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Football

14th Jul 2018

Gary Neville’s having absolutely none of Luka Modric’s English press claims

Simon Lloyd

Yep. We’re still banging on about Luke Modric.

Undeniably one of the weirdest aspects of Croatia beating England to a place in the World Cup final on Sunday night was Modric’s post-match comments, where he suggested he and his teammates had been motivated to win the game by the English press writing them off.

Because y’know, without the English press supposedly writing them off, they’d have probably found it difficult to get themselves up for a World Cup semi-final…

Neville rejected Modric's claim

“I don’t believe it for one second,” Gary Neville said when asked about Modric’s comments on ITV Sport on Saturday afternoon. “I think he’s come out after the game having won and thought ‘I’m going to have a dig.’

“He’s in a position to do that and he’s a great player but I don’t think for any minute of that game he was ever thinking about the English media… about what any pundit had said. Why would you? No player ever thinks like that during a game

“The fact that we made a mistake for the second goal or that Mandzukic was alive and John Stones wasn’t was nothing to do with the English media. They’re just moments in football that happen.

“He’s played for Real Madrid for the last seven or eight years. Imagine the amount of critical things that will have been said about Real Madrid?”