Dinamo put on a scoring clinic against a woefully bad Osijek at Maksimir Stadium in Zagreb on Sunday, winning 5-0 with four different players scoring a goal.
The scoring spectacle started with Dinamo’s leading goal scorer, Duje Čop. Čop took advantage of a blunderous defensive error from Saša Novaković and placed the ball just out of reach of Zvonimir Mikulić.
Osijek entered the game with a bunker-down mind set, and despite the early goal, was successful for a large period of time until the start of the second half where Dinamo opened the flood gates.
Jeremy Travel scored his first goal in a Dinamo jersey and had his best performance with the club, keeping in mind he has just returned from injury he sustained early last season. The goal came in the 51st minute off a corner kick that Travel headed in on a high arch.
Soudani scored a well deserved goal two minutes later to make it 3-0. Soudani hit the crossbar earlier in the match which would have been the goal of the game, but redeemed himself with a gem of a goal in the 53rd minute.
Junior Fernandes also is returning from injury and was subbed in the game in the 61st minute. It took only seconds of being on the field for Fernandes to find the back of the net with a header of his own to make it 4-0
Soudani doubled his scoring count in the 70th minute to finish odd the thumping against Osijek.
Hajduk Split played to a thrilling draw against NK Lokomotiva at Poljud, ending in a 2-2 draw.
Lokomotiva scored first with a goal from Mirko Marić in the 28th minute and was followed by Domagoj Pavačić in the 61st minute to put the Lokosi up by two.
But Igor Tudor’s team was too resilient for the Zagreb club and made sure they played all 90 minutes of the match.
Elvir Maloku scored his first goal as a member of Hajduk with his 85th minute effort. But it was the Ukrainian Artem Milevskiy, who also scored his first goal for Hajduk, tied the match in the 89th minute to salvage a point.
“That second half was better, there was a greater desire than in the first half,
and football is played until the 90th minute,” Tudor said after the match.
Tudor refused to name names, but implied that he was very upset by several players, stating that they did not play with the intesity that he desired. He claims that it reflects poorly on him and it’s “his head on a plate, not theirs.”
HNK Rijkea played to a less-than-thrilling draw against visitors, RNK Split, with the match ending 1-1.
Rijeka is trying to keep pace with Dinamo, but is not helping their cause dropping points at home.
Split took the lead in the 44th minute with Ivan Ibrik’s first goal of the season. But Andrej Kramarić proved once again why he may be the most prolific scorer in the league and tied the match in the 55th minute.
Kramarić has played the best football of his career in 2014. Kramarić’s goal against Split was his 15 of the 1.HNL season, having played only 11 matches.
Kramarić most recently scored a hat trick in Rijeka’s Europa League match, sending his stock through the roof. He has recently been grabbing the interest of clubs such as Athletico Madrid, AC and Inter Milan, and even German powerhouses such as Borussa Dortmond.
“Of course I’m glad to hear of such an interest, they are big clubs, but Serie A and the Premier League is full of great individuals. Do I want to sign for one of these clubs in January? Anything is possible,” Kramarić said. “In the future I would love to play for a top European club that plays attacking football, but this moment, I focused only on the success of Rijeka.”
Kramarić is currently in fifth place for the Golden Boot award for European play.
NK Zagreb won big when they welcomed Zadar to Krajčevićeva. After the loss to stadium “roommates” Lokomotiva, Zagreb was eager to get a win in their home.
Defender, Bruno Boban, scored two goals on the night for Zagreb. Both goals came within 10 minutes of each other, and proved to be more than enough to beat Zadar.
Josip Jurendić scored a penalty to seal the 3-0 over the weekend.
NK Istra 1961 did the bare minimum they needed to do to defeat last-place Slaven Belupo. Ivan Horvat scored in only the second minute of the game, and held the lead for the remaining 88 minutes.
It would make sense for Lovren. The city of Liverpool is very open minded.
If anyone has Lovren or Rakitic’s email please forward this to them.
http://www.clmagazine.org/article/index/id/OTI2Mw/
Lovren needs to hop out of the ormar… it’s 2014, Dejane… it’s ok buddy
Lovren gonna Lovren.
Full highlights including the Lovren goal:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x28tbqo_liverpool-vs-swansea-2-1-full-highlights-28-10-2014-capital-one-cup-hd_sport
…and yes, he was completely at fault for the goal Liverpool conceded.
Lovren scored the injury time winner over Swansea today
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYa8ShGgEPs
Where’s the Tuesday funnies? I found a better one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A38fzu79WcI
Found a video of Mama Istina drunk in Dubroivnik.
Austria’s league is getting stronger and won’t go down. Their youth schools are good (just ask Kovačić, Ćorić, and Roguljić).
However, countries like Czech, Israel, and Romania seem to be on a decline. Dinamo handled the 2nd and 3rd placed teams from Romania pretty easily. RNK Split took down Israel’s 2nd best team before they beat Chornomorets.
