We’re close! We’re very close.
It’s not easy to win a World Cup. You basically have to play perfect football for a month straight. Two bad games in group stage, you go home! One bad game in the knockout round, you go home!
What Croatia has done in the past 4 1/2 years has been unquantifiable for a nation of 3.8 million. Absolutely unquantifiable!
A 2nd and a 3rd place finish in back-to-back World Cups. Even football ‘super powers’ pray for those kind of results. Take a look at the graphic above. Only France and Germany have had more top-3 finishes than Croatia since 1998. However, France won the whole thing in ’98 and 2018. Germany took home the World Cup title in 2014. The Vatreni are in the right company.
The more times you can get to the last four, the better your chances at a title. But that’s common sense and this isn’t a statistics class. However, what this most recent World Cup run (to go along with 1998) does is two things:
- It gives future generations of Croatian kids hope knowing that a World Cup title for Croatia is no longer a pipe dream.
- It will sway dijaspora Hrvati who grow up in German, Swiss, Austrian, Australian football systems to play for Croatia instead of the country they grew up in. (looking at you Sosa! 🙂 )
However, what Croatia has done under Modrić and Dalić since the summer of 2018 has been magical!
(results in last two World Cups by football “Super Powers” compared to Croatia):
Croatia: Finals; Semifinals
Brazil: Quarters; Quarters (Brazil has only played in one semifinal since winning the whole thing in 2002)
England: Semifinals; Quarters
Italy: Have not qualified for two straight World Cups
Germany: Have not got out of group stage in two straight World Cups
Spain: R16; R16
Portugal: R16; Quarters
Only Argentina and France have had better runs during the same timeframe. Both these nations are also responsible for knocking Croatia out of the World Cup in 2018 and 2022. Adding 2016 Portugal to the mix, who beat Croatia in extra time in the Round of 16 of EURO, Croatia have lost to the eventual champion in 3/4 past tournaments.
Croatia are on their way to a title in the next decade at this pace. (FIFA permitting)
Special thanks to Ante Kvartuc- so unselfish to say it’s other people but he is the face of Croatian Sports for so many years. My late father came from Lika and his favorite saying was – “Canada gave me so much but my heart will always be in Croatia and our bear of strength LIKA.” Ante, you are such a great ambassador of what is so good about being a Croatian-American, Canadian , German , Australian whatever- look forward to news, comments, Croatian want to be’s on the site, all of it- Special Sretan Bozic to all the team that support Ante and look forward to what Croatian Sport has in store for 2023. Naprid!!!
Oršić is our most lethal scorer.
He should start on the LW. 2 goals and 2 assists during our Bronze World Cup.
He is quick and can fire from long range.
Perišić is our most athletic forward.
He needs to play as a second striker at times.
Why waste him playing defense?
We got a full stable of defending studs.
JJ can absolutely play RW.
Stanisic can play RB.
I actually like Gvardiol at LB.
Sustalo and Erlic at CB.
Just once I would like to surround Modrić with crew of athletic nogometaši.
No more fat and slow weaklings please.
Don’t underestimate how much Modrić has to compensate for these dudes
You want to score, you need to attack with dynamic players up top.
Dynamic player pool:
Oršić
Perišić
Rebić
Ljubičić
Juranovic
Biuk
Musa
Brekalo
Vlašić
Šimić
These dudes run and take people on in their own style.
Some are more explosive like Rebić and others are more technical like Brekalo.
Dalic has to crack the code in the final third.
With our midfield and solid D, we need some form of attacking play.
How did Gvardiol not win the young player award?
I had said, we should play in our away Blue kit Jerseys, for the majority of the time, because I believe we had done well in the past with them. Did not want to change anything that was not broken. We had done so well in the predominantly black uniforms in 2018.
Boy was a wrong. Thanks for not listening to me Dalic.
Kromiza – don’t feel bad – I said they should send Livakovic to Russia – man, i’m still in shock at the journey and how wrong so many of us were on the team and the direction- That’s why people get hired and fired who have skin in the game- we get to be wrong and laugh at ourselves- all good , Kromiza.
