Ivica Olić looks to be peaking just at the right time- with his skills and his state of mind. As you’ll see in this clip, Olić isn’t taking crap from anyone; not even in a friendly.
Hamburg and Hoffenheim played a club friendly on Wednesday, January 18th as the BundesLiga remained on winter break. Hamburg ultimately won the match 2-0, but not before Olić ‘punked’ M.C. Eduardo of Hoffenheim.
This is what I want to see from Olić. Fire, passion and drive. I’ll take him on the first team right now with no hesitation. Besides scoring like crazy for Hamburg and knowing he’ll be moving to German giants, Bayern Munich, at the end of the season; Olić seems to be in ‘the zone’ with the right state of mind. He gouged Eduardo’s (no relation) eyes for goodness sakes. His left hook can use some work though.
For those of you Tennis fans, Ante and I will be posting the latest from the Australian Open here:
Croatians Down Under
This post will be updated almost daily up until the last Croat.
OLIC SUSPENDED 5 GAMES
Well, it turns out Ivica Olic will miss the next 3 friendlies and next Friday’s Bundesliga match against Bayern Munich after receiving a two-match ban as a result of a fight with Carlos Eduardo on January 14th.
hmmm… This means that Ivica Olic will be almost a month out of action before the February 11th friendly at Bucharest to face Romania.
Personally, I would have him come off the bench and give Rukavina or Bilic the start with Petric.
croatiafan:
funny you should say that…it’s actually denis’ turn to do Croatians Around Europe….he’s lagging i know but we’re aware of everything you mentioned plus another little incident in the French Ligue.
Kranjcar will be fine, just a little bump.
Talk to all of you soon and nice heads up!
oh yes, but to be honest i think it was just a kick on the ankle. it happened when he got caught in possession. shouldn’t be serious. he doesn’t look 100% right just yet. When he hit that shot near the end he didn’t really go for it and felt his leg straight after. I think he’s working his way back to form. Modric was quiet for most of that match until the end. Corluka is getting better and better though.
Anyone know the status of Kranjcar? he left the tottenham game with an injury at the end
WHY IS PRANJIC AND BABIC NOT MOVING? DON’T UNDERSTAND. PLAYERS DON’T SEEM TO BE TRANSFERING. IT IS PROBABLY THANKS TO THE OVER INFLATED PRICES. LOTS OF GOOD PLAYERS NOT GETTING TO MOVE DUE TO HIGH FEES … ASHAVIN, JOVANOVIC, PRANJIC TO NAME JUST A FEW.
Rukavina scored again.. Great yeah give him a call up in place of Kalinic. I know Kalinic outscored him every year in HNL1 but Rukavina can play mid. If Ilicevic can be called up definitely Rukavina can. Ante/Denis your a bit slow on the news this week. Pranjic scored for Heerenveen as well. Kranjcar and Modric played against each other. Widely regarded from Ratings than Niko was better. Also Cvitanich red carded days after FIFA banned him. Hajduk signed Vejic and Dinamo sacked Drpic despite having no defenders at the club. I agree with your team Adrien. Looks cool to me!
Agreed. I’d put Rukavina ahead of Bilic in the pecking order.
Also, our lack of real talent in the left-back position and our richness in midfield makes me believe we should return to a 3-5-2 formation with Pranjic and Srna as wing-backs. Something like this:
———–Olic—Petric———–
___________(Rukavina)_________
—–Kranjcar———Modric——-
____(Rakitic)_____________________
Pranjic——–Juric———–Srna
__________(Vukojevic)__________
——Simunic———Corluka——
————-Krizanac————–
————-Pletikosa————-
I also think Galinovic deserves a chance in goal. He is playing CL football after all
Rukavina scored again…wouldnt mind him playing for Croatia
I dont think Roberts elbow was intentional.
We were 1-0 down and when I saw him running up for that header I was thinking “good job Robert…trying to pump up the team getting the ball forward” but then it all went wrong and Cole was bleeding. I think Kovac was very unlucky!
@ Croat
I’ll believe it when i see it. they have been saying “this is the week he comes back” since before Christmas.
i heard Eduardo da silva is coming back next week or after that.
