Dinamo thump Lithuanian side Kauno Žalgiris 5-0 in the 1st leg of their Champions League 3R qualifying match in Zagreb Tuesday night.
Goals from Zajc, McKenna, Lisica, Stojković & Kačavenda got the job done as Žalgiris did not manage one shot on goal at Maksimir while Dinamo completely controlled the match with 70% possession and 10 corner kicks.
Dinamo are now 90 minutes away from facing Norwegian champs Viking with a spot in the Champions League on the line. Should they not beat Viking, Dinamo will play in the Europa League “league phase” this European season.
Good performance by Hajduk admittedly against weakish opponents.
Checked records and this is only the third time that we have scored 5 goals away from home in Europe. We should have scored more notably with Sego missing a penalty on 14 minutes.
Marin Soticek was really good, and it was his speed and skill that earned us two penalties in the first 15 minutes with Sego converting the first in the 5th minute.
Sego scored a superb goal from a free kick into top corner just before half time to make amends for the missed spot kick.
It should be noted that Marko Capan former Hajduk junior and captain of the youth team that reached the Youth Champions League Final a few years back scored the second goal for the home team with a superb goal from a free kick. Pretty much a caron copy of Segos goal.
Bit of a concern is Hajduks defence which is leaking too many goals.
Also watched the Rijeka match which they won 1 – 0 but should have won by a bigger margin. First half in particular they had chances to double their lead.
Rijeka look the better team and should advance ? but you never know 1 – 0 may not be enough away from home.
Toni Fruk rolled his ankle in the first half and although it did not look too serious, he was replaced at half time. Hopefully he will be fit for the return leg in a weeks’ time.
Hajduk being able to beat even these weakish opponents puts them light years ahead of where they’ve been
This is the same Hajduk that lost to Dinamo City and Ružomberok at home.
Now they’re actually winning against teams better than these teams.
Losing to Pafos in extra time and a strong Varaždin squad is nothing to be ashamed of.
I hope the board and fans don’t hold this against Garcia.
I think Hajduk may be on the right track and we may find ourselves with 3-4 European caliber HNL teams very soon.
Thanks for the report, MART.
Stojko is ahead of jaga. By a considerable distance. Stojko is ready now for NT and a big club. He knows his own game and is comfortable doing his thing. He knows when to be dynamic and when to keep it simple, he picks up all the right spaces and he is able to use his remarkable shooting and passing ability to hurt the opposition 5/6 times a game. In addition when you can shoot and pass like he can, the higher the level you play the easier it gets as your teammates are more switched on to working the situations.
Jaga has phenomenal potential but still hasn’t found his way to tactically use them. He tries to get his shots off as often as possible and is able to be dynamic with his running but he is denied the opportunity by the shape of the game. When he receives the ball he has little space to move and also his first touch is not yet good enough for top level football as a number 10. Work to do. He needs to improve his first touch and also develop his understanding of space and timing when it comes to the build up phase. He is doing well but it may take him another year or two to finally blossom into a top player. I hope he gets there sooner Ofcourse, but he is doing well
He’s 26 month older than him hope he’s better 😉
100% agree Jaga first touch
But Stokjo has the same teammates for years now so unfair to compare vs Jaga who’s played 4 games with the guys (last same Tetteh went hospital b4 kick-off, some random midfielder got chucked in, and a few injuries (2-3) to guys who will be in starting XI) – they also don’t have a real #8 to put into midfield so it’s a mess currently (Jaga has more defensive duties than u should) – important context
Only fair to compare them after Jaga has like 15-20 games with the same guys
Agree Jaga is still raw and needs to do better – but his trajectory is crazy and Greek League like 3x intensity of HNL so bigger challenge
I like Stojko a lot too – especially his Wild Thing attribute – don’t get me wrong
Sure. I’m not criticising Jaga. Stojko is further ahead that’s all.
Dinamo and Hajduk both beat teams called Zalgiris with 5 goals? huh?
Wellness check on Mart please
His heart gotta to be pumping HARD with this Hajduk domination
Congrats – don’t f it up in the second leg again though 😱
Waiting for the Anonymous break down of Jagusic. The Greek media had lots of praise for Jagusic yesterday so hopefully this is a sign of good things to come for him.
