Fair to say that Luka Modric has caused a stir among Her Majesty's Press. After Croatia's extra-time win over England in the semi-finals of the World Cup, the winners went on the offensive once again by shoving English media's words down their throats.
In a post-game display that was all very GAA, Modric and his teammates hit out at the English meedja that had written them off.
English journalists, pundits from television, they underestimated Croatia tonight and that was a huge mistake.
All these words from them we take, we were reading and we were saying 'ok, today we will see who will be tired.
The Croatian manager hit out at English "experts", while Vedran Corluka merely told assembled journalists that "football's not coming home".
Responding to a player being fed up with the English media telling the world how to think, Gary Neville told Luka Modric what to think.
Heard this over the years time and time again. My opinion is A journalist, Pundit or Broadcaster never won or lost a football game in history! Modric is a great player . I’m not having he was thinking of the Daily Star front page at 1-0 down.
Neville has maintained this stance on Twitter in the last couple of days, and is now engaging in whataboutery. The Sky and ITV pundit found comments by Davor Suker in the build-up to the semi-final which he says are "probably more disrespectful" than anything uttered by the English media. Suker said that England were "lucky" to still be in the tournament.
Neville has also been going back and forth with a man a man oft-cited by Eamon Dunphy: Guillem Balague. The Spanish journalist tweeted his belief that the "it's coming home" meme morphed into a mass statement of unflinching arrogance.
Read interviews/spoke with Croat players. They saw #ComingHome signing as disrespectful mostly because it CONFIRMED what they thought of the English. U might say it was all a joke (it felt less of one after #COL), I’m telling you how it was perceived. Maybe something to consider
— Guillem Balague (@GuillemBalague) July 14, 2018
Neville called that stance "nonsense", repeating his belief that players are not motivated by that.
Perhaps Neville wasn't motivated by such factors at Manchester United - how could he have been given that United were the top team in England for most of his career - but the Croatian players evidently did find energy in these comments.
Amid all this unseemly rowing, Sensible Gary Lineker weighed in to explain that "It's Coming Home" was only ever a joke anyway.
Dear non English football fans.
Football’s coming home is a fun song highlighting the lack of success of our football team for decades. No one really thought we’d win it. I totally get why you might think it was arrogance, but it’s more our self deprecatory sense of humour. 👍🏻— Gary Lineker 💙💛 (@GaryLineker) July 14, 2018
Anyway, the only truth we know that after today's 3rd place play-off, they're coming home.