So…so…. what is everyone’s thoughts on Sosa. I still think he is still going to be great one day, and he made a good showing, and we have not seen the last or best of him yet. I probably was hoping for 2-3 assists, and maybe even 1 goal from Borna, so I was a little disappointed though this time around. Anyone think otherwise?
I expected more offensively, the sickness affected him once he returned and had to go through extra time? Whatever it was, not good vs Argentina
Unfortunately, I’m stuck on how he played against Argentina but he’s a key guy so i think he will develop and this bronze will give these first time guys so much experience- I do love the left footed kickers – I think we have more starters with dominant left than any other of the final 3 – happy to be corrected on that but it’s a key strength if you have guys who are dominate with left foot.
I was also disappointed by his performance; we all know that he has defensive deficiencies, but he showed very little going forward during the entire tournament. Sosa and Perisic have not clicked on the left-hand side and that is a problem going forward. I also think that Sosa needs to bulk up, he looks too skinny to me. He needs to do more gym work.
Sosa was off all tournament.
At first it looked like he was nervous, then it looked like maybe a slow recovery from that virus.
Sosa and Perisic clicked very well in qualifying, so I’m not sure what changed. I’m sure he’ll be fine again in March.
Well he was sick with a virus so we didn’t see Full Metal Sosa.
Unfortunately for croatia there is not a lot of experiment time. The first two qualifiers for euros are most important
Experimenting should be the last 15 minutes of a game…and only experimenting with things you would actually do in the future.
I think Dalic learned his lesson from the previous UNL iterations, and we won’t be doing any of these idiotic lineups comprised of third stringer non-callup players, then wonder why our newly called up youngsters can’t seem to get it going with guys like Melnjak and Uremovic trying to create for them.
That graphic looks really cool and we have arrived on the world stage as a top footballing nation. We just need to get our striker clinic in full gear. What we need is a guy who is really good in the box at headers/aerial attack close range and one guy who is a deadly striker who can score from mid to long range.
2 forwards with different specialties. If we focus and develop this we can make the break through and win a World Cup. Time to get to work!!!
Gotta keep bringing up this “top-3” finish statistic at every opportunity.
Just like the other stat about “every Champions League winning team has a Croat on the squad”.
I’ve actually seen other websites make reference to this. It all started here, and now you have FourFourTwo, ESPN and others sports sites making references to this “Croat on every Champions League winning team” statistic.
this stat has teams actively seeking Croats for roster – at least thefans of those teams do
The stupidity of the sports media is unbearable, they keep repeating mindless bullshit “you can’t blame the refs, you should have done something to not make it come down to that (bad) call”. Aren’t both teams trying? So if the team who benefited from the bad call instead had a bad call cost THEM the game, then THEY suddenly were required to blow the other team out so as to “not let it come down to the refs call”. Fucking MORONS.
And NO imbecile, the refs calls do NOT “always even out in the end” and a bad call at the end of a close game OF COURSE in most cases is more costly in the same way a malfunction or pilot error when about to land a plane is much more dangerous than when you’re 20,000 feet in the air.
Orsic/someone else
Perisic. Kova/luka/JJ
Broz
Gvardiol/lovren/sutalo(Jakic)
Or Perisic in some more striker role till someone else really steps up
Just throwing out some ideas
We have talked about it but seriously what does it look like to line up with Perisic at striker
Then orsic and sosa on left
Also, would you guys think JJ could make a rw?
I guess it all depends on the formation
Lots of work ahead of us figuring out our scoring deficiencies, Ante did a great job on articles evaluating our U21 team and prospects after Euros last year, would love to see a updated one where the players stand now in terms of progress and rumors on potential transfers and news. It’s imperative at least 2 youngsters make a leap for 1st team call ups during qualifiers and NL if possible
We’re going to have to experiment…but the correct way.
Continue to field our first team, but try to integrate Musa, Čolak, Beljo and Ljubičić.
Dalić and his assistants have to really watch all the games that these guys played at the clubs this season, and determine what exactly is allowing them to have such good scoring seasons.
