The Croatian defense was hit with horrible news this weekend as starting center-back Joško Gvardiol has been ruled out of Wednesday’s Nations League semifinal against the Netherlands. Gvardiol has been battling an abdominal injury that hasn’t been able to properly heal by this week. Because of that, Dalić has sent Gvardiol home and recalled striker Dion Drena Beljo from the U21 side.
With Gvardiol out, will Dalić go with a Šutalo-Erlić center-back pairing or will he add 34 year-old veteran Domagoj Vida to the starting XI mix?
Livaja was also excused from the team last week for non-injury related reasons. It’s a tiny blessing in disguise that 21 year-old Beljo will take his spot, however, don’t expect Beljo to get any playing time ahead of Petković or Musa in the semifinal match.
From Pinnacle:
Netherlands +103
Croatia +305
Draw +245
Does it look like an erlic/sutalo pairing??
Something tells me he goes with vida
For veteran presence and his swan song
Give him another coach position once retired
He’s a good presence and motivator I feel for the team and it’s worth having him with the repka in some capacity
We are getting ready for the mali tournament semifinals and we are talking about Serbs? WTF is wrong with you
Seems like we have more depth than in the past on our defensive end. Hopefully it will show.
I know Goran ivanisevic ..novaks coach absolutely loves djokovic.In the press conference he praised him on all fronts ..so there are cros and Serbs who can get along as well I’m sure lots of us cros on this site have some serb relatives or distant cousin.Its difficult to shake the past evils of certain leaders .that’s the sad part ..there are still good people out there.
Nobody here is saying they don’t get along with Serbs.
We’re just debating sports.
Novak Djokovic is half Croat so the Serbs cannot take that away from him.
Just like they like to take Credit for all of the half serbs who have played for the Croatian national team (Srna, Subasic, Rapijic, Prosinecki). Not to mention Mirko Crocop and Dragan Petkovic who are both half Serb.
LOL.
You’d better change your username before CroCop sends you to Mirogoj, ha ha.
Not sure if you’re trolling or are genuinely confused.
If you truly are mistaken, then you picked a couple of the worst guys to mistake as Serbs.
Srna’s dad was a Bosnjak whose mother and aunt were burned alive by Serbian Chetniks in WW2 leaving him orphaned.
Cro Cop being a successful MMA fighter is proof enough that he doesn’t have an ounce of Serbian blood in him.
Erlic is better than people realize, hopefully sosa plays better than he did at the WC
Erlic is like a supercharged Schifo.
Not gonna WOW you with anything, but he never makes any mistakes.
I often wonder why anyone would bring up Djokovic or any other Cedo on these topics?
someone is really desperate for attention!
The truth2 is obviously a Serb looking to push buttons and then sit back and enjoy the responses. That’s why he brings it up. I don’t think anyone is as strong mentally as Djokovic on the court. But his fans, his dad, and his mentality towards the war are all garbage. You understand what it takes to make Federer say “be quiet” to your parents?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2GUpbNKSWs
with djokovic winning a record 23rd grand slam and nikola jokic about to lead a team to an nba championship and with 2 mvp award (should’ve been 3)…. it seems Serbia has taken the lead amongst balkan countries for most accomplished sports country. Notable sports on a world wide basis are soccer, basketball, and tennis. Serbia dominates in 2 out of 3 of those in a way croatia has not come close in the third.
The main feather in the cap of Croatia is the world cup performances. But let’s always remember, Croatia never actually won any of those world cups…and really stumbled into a lot of those results through coin flip penalty kicks…please reference the last two cycles of world cups where Croatia through 90 minutes is 1 win, 2 losses, 5 ties.
serbia has actually won things on the biggest stage. 2 Fiba world cup gold medals in 98 and 2022, eurobasket gold in 95, 97, 01 and an olympic silver in 96 and 2016 which really is the equivalent of a gold medal given the complete dominance of the US.
The tennis is obvious with Serbia producing the greatest tennis player ever.. No one really cares about Davis cup.
