Luka Modrić showed up big Tuesday night in Real Madrid’s 2-1 Champions League victory over Braga. He played the full match and was awarded MOTM honors from FOTMOB with an 8.2 rating. He didn’t make it to the score sheet but he did supply the following stats. Not too shabby after a disastrous international break.
Both Roko Šimić and Luka Sučić got the start for Red Bull Salzburg Tuesday night in a 2-1 loss to Inter Milan. Šimić should have bagged a goal following a near breakaway but got caught by the last defender and decided to pull back the attack. However, the 20 year-old Croatian striker did supply a “hockey assist” on Salzburg’s equalizing goal in the 57th minute. He was cool, calm, and composed for the pass. Great to see both Šimić and Sučić gets starts in CL vs. Inter Milan.
Despite other guys not being in form in October
These will be the X factor
If Ivanušec and course our wing backs get going
Sosa and JJ really have that ability to change our game
This will be the big thing
It’s Ivanušec chance to potentially take the thrown from Perisic on that side.
He just looks a lot hungrier when he’s played for us as of late
I thought there were comments he had some sort of loss of confidence and went to see a psychiatrist or something. Shows me he is really darn serious about his life and game
The guys will come out to play in November im sure of it
It’s the cardiac Croatians. Come on guys, we knew better then to think we would qualify with games in hand and cruise in
Davor why you always so negative man? Every post you’re beating players down and only identifying weaknesses
Because he’s an Elongelical and his Tesla stock is tanking! Right Renato?
Never listen to a Christofascist .
Croatia dropped to 10th place ranking, with last two defeats. Still in the top 10, but no room to move down.
Ranking as 10th best team in the world feels like a huge compliment after the last 2 games.
True. We deserve to drop…but not below 10th.
The 11th-15th placed teams are USA, Mexico, Morrocco, Switzerland.
We’re better than all of them despite these two bad losses.
I definitely believe that we belong among the top 10 in the world. My point was more that we looked like a top 100 in the last few games.
For sure
Belgium will lose 4 in a row and drop 1 spot and still stay in the top 5, never quite understood yhat especially after we beat them, yet we’re still behind.
Oh ok
Belgium is such a weird outlier.
Seems like nothing they do can knock them out of the top-5
Seems to be
Dalic is an absolutely shit manager!
He won’t dare to use this formation.
……………… R Simic ………. Ljubičić ………………
Ivanusec………….. Pasalic …………Juranovic
………………Lv Mayer………Lk Modric……………..
……….Gvardiol…..Vušković…..Stanisic………
…………………….….. Livakovic ………………………..
This is when we are going to attack –
the formation is quite formidable –
…………… R Simic ………… Ljubičić ………………
Gvardiol…………..Pasalic……………Juranovic
…….. Ivanusec….Modric….Lv Majer .…..……
………..…..Vušković..……Stanisic…..…………….
…………………….…. Livakovic ……..…………………..
Dalic is a low-tier tactician and absolute shit
He will never figure out this masterpiece line!
Who allowed you to post here. Get lost
………………you sound tight like this girl………………….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoDHTVV_RYs
* tight <– small size of your brain
Everyone needs to chill out when it comes to Kova. He is finding his form post injury. The dude just played 90 mins for one of the top teams in Europe. He will need another game or two to find his form. Earlier in qualifying he was one of our best players. Relax with the doom and gloom.
He’s got about four weeks to get back into form. Hopefully he keeps getting minutes (like he did a few days ago) and he should get back to form.
Having an in-form Ivanusec, Petkovic, and Kovacic will be important for the next round of games.
Don’t want to rely on a bunch of random experimental callups.
I’m nervous about Meljnak making a return to the team.
Kova find form? You are delusional, he’s the lateral and back pass master that loses the ball when he goes for a dribble, catastrophically misses penalties and hardly ever scores. Way overrated.
Kova’s player rating
AM: Mateo Kovacic – 5/10 – Didn’t seem to do a lot that made an actual difference.
There is no way Broz, Modric or Kova would allow Dalic to sub them out before 90mins. The 3 midgets would attack him in the dressing room.
Great news regarding Ivanusec. Big upgrade at LW given his play this year. I think Dalic will sit Kova next game unless he heats up. I fully expect to see 2-3 of our younger players get shots. Wouldn’t be surprise to see Brekalo, Musa and Vlasic relegated to the injury call up list. Watching Simic play U21 games in the past, reminded me of a younger and more skilled Mandza. I think he has that potential and as mentioned before he will be a regular for us in the future. Being 20 it’s hard to see him make a difference given our typical late bloomer players.