Find out which ones can integrate into your offense the best…or see what formation we can tweak to accomodate (assuming it doesn’t impact the rest of our team).
My biggest worry is the “lag”.
I could see Dalić just doing a ‘status quo’ forward callup of Petković/Livaja/Budimir from now until after Nations League before he even begins to consider Čolak and Musa (let alone the younger options in Ljubičić and Beljo).
Nice to see the players get individual hometown celebrations.
https://www.croatiaweek.com/croatias-world-cup-stars-welcomed-in-their-hometowns-across-the-country/
I’m curious to know is Split had a home welcoming for guys like Vlašić, Livaja, Perišić, Pašalić, etc.
The article doesn’t seem to have anything from Split.
Are Torcida/Hajduk still on the anti-HNS train?
Or is that shit done already?
I’m pretty sure they did. I think I saw it on one of the Croatian papers. But I didn’t see anything about attendance/reception.
It was in the first paragraph of the article:
“The waterfront in Split was packed as they welcomed home Ivan Perišić, Mario Pašalić, Nikola Vlašić, Josip Juranović, Ivo Grbić and Marko Livaja.”
Oops. LOL
Clubs received 10,000 dollars for each player for one day spent at the World Cup, meaning Dinamo Zagreb received $50,000 each day a player was in Qatar.
With Croatia’s stay in Qatar until the end of the tournament, and an extra $330.000 they received for players who had been at the club in the last two years – Lovro Majer, Joško Gvardiol and Kristijan Jakić – Dinamo Zagreb earned just over $2 million during the World Cup.
As many have pointed out here, we need to score more goals!
If we are going to start rebuilding and integrating youth, at the moment Ljubicic (based on stats alone) should get the first call.
Comparing this season’s stats so far, Ljubicic has played the most minutes along with the best results obtained, followed by Musa, and lastly Simic.
Hopefully they all turn out to be studs at the highest level, but at least one relatively soon would be nice.
Dark web is saying Croatia threw that match against Argentina. Based on their play that day it is suspicious
That makes no sense!
Argentina walked away with the trophy and $19 million more.
So they are saying that Croatia can be bought -not a chance.
Lets just say that its true, How much did tgey get paid? The 19 million differece doubled for a total of $38 million?
Do you really think someone would pay $38 million to Croatia rather than just pay the referee $1 million (to give a free penalty kick and ruin the game for Croatia)?
Shutup!
It was Boban again!
Trump colluded with the Russians, he risked being put to death for treason in exchange for maybe getting some meaningless popular votes from people who were swayed by Russian internet trolls.
I can’t believe that Croatia would throw the match.
What I observed was that when you have a weak attack, it gives your opponents more options in how they want to go about it, in my opinion what the Argies did was give us the ball knowing that our attack wasn’t great and hoping to take their chance on a counter attack when it presents itself, like what Portugal did in ’16.
The Croatia threw the match scenario obviously comes from watching that awesome first half Argentina played against France in the Final, because they didn’t play anywhere near that level against us.
I think the reason most thought that when Argentina scored first (no penalty) we were done was because we knew we were not going to get anything close to the opportunity we got against Brazil (when they scored first against us) against Argentina because of the way they were going about it.
In future I hope when teams do what the Argies did against us we have the guts to take some long range efforts.
This site has a symbiotic relationship with our rebirth as a footballing power.
I remember back in the day of CSR, we had Srna in a Shaktar outpost making a little noise in the CL.
Once we started to get our boys back in the business end of the CL our fortunes started to turn.
Big Joe and Raketa representing the dijaspora.
2018 was the Magic we needed.
Modrić was clear that 2022 was the move to drop the Cinderella nonsense and be counted as a footballing power.
Now the crew is focused on UNL. Say what you want but beating a desperate Italy and a formidable Dutch side along with Spain is real.
I am actually loving the opportunity to establish our dominance in Europe over the next 18 months.
I am in awe that Modrić was this integral at 37, leading us to Bronze.
He absolutely can play the next 18 months. We need to support him with more talent up top to allow him to create scoring plays.
At 38 we will need to slightly modify his minutes for maximum effect.
