I have said that Luka Modric is the most complete midfield player in world football, but just as important to the Croatia team is Ivan Rakitic.

Croatia is a relatively small country but we have big communities elsewhere in the world, like Australia, Germany and Switzerland. With regards to football, we have always looked at those other countries because we don’t have a big base from which to recruit.

In 2006, after we had beaten England 2-0 in Zagreb in a qualification game for the 2008 Euros, the Croatian FA told me about a young, talented player from Switzerland who was playing for FC Basel along with Mladen Petric, a player who at that time was in our national team.

His name, they told me, was Ivan Rakitic. He had been born in Switzerland in 1988 and had already played for their Under-21 team. We went to see him, watched him play and then had a big talk with his parents.

Ivan was just a kid then, so we left things for a little while and then went back to Switzerland. His parents are big-time Croatian and, like many who go abroad, they often have more national identity than the people who live in the country itself.

I didn’t have to convince them about their son playing for Croatia and, yet, I didn’t want to push Ivan. I found out in the first 10 minutes of meeting him that you couldn’t be cold and professional with him. You didn’t say to him: “Listen, you have to make a choice.”

I was warm with him, I tried to explain the benefits of playing for us, that we are a good team, that we would really be counting on him and that, although I couldn’t promise him everything because we already had a good team, that we had young players like Luka Modric, Vedran Corluka, Eduardo, Niko Kranjcar and he would enjoy the style we are playing.

I told him: “If you do well in Switzerland then it’s great, but if you make it big in Croatia then it’s more than football, it’s everything!”

We talked for a couple of hours and then I went back again a couple of weeks later and he decided to come to us. It was a decision he never regretted. It has been said that I was instrumental in convincing him. He didn’t need that much persuading but I told him that we would look after him, that he had a big chance and that his skill fitted perfectly with the way we were playing.

I know him and his family well. They have a lot of respect for Switzerland and that made the decision harder. They are proper Croatians, though.

If he had stayed in Switzerland, I have no doubt he would still have had a big career. He was 18 at the time and, in our first meeting, his father told me he had an offer from Chelsea. Bundesliga club Schalke also wanted him and I told him that maybe it was a little too early to go to Chelsea, that Schalke was close to his home and German was his language.

Wherever he had gone, though, he would have made it. With the greatest respect to Switzerland because their national team are doing well, playing for Croatia puts you on another level.

So, what is Ivan like? First, he has a huge personality. He has a Croatian soul but a Swiss mind. He has that determination and work ethic, but above everything is his skill. His technique is unbelievable. He doesn’t have great pace but he has a great brain and a terrific first touch. He understands the game.

In the early days, he was a No10 and he played in that position for Sevilla, where he was their captain when they won the Europa League in 2014. He changed to his new position when he went to Barcelona and that transformation helped him become a complete midfielder.

Modric takes the eye but Rakitic sacrifices himself for the team. He is humble and quite happy to do the donkey work. His biggest strength, though, is when he has the ball. He has a terrific shot on him and can take a great free-kick. Remember the one against Argentina when he hit the crossbar?

His performance against Argentina was one of the best I have seen from him. In the last couple of games, against Denmark and Russia, he wasn’t brilliant but we won; he was part of the team and he was the key player in both penalty shoot-outs, taking the decisive spot-kicks.

In 2008, both he and Modric missed their penalties when we lost to Turkey in the Euro quarter-finals, but he was 19. Now he is a mature player. In pressure situations he has a cool brain, is very calm and professional, so he is an obvious choice to take the fifth penalty.