There were rumblings of Rakitic maybe getting a call up. Would love to see it as he would provide a little of everything we lacked in those last two games. Apparently he’s been playing really well as of late.
We need our best regardless of age….
A Rakitić callup to replace Kovačić in the lineup would be pretty embarrassing for ol’ Kova.
Raketa is playing well though, but the moron shouldn’t have retired so early.
So much for Modric Endorsement, that Kovacic was the future of the team. I guess that is true, but what can of future is it going to be.
Modrić was just saying that to be nice. I don’t think anyone seriously considers Kovačić to actually ever lead the team.
He’s a solid central midfielder (when in form) but not someone that could change the game by himself or anything like that.
We will need to hope that one of Baturina, Sučić, or some other talent becomes that.
I guess he’ll always have that Serbia victory 2-0 where he played so well for us in 2013, if nothing else.
Kova had a nice hockey assist on the second goal
Kova looking out of form vs YB. Positioning poor and always seems to be hiding behind two or three opposing players
Luka Ivanušec is on the substitute list for Feyenoord today. I hope that means he’s ready for a comeback.
Subbed on in the 78th minute with Feyenoord up 3-0
Not much time to do anything, but he looked lively. Most importantly, he didn’t seem to have any issues with his ankle.
This is good.
He’s been amazing in all of 2023 so far.
We’re 3.5 weeks away from our game against Latvia, so it’s good that he’s back on the field and will get into game shape by then.
Our left side was awful offensively.
Replacing Brekalo with Ivanusec, and Barisic with Sosa will make a huge difference offensively.
in this era of the shit manager
we know as Dalic – fucking shit
who relies on a stroke of luck,
there is no guarantee for our future!
it is like rickety bridges…
depending on which plank you step on
the floor could fall out from beneath you.
why are we crossing that kind of bridge?!
The team lost twice in 30 matches until very recently and controlled a majority of possession in nearly all of those matches. I’d day that’s pretty solid. What was rickety was the players’ concentration and motivation in the last two matches because they didn’t take their opponents seriously enough or turn on the desire to win until too late.
We just had too many injuries which was 80% of the problem. The other 20% was Dalic launching his new restaurant business. He wasn’t as focused.
Opening a company, let alone a restaurant in Croatia isn’t as easy as a few clicks online. I migrated my UK company to Croatia 4 years ago and it was over 4 weeks of bullshit required with about 30 signatures in between in different buildings with the help of accountants and lawyers.
Dalic is good at finding a working starting eleven…but he gets lazy and relies to heavily on it.
This same thing happened in the runup to the Euro2020, where he was just going to roll out our 2018 World Cup team…then panicked and started introducing new players late into the tournament (like Juranovic, Gvardiol, Ivanusec, Budimir, Orsic, etc.).
He’s been doing the same thing this past year by overplaying Modric, Broz, Perisic, Kova, and Krama.
You can’t just keep giving these guys the full 90 minutes, then when they get injured or if any are out of form…you panic and now expect Musa, Beljo (or whoever the new callups will be in November) to bail you out after never integrating them at all earlier.
And Susic provided the long ball to Simic for the “hockey assist”. These two are a must for the NT. Especially Susic. Pure class. If he stays healthy he’s our next great.
Simic had a poor game overall.
Explain. He ran a ton, he had great touches (one poor thatI can remember), had great control. Always challenges for 50 50 headers and wins most of the time. When they took him out salzburg created nothing up front.
Running a ton doesn’t mean he had a great game. It means his team was chasing.
Agree. that’s why i said touches, control and winning 50 50 balls as well. All this together and he had a decent game.
It’s a good sign to see him get an assist, despite the poor play.
Perišić has this trait, where he could play poorly all game, yet still end up with a goal or assist. Great example is the Japan game.
So if this is what a bad game looks like for Šimić, then it’s great news.
And the young man just turned 20 last month
I’m ok with this
He is 5 yeats younger then the guy we just started and are hoping will continue to improve
We may have to wait some more time as he isn’t like a certain Norwegian
But where was Perišić, luka, raketa and mandzo right at 20
Even gvardi is basically two years older then him
This is huge development time for the young man
And I’m certainly glad he has sucic with him. Hopefully they create a serious bond that can transfer to the repka one day in the near future
If memory serves me right. Perisic was quiet in that England semi final till that goal no? Then basically grabbed that Match by the balls
Yes. Same situation.
whole lot of “ifs”
We’ll get a written guarantee for you that a player will pan out a certain way, lol.
Great to see the young 🇭🇷 players doing well and the old guys doing what they do best. This should be a exciting November. I think we’ll be seeing some new faces on the NT.