It’s getting pretty tough to argue that Croatia has emerged as the best former Yugo sporting country
Soccer is the number one sport in the world and at the senior level we are way ahead of Serbia. They have won a World Cup and Euro at U21 level.
We also have much better results in Handball. We also have better results than Serbia at winter and summer Olympics.
Agree with you about other sports such as Tennis, Basketball, Volleyball, Water polo where Serbia is way ahead of us in achievements.
Still as I said Soccer is the number one sport and I would not change with them.
If anything Djokovic is a Yugo. Croatian mother (so do we get a half credit on those wins?)
And who really cares about basketball, a sport where success is highly dependent on freakish physiognomy (height).
Everyone and anyone plays the ‘beautiful game’ but there are very few who can reach the level of naša draga Hrvatska.
Nice try truth.
Bog i Hrvati
LOL. You’re such an agitator, desperate for a respose in every single thread.
A country’s measure for sports success will always be Football and the Olympics.
Croatia demolishes Serbia in both (with half the population mind you). Croatia is actually even better than Yugoslavia too.
In the Olympics, Croatia has 14 gold medals to Serbia’s 6 gold medals (41 to 24 overall). This isn’t even close.
We don’t even have to talk about Football, where Croatia easily demolishes both Serbia and all of Yugo’s historical success in that sport (despite it being easier to medal in previous tournaments in history).
Serbia has been better in basketball these past 25 years, however, most would argue that they have not been better in tennis. Yes, they have Djokovic being an all-time great, but overall Croatia is still considered a better tennis nation as per Davis Cup, Olympics, and the amount of successful top-100 players throughout history. On an individual level, Djokovic is king…but we’re not talking about individuals here. We are talking about country.
Either way it doesn’t matter, since all other team sports outside of football are a huge step down from football.
The World Cup and the Olympics are the biggest sporting events in the World…but then there is a big dropoff after that.
Individually, I would say that Doncic, Jokic, Djokovic and Modric are the biggest stars to come out of the region…but Croatia has had a much far larger amount of successful secondary stars like Suker, Boban, Mirko CroCop, Janica Kostelic, Toni Kukoc, Ivanisevic, Blanka, Ivano Balic, etc. who were all popular in their respective sports as well (which is significant since this is only a 30 year old country). Outside of the two Sacramento Serbs (Divac and Stojakovic), Serbia hasn’t really produced many secondary star types that people from other countries could name you.
If we are included NBA titles, don’t we need to include Champion League wins as well.
Lol. Truth will do anything attention. Kind of sad really.
Sutalo – Erlic were excellent for us against both France and Denmark. As Slavonac said we will miss Gvardiol’s passing but Erlic may actually be less error prone than Gvardiol (although Gvardiols athletic ability is off the charts and he can quickly make up for mistakes).
I’ll put money on Krama starting up top with Pasalic/Vlasic on RW.
I really wish we try Juranovic on RW, Stanisic at RB and maybe Krama as a false 9. This would be as close as we get to having all players in their natural positions.
Pasalic, Musa, Vlasic, Majer, Beljo off the bench if we need a goal.
I only suggest this because there is no way Dalic gives Musa or Beljo get a start in this big of a game……
Iva Majoli won the French Open, Joe Sakic (first generation Canadian) is an all-time Hockey great, Roger Maris, Fred Couples, numerous massively successful Basketball and American Football coaches…..
First of all, who gives a shit about serbia?
Secondly, Croatia is not “Balkan”.
https://studentski.hr/zabava/zanimljivosti/mala-skola-geografije-pripada-li-hrvatska-balkanskom-poluotoku
Musa has been ready
He’s not a little boy
I really hope he can make something happen in this tournament and become the striker we so desperately need on the national team.
So sick of watching the 👻 ghost boy….mr. do nothing Kramaric!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We need to win this nations league trophy 🏆 and get ready to take on the Euro and World Cup!
In order for Dalic to move away from the old guard, we need Musa or Beljo to score.
The only reason why Beljo was finally called up (despite starting almost every game in Bundesliga) is because he suddenly scored a couple of goals.