Haven’t watched it yet ☹️
Goal contributions by Adriano Jagusic so far this season; respective video will start playing from his goal or assist:
Jul 4 Pre-season friendly
PAO [2]-0 Ajax (final result 3-1)
Jagusic assist 30′
youtube.com/watch?v=bxayE1H8L-c&t=75s
Jul 11 Pre-season friendly
PAO [1]-0 Grasshoppers (final result 3-0)
Jagusic goal 48′
youtube.com/watch?v=qLv4z41LLX0&t=251s
Jul 30 Conference League, Second qualifying round Leg 2
PAO [1]-1 Paks (final result 2-2; final aggregate 4-3)
Jagusic goal 44′
youtube.com/watch?v=2DAa1dqPCkI&t=312s
Aug 5 Conference League, Third qualifying round Leg 1
PAO [1]-0 CSKA 1948 (final result 1-1)
Jagusic goal 21′
youtube.com/watch?v=eXsRBCICq7s&t=115s
Will be interesting to see who wins out between Jaga and Stojko for that right-sided CAM role alongside Baturina.
Goal contributions by Adriano Jagusic so far this season; respective video will start playing from his goal or assist:
Jul 4 Pre-season friendly
PAO [2]-0 Ajax (final result 3-1)
Jagusic assist 30′
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxayE1H8L-c&t=75s
Jul 11 Pre-season friendly
PAO [1]-0 Grasshoppers (final result 3-0)
Jagusic goal 48′
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLv4z41LLX0&t=251s
Jul 30 Conference League, Second qualifying round Leg 2
PAO [1]-1 Paks (final result 2-2; final aggregate 4-3)
Jagusic goal 44′
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DAa1dqPCkI&t=312s
Aug 5 Conference League, Third qualifying round Leg 1
PAO [1]-0 CSKA 1948 (final result 1-1)
Jagusic goal 21′
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXsRBCICq7s&t=115s
Thanks for this, @Bart!
Appreciated!
Sofascore:
Jagusic third highest rated (tied third) at 7.4
Fotmob:
Jagusic second highest rated at 8.0
2nd only to:
Anonymous eye testing 10.0 !
The best the World has EVER seen !!!!!!!
Who? Anonymous? Or Jagusic?
Or both?
Jaga 3rd goal of the season slutz
Any questions MORONS ???! 😘
Hey! I was the first Jaga fan!
His girlfriend confirmed it on IG.
Jaga starts btchessssss
He also posted re Oluja 31 years
Such a good boy
Such a good Croatia
And those Anonymous-like Monster Arms – wow!
Best moment of the video at the 3:25 mark and lasts for one second.
Misic has some speed and a great pass for 5th goal but I’m sure the opposition was looking for the bus home by then.
Brilliant play by misic for the assist to lisica. Great footwork set the play to give the ball out wide to Stojkovic who had drifted there. Stojkovic is the main threat for dinamo so the zalgiris players bought it and shifted a yard to far over creating the space for lisica inside. Beautiful reverse pass with disguise by misic to find him, perfect weight and timing on the ball. Lisica rocket. Great stuff
Watching friendly between AC Milan v Inter in Perth.
TV camera zoomed in Modric sitting on the bench, however not sure if he will come on? as his name was not on the subs list. Sucic was listed on the Inter sub list so will see if he comes on?
Modric came on after 61 minutes with 6 other AC Milan players and got a big cheer from the crowd.
He played really well and provided a lovely pass into the box which led to a penalty for AC Milan and the equalising goal for final score 1 – 1.
Sucic did not come on for Inter.
Great to see Luka enjoying tremendous respect all over the world. He deserves it.
Any hope that Lisica turns out as a winger for the repka?
DannyJ . . . I would say the potential is there . . . Lisica is said to have better acceleration and faster sprint speed than any other Croatian. He and Segecic are pretty close on those two measuring sticks, but Lisica edges him out.
That was one heck of a rocket shot. We can clearly add a powerful left foot to top notch speed and acceleration. Seems like a combination of skills that would help the repka somewhere down the road.
Segecic for my is a better player technically and can score more goals, however I agree Lisica is quicker.
MART, it will be interesting to see what kind of year Segecic has. He ended last season on a goal scoring tear . . .
I just stumbled across something about Segecic. There’s this stat on sofascore called “Top speed”. Both Segecic and Mbappe recorded the same “Top speed” of 36.0 km/h (approx 22.37 mph) while playing in their respective leagues last season. Mmmmm I’m looking forward to the day when our repka will play with more wingers and with more speed in general😊
Interesting. I had not seen that. That IS fast.
