Portugal’s old master still had his say, but this night in Toronto belonged as much to the chaos around him as the penalty he converted. In a tie framed by the final World Cup meeting of former Real Madrid team-mates Cristiano Ronaldo and Luka Modrić, Portugal escaped with a 2-1 win over Croatia on Thursday, 2 July, and moved into the last 16 after one of the wildest finishes of the tournament.

For long spells, Croatia looked ready to write the more romantic ending. Modrić, conducting with his usual calm at 40, helped drag the match into the kind of tense, technical battle that never really settled. Portugal had more of the attacking names, but Croatia found the first real breakthrough early in the second half. Ivan Perišić struck in the 53rd minute after Josip Stanišić supplied the delivery, and suddenly the evening tilted towards the team in the red-and-white checks.

That goal sharpened Portugal rather than broke them. Roberto Martínez’s side pushed higher, forced Croatia back and eventually found their route back through Ronaldo. The Portugal captain, now 41 and playing at a sixth World Cup, held his nerve from the penalty spot in the 68th minute to level the contest. It was a moment loaded with weight beyond the scoreline: Ronaldo’s first goal in a World Cup knockout match and his 11th overall in the competition.

Yet the game did not turn calm after that. It became frantic, bruising and increasingly surreal. Croatia kept coming, Portugal kept searching, and the closing minutes felt as if they were being played on a fault line. Gonçalo Ramos, introduced from the bench, delivered the decisive touch in stoppage time, glancing home Rafael Leão’s cross in the 94th minute to complete the comeback and send the Portuguese support into release rather than celebration.

Even then, there was one more twist. Croatia thought they had rescued themselves at the death, only for a last-gasp equaliser to be ruled out for offside after a VAR review. By the final whistle, the scoreboard still read Portugal 2, Croatia 1, but the match had carried far more drama than that neat line suggests. Reports from multiple outlets described four disallowed goals across the evening, a measure of just how unstable and fevered the contest became.

The emotional centre of it all, though, remained the farewell undertone. One of Ronaldo or Modrić was always going to leave this World Cup in Toronto, and it was the Croatian captain who walked away with the heavier silence. Portugal live on and will face Spain in the last 16. Croatia depart after pushing one of the tournament’s most gifted squads to the edge, while Modrić’s likely final World Cup appearance ended not with a grand finish, but with the cruel thin margins that have always defined knockout football.