage and show why everyone thinks he’ll be a superstar for many years to come. Tottenham signed him for a bargain £10m in 2025 and surely they won’t loan him out again?

The Moose, as they like to call him there, is pretty big in Texas these days. He’s known for his scoring and a goal celebration that includes putting his open palms with fingers spread to the side of his head, imitating antlers. In Croatia, though, it took him a long time to be taken seriously and as a genuine option up front; he never played for a big club at home and moved abroad aged 19 without having scored a senior goal. That has changed; after seven years in Czechia, Germany and Portugal - including Champions League experience with Benfica - he signed for FC Dallas in 2024 and has developed into one of the MLS’s leading strikers. His mother, Jagoda Obradovic, played for the women’s national team in the mid-1990s.