A new journalistic genre has been around for a while now: sports columnists writing about their kids, which I've been ranting about for being repetitive, corny, and hackneyed. Until Luka Modrić announced he was leaving Real Madrid and, as luck would have it, I was having lunch with my 14-year-old niece, Martina. As soon as she found out, she burst into tears, and there was no way to console her. Everything we told her—that Luka, like family, is now grown up, that it's just the way life is, that she should reflect on how much fun she had watching him, that he still has so much more to enjoy—was useless. Because she simply felt sorry. "I don't know a Madrid without Modric," she once said. On Saturday, she went to the Bernabéu with a banner: "Thank you for everything, Lukita. Today isn't a player leaving, a legend is leaving."