Right now Sofifa has Segecic as the 16th fastest Croatian.
Lisica is number 1.
But Sofifa might be due for an update. In some cases it lags by several months. . . . I will be interested to see what their next update brings.
Of note, they have Hrgovic rated seventh fastest.
Wonderful
Be great exposure and experience for the young guys to play some bigger euro teams soon
Stojkovic looking like he will be the goods
Let’s hope brothers
Some nice goals by Dinamo in particular by Stojkovic and Lisica against weak opposition.
Stojkovic again looked impressive and Bilic must call him up for the national team. Valincic is also playing well and deserves a call by Bilic, although I think that he has lost some of his pace since suffering that lengthy injury at the end of last year.
There is another qualifying round after this ? God how many are there…
4. 3 qualifying rounds and one playoff round.
and that’s one of the main issues I have with current UEFA qualifying rounds. Countries like Spain, England etc get like 10 teams directly qualified for the CL (I’m exaggerating a bit but you get the picture) while Dinamo, as Croatian champion, needs to go through 4 qualifying round.
I get that UEFA did that to kill the super league project but, at the very least, all champions should qualify directly
Good point, Elgipsy.
Does anyone know how far the HNL would be from getting an automatic birth into Champions Laeague for our league champion? Or automatics into other European leagues (Europa or Conference)?
As I understand it, under the current rules, the HNL “coefficient” would have to be higher to get automatic qualification.
But how much higher would we have to be?
Maybe this isn’t easy to figure out, but does anybody have a potential answer to this or can anybody offer any guidance?
For example, let’s suppose all the stars lined up, which I understand they didn’t and won’t, but if they did, and we had five teams who qualified to be playing in Europe this year, Dinamo, Hajduk, Rijeka, Varazdin and one other . . . Would that drive our coefficient high enough that we would get automatic entry thereafter. Would half our league qualifying give us automatic entry by right? Or could our top teams at least then avoid the early qualifying rounds and get directly into the playoffs?
Just asking!
To get automatic Champions League league stage entry, your country needs to be ranked in the top ten by UEFA country coefficient. top four get four spots, five gets three, six gets two, and seven through ten get the champion in automatically. anything below that and even your league winner has to grind through qualifiers.
Realistic requirements for HNL teams with the typical four entrants:
• Dinamo Zagreb (the main contributor historically) would need to regularly reach the Champions League or Europa League league phase and collect wins/bonuses there. Simply surviving qualifying and then picking up a few results in the league phase helps a lot because of the fixed participation bonuses.
• At least one or two other clubs (Rijeka, Hajduk, Osijek or whoever qualifies) would need to advance past early qualifying rounds into the Europa League or Conference League league phase and add wins or draws.
• Deep runs (knockout stages) by multiple teams in the same season would accelerate progress via bonuses.
A season in which Croatia’s four clubs combined produce the equivalent of strong league-phase campaigns (multiple wins + bonuses) could yield a coefficient in the 10–15 range — something they have not done consistently in recent years. Repeating that kind of collective performance for 3–5 seasons while countries around the current top 10 are more average would be the path into the top 10.
Wow. It would be quite a process then. . . Interesting.
Thanks Maminjo!
Well, the Czechs were ranked 10th last season so it’s definitely do-able.
I think with Boban running Dinamo, Kek at Rijeka, and maybe some stability at Hajduk with Garcia (not to mention Varaždin playing consistently well for years now)… is possible for us to move a lot up the coefficient rankings.
So long as they don’t do it using foreign talent. The majority of players on each of these teams are still Croats, which is most important.
There is a good deal of Croatian talent around. More of the young Croatian players who grew up in Austria or Germany, for example, should be heavily scouted and brought to play in the HNL.
If we can get that coefficient ranking higher, more success, and more money coming in, more of our younger players might choose the HNL rather than stay and play in Germany or Austria or somewhere out in the diaspora, or just stay a year or two longer in the HNL before making the jump to another league. Success will breed more success. I am thinking of players like Oliver Lukic, Patrice Covic, Lovro Zvonarek, Segecic before he went to Championship, Jagusic or Krivak not leaving the league as early as they did, and so forth . . .