He wants to go for UNL, then Euro ‘24.
The legend continues.
“Uniting Croatians round the World!!”
Onward and upwards friends
Every team has its should have would haves
Yes its sad luka is getting old, however even if he doesn’t take home a tourney he has helped galvanize the team, country and propel to youth
Having one of the top players to ever kick a ball is huge
He rubs off on everyone. It’s his attitude but I feel we can also credit Madrid for this winning attitude
The fact we have all these cl wins in a row… all of this whether it’s all in the head or not really helps
Yes and don’t think any potential diaspora hasn’t seen the magic
A Croat playing for Germany is still always an immigrant feel
Most of us would for sure enjoy playing for whatever country but give up a lot more to play for cro
And I hope others will see this
One step at a time, but know we are making the right steps
Thank you ante for the site and uniting us all over the world
Course to all the writers who contribute and provide content and food for talk
And course all the main posters and sometimes even the shit posters;)
Thank you for participating in the Digital Dom. Your membership has been renewed for 2023. 🙂
Shame that Modrić isn’t younger.
Our mentality of being a small country that should simply be happy to participate, is the reason we haven’t won one yet.
Dalić is guilty of this rhetoric too, constantly saying that just qualifying for knockouts is a huge achievement.
Being raised in Communist Yugo caps your mental ceiling so low.
Now I think the reality of Croatia being able to win a tournament is settling into the mindset of Croats.
Modrić can feel it too, which is why he won’t retire.
I think he pulls a Zlatan and plays for us, even in his 40s.
Dalić too is starting to believe. He sounded like such a loser at the Euros after he destroyed our ranking and seeding in UNL, then set expectations so damn low for a tournament that had no clear contenders.
If we showed up to the Euro2020 with this team and mentality, we would win it.
Hopefully this is the start of us washing that loser Yugo stench out of the minds of our players and coaches and (most importantly) our youth.
Look what it’s done to Serbia’s National Team. They lost to a washed up version of the same Albanians who beat them last time. Such sramota.
Now we go for the Nations League title, we clean sweep our Euro2024 qualifying group, and cherish our FIFA ranking (because it is important no matter what the bitter losers and Yugos say).
Enter the next tournament…not as dark horses, but as top ranked contenders.
“Hopefully this is the start of us washing that loser Yugo stench out of the minds of our players and coaches and (most importantly) our youth.”
You mean the kind of loser stench that censors fellow Croatians who have heretical (politically incorrect) political views? That’s exactly what the Yugoslav gov’t and it’s sycophant toadies did, was it not? Do you consider a winner someone who says “oh, you can’t say that, it might offend our slave masters” ?
“Alice in Chains” raises some good points!
It’s led me to ask myself, are the people that started this site false alarmers (you know what I mean?), because they believe that football unites “Croats” of a nationalist or globalist/partizan persuasion (just like globalist Fifa tell us it “unites the world”), but then go accusing globalist Fifa (the very organisation they model this site on) of rigging things against us! Is that just for show?
Is Ante Kvartuc a nationalist or a globalist stooge? Jer meni izgleda da voli sjedit sa guzicom na dvije stolice.
Nemoj biti mlak (to je sjesti sa guzicom na dvije stolice), bolje je biti vruć ili studen.
Onaj koji je vruć, zna
Tko je mlak, ne mari, i 100% manipulira
Tko je studen, ne zna
So Alice, which one of those do you believe Mr. Kvartuc is?
1998 | was the greatest ever …
we had everything – the golden era
2018 | was complete an easy path
once we met a favorite – can’t do anything
2022 | there was luck involved
lack of goals and waste of talent…
And 2008 the best team we’ve ever had that never was so to speak
Yes, I also think that 2008 team was our best. Had we not conceded that goal to Turkey in the 122 minute I believe there was a good chance that we would have won the EURO.
If I’m not mistaken I remember yelling at the tv cause olic missed a couple sitters
If Dudu never got hurt we probably would have won it and would have opened the doors for future “Fred’s” to come to Cro lol
It all happens how it happens and we have to be overall pretty pleased
We have to be proud but still remain hungry which I think the boys are