World Cup 2026, Round of 32: Spain, Portugal and Switzerland Advance — and Modrić’s Last World Cup Ends in Toronto

There is a particular way a great player leaves a field he knows he will never walk back onto. No sprint to the touchline, no arms flung wide — just a man taking the long route to the tunnel so the walk lasts a few seconds more. Luka Modrić took that walk in Toronto, forty years old and out of the World Cup for the last time, and it framed everything else about the day.

On the scoreboard, the last 32 did what the seedings asked of it. Spain, Portugal and Switzerland all reached the round of 16, the favourites and the higher-ranked sides holding their ground while three good teams went home. But the meaning of the day was not in who advanced. It was in who was allowed to stay, and who had run out of tournaments — the oldest story sport tells, played out three times in an afternoon and an evening.

Portugal 2–1 Croatia: two men of forty, one more match

The tie that carried the weight put two of the game’s great survivors on the same grass. Modrić and Ronaldo are both forty. Between them they have played in more World Cups than most of the squads around them have years, and for ninety-plus minutes in Toronto they refused to be the oldest men on the pitch. Modrić still set the tempo for Croatia the way he has for a decade and a half, still found the pass no one else saw, still asked his legs for one more recovery run and got it.

It was not enough. Portugal edged it 2–1, and the margin was the honest one — a single goal between a side with more places to hurt you and a side leaning on one man to hold the whole thing together. Ronaldo goes through, still chasing the one prize that has eluded him, his tournament extended by a team that no longer needs him to be its best player, only its most dangerous. Croatia’s golden generation, the one that reached a final and a semi-final and turned a country of four million into a fixture of the last four, leaves the stage with its captain. Modrić did not lose this on his own, and he could not win it on his own either. That is the cruelty of forty.

Spain 3–0 Austria: the other end of the arc

Two thousand miles away in Los Angeles, the World Cup showed you the future in the same breath. Spain took Austria apart 3–0, and the difference was an eighteen-year-old. Lamine Yamal had been rationed through the group stage — brought back carefully from a hamstring tear, a few minutes here, a cameo there, Spain refusing to spend him before they needed him. Against Austria they let him off the leash, and Ralf Rangnick’s pressing plan, built specifically to smother him, lasted about as long as it took Yamal to receive the ball facing goal.

Once he was running at them, Austria’s structure bent and then broke. Spain did not need to be brilliant everywhere; they needed one player capable of turning a tight game into a comfortable one, and they have him. Mikel Oyarzabal put the seal on it late, but the scoreline flattered nobody — it simply confirmed what the group stage had hinted. The team that stumbled against Cape Verde a fortnight ago looks a great deal more dangerous when its teenager is fit and free. Where Modrić spent the day proving how much a career can give, Yamal spent it proving how much of one is still ahead.

Switzerland 2–0 Algeria: Xhaka’s game, and a dream that ends

In Vancouver, under the closed roof of BC Place, Switzerland did the quiet, ruthless thing they do so well. Granit Xhaka, the most-capped man in the squad and the metronome at the base of it, ran the match at his own pace, and Algeria never found the tempo to drag him out of it. Breel Embolo and Dan Ndoye supplied the goals in a 2–0 win that felt more controlled than close, the Swiss defending their lead the way a boxer defends a points advantage — hands high, giving nothing away.

For Algeria it is the end of a story that had already exceeded itself. Back at a World Cup for the first time since 2014, through to the knockouts as one of the best third-placed sides, carried by Riyad Mahrez’s late heroics in the group, the Desert Foxes ran into a team with no romance in it and no interest in theirs. Mahrez chased the game he has won so many others, and this time the door stayed shut. A good tournament, ended by a better-organised one.

What it changes

The bracket now tilts toward experience and control. Spain move on looking like a side that has quietly solved its one problem. Portugal advance carrying a talisman and a question — how far can Ronaldo’s team go leaning on moments rather than a plan. Switzerland arrive in the last 16 the way they always seem to, underestimated and hard to beat, the kind of opponent nobody wanted to draw.

But the line that will stay is the one that ran through all three grounds. A World Cup is a clock as much as a tournament, and on this day it ran out for Modrić, kept turning for Ronaldo, and started properly for Yamal. The favourites held. The road to the final narrowed. And somewhere on the walk to a Toronto tunnel, a forty-year-old with nothing left to prove reminded everyone why we watch: not for the score, but for the moment a great man refuses, right up until the second he has to stop.

Tags: wc26, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Croatia