Alright guys, here we go! The real tournament starts Thursday night for Croatia when they take on Portugal in Toronto at 7PM (ET) in their Round of 32 knockout round match. There’s a lot to unpack for this one. Here’s what you need to know:
- PORTUGUESE HOME GAME??? The Portuguese are going to treat this as a home match. The largest concentration of Portuguese in Canada are in the Greater Toronto/Ontario area at roughly 180,000 people. However, Croatia has the largest concentration of Croatians in North America in Ontario as well. So if you have the privilege of being inside the stadium for this match, BE LOUD for 90 MINUTES and DO NOT let the Portuguese make this a home crowd for them.
- LEGENDS MATCH: This will be the last World Cup match for either Luka Modrić or Cristiano Ronaldo. The two former Real Madrid teammates will go toe-to-toe with the winner moving forward to possibly face Spain and the loser going home.
- EXPECT THE BEST CROATIA LINEUP: The Vatreni have yet to play a great game at this World Cup for 90 straight minutes. I’m expecting Dalić to roll out his best possible lineup for the Portugal match which includes Baturina, Petar Sučić and possibly Marco Pašalić if he wants to play a bit more offensive-minded in a 4231. However, will a less than 60% Joško Gvardiol be part of the defensive plans? He came off the bench late versus Ghana. Could we possibly play him at CB to minimize his running game on the wings vs. Portugal?
- VEGAS ODDS: Vegas has Portugal at -260 to progress to the next round making Croatia the betting underdog in this match. Vegas also has the Under 2.5 goals weighted which means they are expecting a 1-0 or 1-1 match in 90 minutes. CroatianSports has a gut feeling this match will go into extra time, maybe even penalties. As we all know, Croatia have won four straight penalty shootouts at the World Cup dating back to 2018.
Is Croatia House happening in Toronto for the Portugal game ? Anyone know ?
We really need to beat Portugal if we want to consider this a successful tournament.
So far, we’ve been soundly beaten by England, barely scraped by Panama, and the only game where we looked “good” was against a team that had nothing to play for and were probably happy with taking a loss.
That being said, hopefully we’ve been able to pick up some momentum from that Ghana game and can carry it over against Portugal. We need our revenge for that disgracefully reffed game in 2016.
This tournament reminds me allot of Euro 2020.
In 2020, we looked very unprepared and were bad the first two games against England and Czech.
Then we made up for it by outplaying the Scots in one half and winning the game…but we were then easily dispatched by Spain.
If Portugal takes us out relatively easy, we can’t just use the same “small country” rhetoric, and consider it a successful tournament.
I think there might be some upsets today
Japan and Morocco could be the ones to do it
Why would Morocco winning be an upset? They’re way better than 4 years ago when they won 4th place.
I think if they beat The Dutch it would be an upset however I agree with you on the fact that they have improved
Because they are underdogs.
Yes
It’s not a bad thing we’re playing Portgual since they got outplayed by Colombia. Yeah, I know we beat them in the friendly, but they looked SO GOOD on Saturday.
I know we usually don’t match up well vs Portugal, but I’m happier with this matchup instead.
Croatia will win 2–1. They stay compact, control the midfield, and frustrate Portugal’s attack. They punish mistakes with quick counterattacks and take their chances when they come. Portugal creates opportunities but struggles to finish consistently. Portugal, at times, looks disorganized and lacks effort amongst some teammates. I don’t think they are as good as people glaze them out to be. 100% winnable if we fight hard and run them off the field like Colombia did and some African teams.