The Sinković brothers (Valent & Martin) win gold again! The Zagreb-born rowers took the gold medal Friday at the Paris Olympics in the coxless pair rowing competition. This is the 3rd straight Olympics the brothers have taken gold in! If there was ever a rowing dynasty, this is it. The medal puts Croatia on two goals and one bronze after the first week of competition in Paris.
Check out the video below. Sinković brothers were dead in the water with 300 meters to go but came back to win from behind on the last stroke of the race. British commentary at its finest! “The Croatians are sprinting and coming in silver…”
Hajduk, Rijeka and Osijek all won their European ties to move onto the next round this upcoming week. Hajduk made easy work of Faroese club Torshavn 2-0 (on aggregate) in the 2nd round of Conference League qualifying. Hajduk will now face Slovakian side MFK Ružomberok in the next qualifying round, where they will be considered favorites to go through. In Europa League qualifying, Rijeka skimmed by Romanian side Corvinul Hunedoara in the 2nd round of qualifying (1-0 on aggregate). Dejan Petrović scored the lone goal of the tie for Rijeka, who will now face Swedish side Elfsborg in the 3rd qualifying round. Rijeka should be favored here as well. Osijek, who conceded within the first 10 minutes of their tie against Estonian side FCI Levadia Tallinn, roared back to easily win 6-1 (on aggregate) in their Conference League matchup. Osijek will now face Zira FK from Azerbaijan. Dinamo will not enter Europe for a few weeks until the Champions League playoff round ties are announced. They will only have to win one tie in order to reach the CL group stage this year.
Reigning HNL champions Dinamo Zagreb kicked off the season on a high note Friday night at Maksimir, dismantling Pula with a 5-0 scoreline. 21 year-old Martina Baturina, who came off the bench for Croatia this past Euro, was named MOTM with three assists in the game. He also received an incredible 9.6 FOTMOB rating for his efforts.
Why is there no article on Donna Vekic?
Seems strange to me that all that she has achieved this year and it’s like noone is batting an eye?
Is the shot putter on USA team have croatian heritage?
I really don’t care to get into the Croatia-Serbia of it, but Good Lord Djokovic is annoying.
When it’s going his way he’s ha ha “I’m so funny” and ha ha “I’m so charming” but when it’s not he’s a petulant child.
Anyway…..
(Not posting this as though it’s a recent revelation, by the way.)
Give the man a break.
Bombs were (apparently) dropping on him when he was only 7 years old.
Vidovic scored first goal for bayern friendly against spurs
Stanisic played as CB in the same match. Hopefully he can play RB instead for the sake of national team.
We have too many defenders playing as CBs. Only left with juranovic. Gvardiol natural position is still CB.
Donna couldn’t get the gold but still a great achievement to get silver.
I wonder who our next prospects are, is Sandra Perkovic still good? It looks like the handball team isnt doing so good, water polo doing quite well tho..
Zheng was just too good.
Sandra got married and I think her surname is now Elakovic. She will do well to get a medal. In the qualifying she was second with a throw that was 4 meters less than the first placed American. She has lost a lot of weight and does not have the bulk to throw 68 or 69 meters anymore.
Watched all our Handball matches, and we will need a miracle to get a medal. Our defence has been terrible and we are just too slow against fast tempo teams. Need to win against Spain tonight to make the Quater Final. We can beat Spain ? but anything beyond that would be a huge surprise.
Water polo team played last night and beat Greece 14 – 13. Prior to the match starting when I saw that the match officials were from Serbia and Spain, I said to my family we are in trouble. We were leading 12 – 10 in the last quarter when the Serbian ref excluded one of our players for brutality i.e. hitting an opponent deliberately in the face. TV reply showed that it was accidental, however the decision was not overruled by the Serbian ref and we had to play 4 minutes a player down during which Greece equalised, however we were able to come back and win.
We have qualified for the Quatre Final with one group match remaining against USA. Depending on the result and results in the other group our QF opponents look like being one from Hungary, Serbia or Australia.
Awesome update MART!!
Thank you
Sandra Perković (Elkasević), Tin Srbić, Aurel Benović are all in the Final round for their events and are medal candidates.
Our Waterpolo team is a top-3 team (with Spain and Italy) so they’ll be disappointed to not medal.