Our league is ranked 17th right now, which is good considering our small population and limited revenue streams. However, considering our uncanny youth talent we probably should be in the late teens. Contracting the league to 10 teams was a good move.
My hope is that Rijeka slowly begins to invest more in the team, forcing Dinamo to match it as well. I hope Tudor stays on at Hajduk and they continue rebuilding and not go back to their revolving door of coaches. Hopefully someone like a Volpi invests in them or another team with a solid fan base (like Osijek) so we can have a trio of decent teams. Then we bring back the original Varteks into the first league and we’ve got a good league.
“if Dinamo and Rijeka are those two (with one of them challenging for Champions League every year), and a couple of the remaining teams challenge for Europa play, then it’s not a bad league after all (especially considering the average age is probably 21).”
Agreed. If we could continue progress, gain coefficient points and get to 15th in the UEFA rankings ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_coefficient#Current_ranking ) we would have two teams in CL and 3 in EL and could really be in business.
But we are a long way’s away from that…. If we were to get to 15 or above, no more bullshit seasons in Europe where all our teams lay an egg. Dinamo needs to get back to the CL, Rijeka continuing to make EL, Hajduk gets it act together and gets back into the EL Groups and countries like Romania, Austria, Czech Republic have to have their teams do shitty in Europe…. tons of what if’s
Like almost all leagues in Europe, I don’t ever expect there to be parity among teams in the HNL.
La Liga us almost always a battle between Barcelona and Real, but the league is still great to watch.
if Dinamo and Rijeka are those two (with one of them challenging for Champions League every year), and a couple of the remaining teams challenge for Europa play, then it’s not a bad league after all (especially considering the average age is probably 21).
When second place is just as good as first place, it makes the two most important matches for both Italy and Croatia the away games to Bulgaria and Norway – not really against each other.
On top of sending a B squad to face Argentina, Croatia should send a B squad of coaches to London as well. It must bother the fuck out of Kovac to leave his guys in Zagreb for several days (wasted) pretending to coach this group while daydreaming about Italy.
Suker is an idiot.
I think we have gotten better… I remember clear as day Rijeka losing the away leg vs. Differdange a few years back. There team was literally a bunch of part time players… Made me want to vomit. I think we’re in a good position now, but we just need to be sending one of our teams to the CL Groups on a regular basis and not embarrassing themselves in the process….
http://www.tportal.hr/ResourceManager/GetImage.aspx?imgId=295534&width=750&height=550
Come to think of it… It’s been exactly 10 years since Hajduk were humiliated 8:0 by Debrecen for Europa qualifying.
Even in Hajduk’s current state (where they are still relying on teenagers) they would never lose to a Hungarian team like that. Heck, even Hajduk this year has a decent run at Europa and did very well against Dnipro.
I agree with both of you. Dinamo is still going to run away with this, though I do hope Rijeka can do what they can to make it interesting, but this has been one of the best seasons for Croatian teams in Europe as far as I can remember.
There could be some drama as to who will battle it out for the final Europe spot, and the Cup might get interesting in the later rounds, but the league is improving. Also, this is the first year I’ve been covering this where I haven’t heard of a team struggling to pay players. It’s still early, I know, but that’s good news so far.
Appreciate you guys reading and liking this. Definitely helps me keep this up every week. And you want next week’s fixtures in the report? You got it.
Sorry, I meant ‘competitive’ as a league, relative to other leagues in Europe.
The HNL is far from good, but a LOT better than they were 10 years ago.
You’d never see us even coming close to having two teams qualifying for Europa, let alone seeing a team like RNK SPLIT take out Chornomorets and almost do the same to Torino.
Also, our top half of our teams are actually paying players on time! Who’d have thought!
When I think competitive, I think there will be a race for the title or maybe some drama around who goes to Europe… but we just won’t see that this year, nor have we seen that the last few years…. Everyone started sucking each others dicks once we moved to a Liga 10 format, but it’s the same bullshit…. Only difference is you don’t have traditional 2. HNL teams rounding out the Prva Liga and won’t have a scoreline like this:
Dinamo 12 – Lucko 1
Location: Stadion Maksimir
Attendance: 17
@ IvicA
How has the league become more competitive? The only major change in the last 2-3 years is that Rijeka has overtaken Hajduk as the 2nd best team in the league. Aside from that, we can plan that Dinamo will win the league by 10-15 points over Rijeka and Hajduk will be 5-10 points behind Rijeka rounding up the top 3. And then you have your mid table teams like Loko and RNK staying in the hunt for 3rd.
But there won’t be a tight race for the title, small chance Hajduk really challenges Rijeka for second, but those two will be 10-15 points clear of Loko/RNK/etc.
Yea the HNL reports are one of the best things about this site.
The league has become more competitive too. Hopefully the trend continues.
Love these reports!
Keep it up.
How about we include next weeks fixtures to the report…thanks.