Forget Valentine’s Day, Luka Modric’s Milan golazo is romantic enough for us | OneFootball

You’ll have heard of Byran Johnson if you’re as terminally online as us, the American tech entrepreneur spending millions of dollars to reverse the ageing process and avoid death.

Johnson ingests dozens of supplements every day and experiments with unproven ‘anti-ageing’ therapies such as infusions of his son’s plasma.

The 48-year-old eats a strict vegan diet, enjoys red-light and oxygen therapy, and religiously monitors several health metrics, from the quality of his stool to his number of night-time erections.

As well as being no way to live and criminally deluded, Johnson is severely over-complicating the process. He should simply be copying Luka Modric instead.

We can’t be certain Modric isn’t ingesting leafy greens, taping his mouth shut at night and doing 100 sit-ups as penance for thinking about pastries. We suspect not.

But the 40-year-old midfielder is still one of the best around, as his match-winning golazo for AC Milan against Pisa last night demonstrated.

With the game entering its dying embers, locked at 1-1, Modric summoned a burst of pace normally seen in veteran marathon runners to surge into the penalty area.

Several Pisa defenders stood stationary, either in awe or contemplating tactics to secure his autograph post-match.

Several more lunged in doomed-to-failure challenges, the instinctive reaction of the impotent masses in the presence of genius.

Without an inhaler in sight, Modric continued his acceleration and dinked a superb finish past the superbly-named Brazilian goalkeeper Nicolas to win the game.

There are several adjectives we can use to describe both the goal and Modric himself; immortal, eternal, everlasting, timeless, perpetual.

But perhaps the word ‘brilliant’ will more than suffice. Not bad for somebody once voted La Liga’s worst signing of the season.

“It was important for us, we couldn’t miss the win today, because we knew these points were crucial to stay in the battle for the league, and we did it,” Modric told DAZN Italia afterwards.

“We relaxed a bit in the second half and didn’t pay enough attention, and that is why they scored. So we pressed, went forward, and scored that goal which is very important for us. We are happy for the win.

“Every game is really difficult in Serie A, so we have to continue working, getting better, and focus on the next game.”

The Croatian became the third-oldest player to score in Serie A at the age of 40 years and 157 days, behind only fellow Milan stars Alessandro Costacurta and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

The travelling Milan supporters have even dedicated a chant to Modric based upon the one used by Napoli fans towards Diego Armando Maradona.

“It’s a privilege to hear they are singing this song for me. Thank you very much, I am very happy to hear that song for me,” Modric said sheepishly in response.

This win moved Milan up to second, five points adrift of city rivals Inter. Winning the league is unlikely, but they finished eighth last season. It’s still progress.

Their squad is a wonderful patchwork of genuine quality (Rafael Leao) and Cobham graduates (Ruben Loftus-Cheek, who opened the scoring here, and Fikayo Tomori), alongside Niclas Fullkrug (who missed a penalty).

But Modric is still the star.

“Luka is unbelievable,” Christopher Nkunku said recently. “He has a unique talent and delivers exceptional cross-field passes.

“If I tried that, I’d probably dislocate my hip… It’s amazing that he’s 40, but he could play until he’s 45 or even 46.”

Milan are desperate to tie Modric down to an extended deal, which currently expires in June. Modric is reportedly weighing up his options.

There’s also the small matter of the World Cup, where Croatia face England in their opening game on June 17th.

Whatever happens, it’s a delight to watch Modric still going strong and all without infusing his son’s plasma.