Back in the summer of 2008, Tottenham made arguably one of the best signings in their history.

Juande Ramos and Daniel Levy oversaw the £15.8m capture of Croatian midfielder Luka Modric from Dinamo Zagreb, for who he had made 69 appearances for while registering an impressive 42 goal involvements – he scored 21 and assisted 21.

While he may have been an unknown quantity at the time, everybody knew who Modric was after he left White Hart Lane for Real Madrid in 2012.

The Croatia international proved to be an excellent value-for-money signing by Levy.

Modric made 160 appearances for Tottenham, costing the north Londoners just £98.75k per outing, in which time he scored 17 goals and registered 27 assists.

The 2018 Ballon d’Or winner eventually left the club for Real Madrid, netting Levy roughly double his initial investment as Modric put pen to paper on a deal worth something in the region of £30m.

While that could be considered a bargain by Real Madrid given everything he has achieved with them, Tottenham also pulled off a stroke of genius by signing him in the first place.

He won the Tottenham Player of the Year award in 2011, and was clearly something special in north London given what he has gone on to achieve since leaving Tottenham.

Using the Bank of England’s inflation calculator, you would discover that Modric’s fee from 2008 would be worth £21,240,047.20 in the modern era, not taking factors such as Premier League TV money into account and other relevant influences.

Sadly for Spurs, Modric arguably enjoyed his prime years at Real Madrid, winning four Champions League titles, four Club World Cups while also helping Croatia reach the World Cup final – he has had a thoroughly brilliant career.

However, Ramos and Levy’s instinct to spend big on the rising prospect in the first place paid off, to say the least.

A true test for any Spurs fan: Can you match these iconic images with the right results?

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