These are the 14 main players of the Croatian national team that coach Dalic will use in the EURO qualifiers and in the League of Nations (it is possible that Modrić will retire after the League of Nations).
How many old players do you actually see here? Two or possibly three, and all the rest are young players who can play for the Croatian national football team for a very long time, the next 4 or even 8 years.
I think the time has come to stop repeating the false claims that the Croatian national football team is a very old team and that it is in decline. On the contrary, we have never had a team with more young, talented and quality footballers than now.
You do realize that one of the old players is the captain of the team and the best player they have ever had on their entire history and I assume the only ballon d'or winner from their nation? Not sure if that is the case, if any other Croation won it before, and if so god knows when that was. But, we are all aware that as soon as Modric leaves, even though the team that is left is not terrible, it will not be as good as they were with Modric, that's a very important distinction.
Plus, we can't really say how good or bad they will be based on whatever we have seen previously, every single cup is a single thing we need to look at. Look at Italy, won euro and failed to qualify for world cup, it's just that simple and we need to consider that a team is as good as how good they are on that cup, not before, not after, just focus on a single tournament.