Midfielder has put Croatia through on penalties in the last two rounds and thrives in partnership with Luka Modric

Ivan Rakitic has not always been the coolest man in world football. Maybe it was the dog that did it, maybe it was his wife or maybe it was his mother-in-law. He delivered the perfect riposte, that is for sure.

Not long after the midfielder missed a vital penalty for Sevilla against Rayo Vallecano, in 2012, sending the ball well wide of the right post, victory denied, his phone beeped. A message landed from Puri, literally a mother-in-law joke. He opened it to see a photo of his golden retriever with a ball at its paw and a message: “Your dog takes better penalties than you do.”

Six years on the message was different, skipping a generation. On the morning of Croatia’s last-16 tie against Denmark Rakitic’s Spanish wife, Raquel, told him it would go to penalties and he would score the fifth. He spent the next couple of hours watching videos of Kasper Schmeichel, speaking to Andrej Kramaric too – Schmeichel’s former teammate at Leicester – and that night there he was by the spot, the prophecy fulfilled. Six days later and 1,444km away, it happened again, this time against Russia. All alone once more, only you are never alone standing there. He barely blinked.

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Rakitic is the first player to have scored the fifth, decisive penalty twice at a World Cup. Each represented a giant step. He told his teammates they had to do it for Luka Modric, who had missed in normal time, but it went far further than that. From Denmark to Russia, Russia to England and a semi-final. “Amazing,” he called it.

Rakitic was 10 in 1998, the only other time they got there, watching players he describes as “more than idols” on the TV with his brother Dejan, wearing the Croatia shirts their father, Luka, had bought them, a package arriving one day in the post.

He was born and raised in Mohlin, Switzerland, and admits to being a fan of curling. The day he was born Croatia did not officially exist but his father is a Croat, his mother a Croat from Bosnia and Herzegovina, they spoke Croatian at home – one of six languages he speaks – and his idol, Robert Prosinecki, is a Croat. His father played too, a No 4, and set up in Mohlin with the help of a police chief who ran the local football club. Luka sent for his wife soon after and Ivan was born there in 1988.

Rakitic was grateful to be shielded from the Balkan war but as he grew he read, listened to stories. “It’s your history, your people,” he said. Although he represented Switzerland at youth level, ultimately he chose Croatia. Slaven Bilic – “mad, but in a good way” – had much to do with it and so did his dad. When Rakitic finished speaking to Bilic and to the Switzerland manager, Köbi Kuhn, on the phone, his dad pacing outside, he opened the door and announced that after careful consideration he was sticking with Switzerland. Luka accepted that, then cried when Rakitic said, “Nah, only joking: it’s Croatia.”

There were death threats, letters arriving from furious Swiss supporters, people calling at his home, but Rakitic was clear. “It was a decision of the heart. I didn’t think, ‘With this team I will play more’; that thought process is for club football.”

He has played plenty with Croatia – the semi-final against England will be his 98th cap – and has played a huge part too. He has been talked about less than Modric, the man banging on the screen like Benjamin Braddock as Rakitic stood pitchside at the end in Sochi, trying to make sense of it all, but he has been pivotal. “Modric and Rakitic are the best pair of midfielders,” the former Spurs player Vedran Corluka said. That they are presented as a pair is not coincidental. Rakitic calls them brothers and insists Modric is now the greatest player in Croatia’s history.

Rakitic has been delighted to play alongside Modric, prepared too to take a step forward when he has been called upon. There are few more back-handed compliments than reliable but, boy, have Croatia been able to rely on himRakitic.

It is not chance, that dog-day afternoon apart.

At Sevilla Rakitic took the final (fourth) penalty against Betis, their city rivals, when they met in the 2013-14 Europa League. In the final against Benfica in Turin he was down to take the fifth. In the end they did not need him.

That was big – Rakitic married into a family of sevillanos, his wife’s grandfather refusing to remove a Sevilla watch during his final days in hospital, dying with it on, and Rakitic once owned a bar near the Betis ground – but this is bigger.

He knows that: his father watching, an entire nation watching, wearing the shirt he refused to take off 20 years ago now, sleeping in it, living in it. “For a country like Croatia, it’s amazing to be among the final four,” he says. “We want to keep enjoying this. We don’t want to stop now. But we don’t want to put more pressure on ourselves with 98. It’s incredible what they did and that generation are more than heroes for us.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rakitic sends Igor Akinfeev the wrong way to seal a penalty shootout victory for Croatia over Russia. Photograph: Alexander Demianchuk/Tass

The pressure is intense, never more than on that walk from the halfway line when teammates are begging you to please, please, please score and every step seems an eternity. Yet, on the outside at least, he walked calmly into the next round, taking Croatia with him, making history. It is more than penalties too, there is something in that idea that defines him well beyond the spot, the safety in knowing he is there, when needed and what is needed.

Rakitic somehow still remains underrated, relatively unnoticed despite the stage on which he plays. In the under-16s at Basel he scored 48 goals in 17 games from central midfield but soon moved back.

He has been a No 10, a No 4, a No 6 and a No 8, the player who Roma’s famous sporting director Monchi said could do his job and of whom Monchi’s assistant at Sevilla, Victor Orta, said: “He’s so intelligent, able to adapt and humble enough to change position.”

At Sevilla he became the first foreign captain since Diego Maradona.

Unai Emery described him as a man of values, “good for the unity of the team” and played him as an attacking midfielder and a defensive midfielder: their best player in both positions, his role rotated by the game, according to his team’s needs. In his last season, having provided 15 goals and 17 assists, he led them to the Europa League title, was named man of the match in the final. The following year at Barcelona, which finished with a treble and a goal in the Champions League final, he said: “If we have to run 10km for Neymar, Messi and Suárez, that’s fine.”

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Last season, when, he says, the discovery that he is celiac means he feels physically fitter than ever, he has played under a different manager in a different style and he has adapted again, becoming everything to every man.

Alongside Sergio Busquets, sometimes central, sometimes to the right, he has been holding midfielder, driving midfielder and ball-playing midfielder all in the same match, adapting as circumstances dictated. That is not just being able to adapt, it is also about knowing when to adapt.

There have been shifts in Russia as well: pivot to ball-player, goalscorer against Argentina, protector against Denmark. Against Russia his influence, like that of Modric, grew with the introduction of Marcelo Brozovic, releasing them both, pushing them higher from where Rakitic covered 13km and completed 89% of his passing and Modric had more touches than anyone else.

Not that it was perfect and Rakitic is critical. “We know we can play better. We didn’t have the control of the game we wanted and we have to fix that,” he says.

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But, still, it is the semi-final, where his country has been once before. “This is the best Rakitic has played for the national team,” says Zlatko Dalic, the manager. “It is a continuation of his great season with Barcelona. He means a lot to the whole team and I think he and Modric together are the best midfielders at the tournament. Rakitic is playing the best he has played in his career and his confidence is high – we saw that with the two decisive penalties.”

So now here they are, one game from the World Cup final. “We cannot pass up this historic opportunity,” says the man whose dog takes a better penalty. Well, he used to.