TORONTO — Luka Modrić spent fifty-two minutes Thursday making Portugal look like the team they have always been in World Cup knockout rounds: gifted enough to win, and somehow finding ways not to. Then Ivan Perišić drove home Croatia’s opening goal, and the match started to look like the one that sends them out.
What followed changed a number that had been unchanged through three decades of international football. Cristiano Ronaldo’s World Cup knockout-round goal tally moved from zero to one.
The penalty came in the 68th minute. Gonçalo Ramos headed Portugal into the lead late in the second half. Croatia’s Joško Gvardiol sent a header into the net in the 103rd minute that VAR spent several minutes dissecting, before ruling it offside through the chip embedded in the 2026 match ball, a decision that required technology none of Modrić’s previous World Cups had provided. Portugal 2, Croatia 1. Portugal advance to face Spain in the round of sixteen. Modrić, who turns 41 next month, almost certainly does not.
The match’s shape for most of the first hour was Croatia’s to dictate. Perišić, working off a diagonal from Josip Stanišić on the right, arrived first-time into the box in the 53rd minute and drove the ball past the Portugal goalkeeper before the defense could recover. It was the kind of clinical finish Croatia have produced throughout this tournament, technically complete and precise. For the fifteen minutes that followed, the Toronto stadium held the distinct possibility that Portugal were going home.
Ronaldo changed that in the 68th minute. Rafael Leão’s run deep along the left channel drew the foul, VAR confirmed the contact, the referee pointed to the spot, and Ronaldo stepped into the moment that his five previous World Cup knockout appearances had withheld. He dispatched the penalty down the middle with the kind of certainty that comes from having done something thousands of times. He had never done this specific thing, scoring in a World Cup knockout round, before Thursday night.
Whether the goal carries meaning beyond its immediate arithmetic is what the next ten days will settle. Ronaldo was substituted off eleven minutes after scoring, and photographs from the substitution showed his knee bandaged. His fitness for the Spain match has not been confirmed. The record, updated: World Cup knockout goals, one.
Portugal pressed after the equalizer. Ramos had come on from the bench, and with minutes running down it was Leão again, this time from the right, who found him at the back post. Ramos met the cross with his head, and his finish came clean into the net. Portugal 2, Croatia 1, with enough stoppage time remaining for Croatia to attempt what felt nearly impossible.
Gvardiol’s attempt in the 103rd minute came close. His header was accurate, the direction correct, the timing of his run precise. VAR reviewed it for the better part of three minutes. The 2026 World Cup match ball contains a chip that tracks its exact position and movement in real time, and that chip registered that Igor Matanović had touched the ball fractionally in flight, enough under the rules to restart the offside clock. Mario Pašalić received the redirected ball while offside, played it to Gvardiol, and the chain of events produced a disallowed goal that Croatia were entirely entitled to feel they had earned. The stadium noise dropped when the decision was announced. The match ended as it stood.
Modrić has appeared in knockout matches at five World Cups. He walked off the BMO Field grass to sustained applause from the Croatian section and from supporters who understood the arithmetic of a 40-year-old midfielder at this stage of a major tournament. He has not confirmed what happens next. Thursday had been billed as Ronaldo and Modrić’s final World Cup test, two footballers, one Portuguese, one Croatian, who have shared the game’s highest stages across the same generation. One of them left having scored it.
Spain on Sunday presents a categorically different problem. Lamine Yamal scored as Spain beat Austria 3-0 in their own Round of 32 match and announced afterward that the World Cup “starts now.” Yamal is 18. Ronaldo is 41. On Thursday, Harry Kane’s record-breaking brace against DR Congo and Portugal’s 2-1 survival in Toronto were the two most contested outcomes of a knockout round already producing the moments by which this tournament will be remembered.
Portugal’s terms for facing Spain: Ramos clinical and available, Leão capable of the deliveries that created both goals Thursday, and Ronaldo either fit to take the penalties that would inevitably come his way or available from the bench as the most consequential substitute in his national team’s squad. Against a Spain side that won with something approaching ease, Portugal will need precision rather than resilience. Thursday in Toronto required both. CBS Sports’ live match coverage logged the full sequence of VAR decisions and substitution timings as they developed in real time.
The unanswered question is not about the result. Portugal won. It is about the state of the man who scored the goal the record books had no room for until Thursday. Ronaldo’s knee, the substitution, and what Portugal’s medical team says before Sunday will determine whether this was a closing chapter or the opening argument for what comes next.