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/112790-eduardo-da-silva-the-croatians-comeback-crusade
hot headed like ante. He did the open handed strike because he wanted to humiliate him (not knock him out) and judging by the look on eduardo’s face it worked.
But what is it with short people and eye gouging?
OH Cmon mate lets not be naive. Robert did it in a sneaky way, focused 100% on the ball and hit Cole down below. That elbow was very straight and hit Cole pretty hard. I 100% agree he wouldn’t have been red carded if there wasn’t blood. Entirely agree on that. However the red mist definitely descended once Pranjic wacked the ball against his back and Cole was the guy he was arguing with earlier. He knew what he was doing. Robert Kovac is definitely capable of that. If it was another player i would have said accidental but with Robert Kovac i think i am not sure that was accident. I remember maligning the ref all match and then i saw that and couldn’t argue. To be honest if it wasn’t intentional it was a cracking hit. Klitchko couldn’t have done it much better. Is no big deal anyway as Robert’s time is up. Is better he goes out gracefully before he starts to look really off the pace. His red card was no bad thing.
croatiafan:::
No way Robert Kovac’s elbow was intentional; he never swung it. He just went up with it, which you can’t do but he still caught Cole. I completely disagrred with the red vs. England. The ref would have never gave Robert a yellow, never less a red, if he never saw Cole bleeding. It would have just been a regular foul.
As for Olic, I’d like to see him more aggresive with defenders. He can gain a little more respect that way which can go a long way.
@Alex
Guess i should have just said rage, he really can’t up his intensity to another level for the NT. It would be humanly impossible.
Well to be honest we don’t want Olic doing this for us as obviously he’ll get red carded. This is a bit out of character. I think you can tell from this and Olic’s pushing and slapping that he doesn’t get into many fights. I think people like Vukojevic, Niko Kovac, Srna and Simunic might have given a lot worse to the Hoffenheim player. As for Robert Kovac lets just say that was totally deliberate against England. I don’t think Robert cared if he even took Coles head off in that moment. I think gouging is probably the height of Olic’s agression. In his defence he is probably the most fouled player in our team and takes some nasty looking challenges at times and every situation he does nothing. I’d prefer Olic’s normal behaviour to be honest as i’ve seen Klasnic take a kick at players a few times when they are on the ground and worried if the ref saw it and its not really a good thing to do. My opinion regards Olic is that he is always giving 100% even in a friendly so i don;t talk about him much. He’ll always do what he normally does, whereas Petric goes from world class to mediocre and back to world class again so Petric is prob the guy who needs a good coach at times.
Ivica,
You want Olic to bring more “passion” to the NT?!? You can’t be serious…
From what I saw, Olic bitch-slapped “Carlos-Eduardo”, then tried to gauge his eyes out. While I used to be a big Olic hater, within this past year he’s just gone from strength to strength. He’s got my respect…(still, he really does need to work on his left hook)
I just got off the phone with Ivica Olic. It turns out the night before he was watching videos of Cro Cop and MMA.
On a different note, Olic has always shown heart and passion for the vatreni every time he steps onto the field. When was the last time you saw Olic walking up and down the pitch? His problem isn’t lack of passion or heart, his problem is trying to hard and not coming through in pressure situations.
Did they both get reds?
He should have punched him
Marko the guy also pushed ivica and kept hitting him for no reason
Going for the face A+ execution the guy tried to slap him lol.
all i heard is that he will miss next match because of red card thats it
I would bet against a suspension or penalty because the scuffle ended peacefully and both players apologized to each other the next day.
But keep it up Ivica!!
Bravo Ivica! Now bring that rage and passion to your NT game. Just don’t get a red card. Clearly Eduardo swung at Ivica first. Will there be any penalty for Olic when the regular season starts up again from winter break?
WOO OLIC ive never seen him like this before but i would of done the same thing because that guy hit him first and if you read the HNS website Olic said that that guy Carlos kept hitting him pushing during the match and when the fight began Olic also said that he had to defend him self becuase carlos hit him first. Martin Jol also said that he would of done the same thing hit him back because he doesnt take any crap from anyone