Here we go! My favorite time of the year: DRAW TIME! The Euro 2024 draw will take place December 2nd.
Croatia have been placed in Pot 3 because they finished 2nd in group behind Turkey in qualifying with 16 points. UEFA is no longer using FIFA rankings to conduct the draw; rather total points earned in qualifying. I personally like this moving forward as it will keep teams fighting for points even if they have qualified already. A good example is Turkey today vs. Wales. If Turkey would have lost in Cardiff, they would have moved down to Pot 3 on the final qualifying day.
Looking at the draw, Pot 2 looks weak compared to years past. This would normally be a Pot 3/4 in most years. Absolutely no one scares me in the grouping and all are more or less the same quality. I suppose Denmark and Hungary are just a bit better than the rest, but not by much. The name of the game will be to draw a playoff side from Pot 4. If not, playing sides like Italy, Serbia, and Switzerland in group stage; to pair that along with a Pot 1 nation, could be a recipe for disaster.
Group I am rooting for: Germany on opening night (we haven’t played them in awhile), Albania, and finally, give me Serbia! Imagine Modrić scoring the winner on the final day of group stage to send the Serbs home. That would make me so happy. 🙂
Toughest group: France, Denmark, Italy
Easiest group: Belgium, Albania, League C playoff winner (Georgia, Greece, Kazakhstan Luxembourg)
Croatia
Happy Thanksgiving to all my Hrvati homies.
I am grateful for our Catholic faith and Croatian family round the world.
Qualifying for Germany ‘24 is big. We finally have the next generation of young nogometasi be integrated into the national set up.
Marco P, Sučić, Baturina are ready.
Gvardiol, JJ, Sosa Livakovic have been in effect.
Veteran core primed for one more run.
Squad depth with Pasalic, Stanisic, Budimir Majer, Kovačić etc .. is legit.
Dalic keeps gaining mastery as a top international manager.
Striker auditions begin once again:
Šimić, Beljo etc ..
Let’s see who pulls an Ante Budimir for their club?
We have a lot of work to do before the Euro begins. Nobody here should wish for Germany and think they or any other team will be some push over. We struggled against teams we should of blown out . Goals win games. We still have no striker and clear problem on our offense .
yea but you missed the second part to that..
e struggled against teams we should of blown out BUT we also play the best against the stronger sides.
Typical diaspora approach to watching soccer. Last month we were terrible and hrvatska was about to fall into the Jadran. One month later, we have people thinking a Euro title is in reach.
Your diaspora bashing is getting old. All Croatian media has this same attitude, not just us ignorant stranci
You’re the most downy davor of all
Cheers to new hopes brother!
Life is full of ups and downs and at least we can enjoy this next go around and who knows what more
how a downy? Go back one month ago with the comments. People are funny how they reacted.
Like you reacted last month to a female poster who was upset with the same overreaction to the two losses? You didn’t say you agreed with her, or she was right to be upset that everyone was overreacting. You told her to go the kitchen and cook and clean. So classy.
Can’t remember if I did. If I did that does sound like something I would say to girl who wants to talk sports.
We all have our roles to play in society.
There is no positive approach in your comments and that is how and why you are called a downy. You don’t offer much by way of conversation other than what was stated above. You keep referencing how people’s accents make them less Croatian than yourself. You keep discussing how the diaspora is a problem and how we know nothing based on that alone.
Notice that this site is created by a person who is in the diaspora, in fact most articles are written by someone in the diaspora. All comments are also predominantly generated by someone living in the diaspora.
What I find intriguing is that you disvalue us so much or dislike us so much and then at the same token you make the effort to visit site and comment about how much it bothers you. A site, mins you, where you are bound to run into comments from people who live the diaspora. This to me seems a bit counterintuitive.
Seriously impressed by Marco Pasalic dribbling skills. He’s going to be big for us in Euros if he stays in form.
What about Mario’s awesome dribbling skills (that cost him a breakaway at the end there) ha ha ha
Was very nice / poetic to see Baturina / Sucic / Marco P as front three (behind Mario P) for the last 10 minutes
Dalic Modric / Broz double-pivot for these two games (for like the 1st time in forever) was a big tell re: change in tactics (inverting full-backs / who he’d bring on (give young front three a chance)
1st half – Sosa was at times inverting significantly in front of double-pivot (issue was Ivanusec wasn’t really up for it / in sync – so fizzled) – Stanisic stuck mostly to his wing
2nd half – Juranovic came on he was inverting in front of double-pivot (issue is Marco P can go 1-1 / direct / quickly so full-back underlapping is just getting in his way !) – Sosa (gassed by then) stuck mostly to his wing
After seeing that the Modric / Broz double-pivot works – don’t see how you integrate Kovacic back into the midfield tbh
Will the real legendary Pasalic please stand out, and up! Hoping for the best, for both. Marco is the new kid in town. Give them time to reveal the Legendary Pasalic if he exists.
I remember when Jelavic and Perisic were first coming up, pondering the mystery, which one was really going to make it big, or neither. We know the end of that story.
That one play either the Armenians gave up or were tired but he burned 3-4 of them hard
They were kind of just left watching
Overall, solid game and mission accomplished. A few defensive lapses but it happens. It’s also difficult to break down these Armenian type teams when they have 10 players behind the ball. The minute they started to open up, we started to get a couple of chances.
Budimir was great today. Poor man’s Mandza but did everything we need a striker to do…press, hold up the ball, be an aerial threat, and most importantly- score! Hopefully he can carry this form the rest of his club season. He’s 32…same age Mandza was in 2018….typical hrvat who gets better with age.
Brozo was back to being himself……running everywhere and even had a nice crack at the goal.
Marco Pasalic might be our best 1v1 threat given his quickness. Would love to see him continue to progress.