Lena Stojković (taekwondo) should be another gold medal candidate, as she’s been clean sweeping golds at every tournament leading up to the Olympics.
We also have a guy (Šapina) who may be a taekwondo medal candidate as well.
Croatia sitting at 16th in medals placing
Solid
You would think we would have more swimmers
Tall and strong
Well we had Franko Grgić who was an elite prospect… But he’s from Split, so his Dalmatinska fjaka took over I guess.
In other news Erlic has transferred to Bologna. They finished fifth last season so this is probably a decent move for him. With Pongracic now playing at Fiorentina and Sutalo determined to prove himself at Ajax, we might actually be able to continue employing the Gvardiol LB experiment in the upcoming NL games.
It’s great that we have several CBs at decent Serie A clubs (especially when it comes to injuries and form)…but I wouldn’t hinge our future tournament success on these guys.
They’re good for depth but in terms of taking that next step …we need to start looking at building a future CB pairing of Vušković/Gvardiol.
If Vušković is already playing first team football at Westerlo (and continuing to score goals like he did today) then call him up and bring him slowly off the bench for some late minutes.
He’ll be 19 by World Cup 2026 and probably ready, just like how Gvardiol was ready for the 2022 World Cup at age 20. Other top teams regularly field 19 year old talent. Not sure why we can’t do the same.
I would love for us to field a young team at that World Cup with guys like Sucic, Baturina, Vuskovic, Gvardiol, Stanisic (and maybe a young winger/striker that comes up over the next two years) playing key roles for us. Then add in a handful of vets around them like Livakovic, Kovacic, and maybe Modric or Krama.
My guess is Dalić won’t even entertain this idea for another 2 or 3 years, but he might be fired by 2026 so hopefully our next coach is more forward thinking.
Wait I didn’t know vuskovic transferred?
I’m gonna say vuskovic brothers in the middle and gvardi on the left
I’ve been saying it for a while now
And I’m gonna stick with it
I forgot about Mario Vuskovic.
His ban will be lifted on November 14th, so we’ll get to see how good of a player he is with all that time lost (he’s still 21 turning 22 though).
Hopefully he uses better masking agents this time, haha.
I hope he juiced it the whole time.I’m sure he was playing somewhere
I know it’s not high level
But I always say better that then a bum knee like the other young guys
I think he has potential still
Dalic is for sure done after 2026
Luka will stay as we all know and they will leave together
Kova will stay after
Krama may retire too
Will Perisic stay till 26?
I wish we would have made the olympics to get some more exposure to the young guys
Dalic is going to continue with Broz, Modric, Perisic, and Krama until something bad happens.
Finishing with 2 points in a tournament is very bad.
Brushing it off and stubbornly moving forward with guys who are visibly out of form (Perisic, Broz) and putting a heavy reliance on older guys who should be fringe starters now (Modric, Krama) is a recipe for disaster in two years time.
Need to integrate young guys immediately. Keep Modric and Krama in the team of course, but limit their time. Broz and Perisic off the bench at best.
Hopefully Vuskovic devlops into a world-beater, I’m sure we’ll be seeing him for the repka by WC2026. Until we can integrate him, Pong/Sutalo/Erlic will be solid options.
Unfortunately I don’t have much hope for Mario though. The kid had a bright future but missing as much football as he has, at his age, is not insignificant.
What I really want to see taken care of is the Brozovic situation. The guy had a torrid Euro campaign; I think Markus mentioned he was averaging 17 duels a game in Qatar but didn’t even manage half that across both Spain and Albania games. Not that stats are needed to see how poor he was. It’s evident that Saudi has taken the wind out of his sails so the way I see it, either he recovers some form or he’s a liability.
Perišić has completely lost what made him special too.
We really need to stop starting him.
He’s already 35, so I’m not sure what the idea is to keep playing him if we’re essentially building a team for WC2026.
Are we really planning to rely on a 37 year old Hajduk backup with a blown ACL?
Needs to be on the bench at best.
https://x.com/croatiafooty/status/1819744673860083850?s=46&t=tqKhM4idNWs96tKnQSyglQ
Well done to the Sinkovic brothers! They started the race 4th/5th and worked their way to 1st at the end. Great finish.