My worry is that the club season is over and our Euro2024 qualifiers end in November.
If Musa and Beljo don’t get a chance to show what they can do, they could easily still be considered bubble players for the September callups (since Livaja will be back, and the club season will have barely started).
Livaja, Krama, and Petkovic are the ‘default’ so we need Musa and Beljo to break that from Dalic’s mind.
Petkovic hasn’t consistently scored for years, but because he is considered a default callup, his position remain unless someone else pushes him out.
If Musa or Beljo don’t get a hot start to their club seasons, then they’ll probably not even get callups (or just be standy callups when the qualifiers start in September).
Two months pass very quickly, and that could be it for the qualifiers (and the team will be set for Euro2024 despite the tournament not starting for another 7 months).
This happened to Musa last time, when he was red hot and got a June callup. Then the season ended, he moved to Benfica, and was a bench player in September.
Once he managed to get some games in, he started to catch fire…but it was already December and Dalic had called up the default strikers instead.
I don’t want this to happen again.
We will miss Gvardiol and I’m sorry this happened to him but with that said I do feel like Erlic and Sutalo can manage. Sutalo has played against some tough opponents in Champions League this past season and Erlic is no slouch…he’s playing in a tough league against some pretty good attackers and has done relatively well. He’s not as intelligent as Gvardiol, he doesn’t join the attack often and he’s not as good a passer as Gvardiol but we need him to defend and do it well…I’m happy for the guy and we need to embrace this situation…We want all our players to play, gain experience and do well and this guy deserves our full support! One more noteworthy comment about Erlic, he’s from Zadar and they usually produce some really good players!
With regards to Beljo?! I’m on the fence about him starting but if he does start, I hope he has the game of his life! I watched him play a lot last season (not this current season as much) and the guy is a bastard for defenders to mark. He has a good work ethic, he is edgy on the field, he’s a really big kid and he’s hungry all the time! Some strikers are just natural and they have scored goals in bunches since they were 7 years old, I get the impression that Beljo might have been that kid at a younger age but once kids caught up to him in size he had to add to his physical presence and learn positional play, tactics and technique and overall he’s more of a work horse than he is gifted…and I’m good with that, as long as he scores more regularly!
If Musa starts, which is probably more likely (than Beljo but we might just go with Krama up top), I hope Dalic sets up the play to help him be successful! Musa has a very nice touch for a tall and lanky guy. He’s also not a bad dribbler, he can hold up the ball and from the little I’ve seen of him, he anticipates the play well…always looking to be in the right place.
If any of these newcomers demonstrate they have that “striker” mentality and they’re relatively good, I hope we keep them around and give them the support and push they might need to help them perform well! It’s a really big step playing for club and then transitioning to play for your country. The pressure is different and the learning curve is expected to be faster because you have less time training with the national team. The amount of pride and gratitude these kids have moving up to the senior team can sometimes be tougher than one might imagine and nerves and adrenaline can burn them out prematurely. I just hope they get the necessary support they’re gonna need to perform well!
The good news is at least Musa has been part of the setup in the past two Euro2024 qualifiers (and played about 40 minutes) so hopefully that gets rid of some of those initial jitters.
Beljo likely has a higher ceiling as a player, but glad that Livaja got cut and he’s in the picture instead.
I do think Dalic will play it safe and start Krama up top (since he seems to have a few options on that right side) but he’ll probably sub in Musa up top if he feels we need a true spica up top.
I’d rather do the reverse, and continue with our World Cup lineup with Perisic and Krama at LW/RW or go with Juranovic at RW (with Stanisic behind him at RB)…just so we could start Musa up top. If the kid struggles, we can makes changes then.
I agree
I’m all in for JJ at rw with stanisic behind him
This will help the cb pairing no doubt defensively if we get caught weathering a storm
Love to see some minutes for Musa
Let’s face it we all know for beljo to get mins it will take something extraordinary to happen
There is a 3rd/4th place match ya?
If we don’t win and play that match then maybe we would see beljo??