I was shocked to see Dalic throw all the kids in defending a 1 goal lead, but kudos to him. He now knows
we need depth and by not playing these kids will hurt us if we get a few injuries like last month.
I miss the good ol’ October days when everyone though that it was the sudden demise of the National Team, ha ha.
Broz playing in Saudi Arabia made him drop off suddenly from a Ballon D’Or finalist (in September) to a man whose career is over (in October). Quickest dropoff in human sports history.
How did he recover in this round? Is he on PEDs? It can’t be that he just had a bad month…could it?
I miss when everyone thought Wales was gonna win 4 in a row and win out the group (a team that’s never won 4 in a row in their lifetime)…and of course Croatia will lose to Latvia…Modric will retire in disgust, and we’ll never qualify for tournaments again EVEN IF both Baturina and Sucic pan out (lol, wtf?).
Sigh. I miss those takes.
On a serious note, I do like that Sucic seemingly recovered from his injury, and looks very confident out there. Baturina looks good too, and so does Marco Pasalic. Glad to see Dalic FINALLY play Borna Sosa (and was rewarded). Hopefully we give guys like Roko and Beljo some chances in the future as well near the end of games. They are already better than guys like Livaja, Vlasic and Brekalo.
See, it’s not so bad everybody.
Lol. Tell me about it! We played so poorly back in October but missing our whole front line AND having players not in form would hurt the majority of teams.
We really do have some nice young players in Pasalic, Baturina and Sucic.
It’s also really nice to see Majer playing well again. I was iffy on him the last year or so but he really played well these past two games. Kovacic being hurt was such a blessing in disguise. If he was fit he would have started and things may have been different. Now even Kova will
have to pick it up to earn his starting spot back.
Agree that it’s nice to see the dead wood go/not play in Livaja, Vlasic, Barisic.
I remember thinking when Budimir played those few games in the Nations league games how it would have been nice having someone like Sosa to whip in some crosses for him. I might be wrong but I don’t think they were on the field much together if all during those games…
Roko will be our future but Budimir is out now.
I just look forward to getting to a game or two next year….the atmosphere will be unbelievable!
That is the weakest pot 2 i have ever seen
Anybody else watch the Brazil-Argentina qualifier? Brazil lost their third game in a row. And they looked awful, and played dirty. One straight red and should have had another. They had 26 fouls. It looked like a Panama-Honduras game. And this is Brazil. We freaked out after last month. Imagine what it’s like in football mad Brazil right now.
Uruguay crushed. Point being is ??
In Pot 1 despite being the host Germany is the weakest team. The three most improved countries in last couple of years are Hungary, Austria (Pot 2) and Scotland in Pot 3. From Pot 2 Albania is the weakest followed by Romania.
Ideal draw for me is:
Germany, Albania, Croatia and Greece (most likely winner of league C play off)
I.. i dont know what to make of today
i mean we WON our must-win game so that was huge, then i learned im getting yet another payrise at work (just out of nowhere) and hten i had another win at work and im like wtf is this feeling… like… like where life isnt totally shithouse ??? it seems so foreign lol watttt
Narrator, you smoked it. Great job
What is going on with these breakaways and subsequent goalie positioning, and why are they happening, and why can’t we get them fixed. We really got lucky today. Are our defenders pushing to far up? Why is Dominic Livakovic coming out so far? What are we doing differently. Did the Argentina’s forwards steam -rolling over our full backs, during the semi-finals, have a permanent effect on Dom’s goal protection approach forever? He has never been the same.
It is no longer funny, or a fluke, it needs to be addressed.
Watched the replay of that incident a few times. Unfortunately, it started again with Gvardiol pushing forward too much and leaving a gap in our defence that you could drive not 1 but 2 buses through. The same thing happened in Osijek with the Turkish goal when Gvardiol again was at fault when defending on the halfway line and leaving a huge gap in defence behind him for a through ball over the top.
This time Gvardiol unnecessarily followed an Armenian forward some 5 -10 meters into his half leaving a gap for a through ball over the top.
Sosa was also caught ball watching and out of position as was Sutalo who was also to far up the pitch to come across and intercept the pass.
The initial mistake was by Gvardiol, then Sosa and finally Sutalo.
Against better team’s mistakes like this will lead to goals as was the case against Turkey. I have posted before that when Sutalo and Erlic play as our central defenders our defence is a lot stronger and compact. We just need to remember the NL matches against France and Denmark when Gvardiol was out with injury.
However, what do we do with Gvardiol who is prone to positional mistakes?
Nice analysis! Thanks. can you get that information to Dalic somehow
If Kova gets relegated to the bench where he belongs we could win it all.
FOTMOB player ratings:
https://www.fotmob.com/matches/armenia-vs-croatia/2beq7e#4044716
With that said I say GermanY HungarY, and ItalY. ……….Y you ask? To beat Albania, Serbia, France to the run up, and face the Slovenes in the tournament final. Highly unlikely.
Modric scoring to send the Serbs home is Mouthwatering to say the least. I hope that transpires. Oof that would be sweet
After the draw, the wait begins for early leaks of the new kits. Can’t wait, I didn’t love these. I really hope we go back to blues with some stylistic red and white checkers incorporated somewhere.
Need to go Black but with large checkers.
That would be sweet!!
I agree. the 2018 kit in an updated look. These current navy blues with light blue did not inspire victories. Back in Black!
You nailed it Rafael. Let’s rock it in black. Not only are we in it we’re going to win it mentality has to fire up.
Lfg
I wonder who has a say in these final Jersey decisions, and who can you lobby?
Should let fans vote from time to time
I don’t trust Croatian fan voting.
They would probably vote for a kit with Zeljko Kerum superimposed on the front with a slice of prsut on his forehead.
When do they release the new kits?
Spring 2024