All three Croatian clubs will head into their return leg next week even keel after Thursday night’s draws. Rijeka is currently in the third round of Europa League qualifying while Hajduk and Osijek are battling it out in Conference League qualifying.
Hajduk faced off against MFK Ružomberok in Slovakia with the match ending 0-0. Hajduk only had one shot on goal with Rakitić and Perišić coming off the bench in the 2nd half. The Poljud crowd is expected to be sold out next week in Split for the return leg. In Europa League qualifying, Rijeka played Swedish side Elfsborg from Rujevica. Rijeka will be disappointed in the 1-1 draw at home as Elfsborg played the last 30 minutes of the match with only 10 men.
Osijek hosted Zira FK from Azerbaijan with the match ending 1-1 at Opus Arena. Matković opened up the scoring in the 36th minute of play but Osijek would disappointedly concede a 96′ penalty to Zira. Dinamo will not enter Europe until the week of August 20th. They will face the winner of Ludogorets/Qarabag in the Champions League playoff round. Winner will play amongst Europe’s top-36 clubs in the Champions League “league phase” this season. The new “group stage” format now has 36 sides, up four from previous years. Traditional group stage play will no longer take place as each team will play eight games against different opponents, but all 36 teams will be ranked in a joint group.
Hey Maminjo,
Do you still think it is a good idea for former National team players to return to the HNL when they are at the end of their careers after what is happening with Perisic?
Yes of course.
Why wouldn’t it be a good idea?
And we complain about the “special player” in basketball national team
What are the rules in Waterpolo, if any ?
As a reminder Josip Vrlic represented BRAZIL at 2016 Rio games
But then able to just switch back to Croatia – for the fun of it ?
After he retires from Croatia – can he flip-flop back to Brazil – to keep playing into his 40s (he’s 38 now)
Ironically – Croatia had a 38 y.o. and two 37 y.o. – which took them to a final (terrible example for Dalic to see – as he’s just going to keep picking old vs. young blood…)
Poor performance by our water polo team, Serbia just too good winning 13 – 11.
Three consecutive gold medals at Olympics for them, which is incredible.
We were never able to peg them back after a poor start in the first quarter when they went up 5 – 2.
Still a silver at Olympics, not a bad effort this year after winning the world championship and runners up at the European championship.
Not looking good in water polo, losing 11 – 8 with a quarter left.
Had a bad start lost the first quarter 5 – 2.
That 13th Serb goal – sums up our game
There were times when if our goalie / defence could have come up with consecutive blocks (instead of letting in really soft goals) we might have been able to get back to level w/ them
But wasn’t meant to be today
Silver medal nothing to be ashamed of
Our goalie(s) were terrible today
While Serbs were blocking a bunch of our shots and/or we were just taking really low probably shots (or poor decision making e.g. near the end we took a shot – and there were THREE Serb arms up to block the shot – in front of their goalie)
Yes, our defense and goalkeepers were very poor.
Hopefully the Croats picked up the fear in the Serb coach eyes in that time out
Kovačić is our CDM #6!
Mateo Kovacic (7/10):
Deployed in the Rodri role and although he may not be as effective as the Spanish juggernaut, he had a decent enough game and won possession more than anyone else on the pitch.
Some thoughts:
1) What’s up w/ our goalies ? Before he was pulled – he had the identical “deer in the headlights” oozing insecurities in his eyes – as Livakovic did (b4 the Modric pep talk pre WC 2018)
2) If we come back in 2nd half – the turning point will be the coach pulling/changing the goalie – if we do come back – this guy should take over for Dalic on for nogomet (for making a key substitution at a key time)
3) Lastly, fun fact, Croatia is only country where Loren is primarily a boys name (look it up) – so if we ever face any comments in future about “diversity” etc – we should point to this as a data point – i.e. we’re SO open-minded we give our boys a typically “girls” name – and are cool w/ that
Gattuso drops Perisic from the Hajduk squad to face Lokomotiva for disciplinary reasons. We’ll need to wait and find out what he did? Feel really sorry for Perisic but he is struggling for form after the knee surgery, and he is not showing much on the field for Hajduk.
Perisic is at least getting some playing time with Hajduk which is more than can be said for Orsic at Trabzonspor. He is stuck on the bench and getting very little playing time. I cannot see him being recalled for the national team in September or in the foreseeable future by Dalic. There was talk that he might come back to Dinamo on loan ? He needs to find another club quick because I reckon if fit and playing regularly, he can still contribute to the national team.
No need to feel sorry for Perisic. He’s done.
Gattuso knows it. He don’t care what he did in the past for us because he’s not us. Maybe that’s what we need for NT.
Just sayin, Love Perisic but there comes a time.
The writing is on the wall
Have you seen that clip of the news conference where Gatusso says “Hey Filip, quickly, don’t talk too much, than F off”
And Krovinovic is sitting there giggling like it’s a joke ?
It’s not a joke – Gatusso is being serious (as he looked at his watch) – the right response would have been “Yes coach – I’ll be quick”
Not giggling like a school girl
If Gatusso continues down this very good trajectory (of instilling discipline) – Anonymous will have no choice but to give Kalinic credit for making this selection
Honeymoon is over for Gattuso. He suspended Perisic for the 1st game for a disciplinary reason. Hmmmm??
We keep coming short for medals.
Alot of 4th to 8th place finishes.
Could’ve probably broken our 10 medal record if we managed to hit on some of these.
Oh well. It will be worth it if we score gold in water polo tomorrow.
Yeah for sure. I was really bummed about Sapina. He was 5 seconds from the final. Dude nipped him at the end.
I thought Kolak would catch but not to be.
Can’t wait for tomorrow. I’m already jittery lol
Sapina really unlucky, the Iranian dude that beat him went on to win the gold.
Water polo will very close. Serbs were awful at the start of the tournament but have improved and so have we beating Spain and Hungary in the QF and SF respectively.
Yo Dalic
Are u (or at least one of the nose pickers) watching the Community Shield ?
Kovacic in midfield w/ a 19 y.o. O’Reilly (City debut) and 21 y.o. McAfee
If it’s good enough for Pep – should be good enough 4 u
We should use this as a “blueprint” for our upcoming NL matches
i.e. Kovacic w/ 2 young midfielders
Please and thank you
Water polo finals will be Croatia Serbia. Big win against Hungary to take us there.
It was nerve wracking watching this match and it has to be said that we had a bit of luck winning this match. Hungary missed three penalties in the match, two were saved by our goalkeeper and captain Marko Bijac and the third went wide of goal.
Bijac was superb in goal and kept us alive. We went into the final quarter leading 9 – 7 but failed to score any further goals however our defence together with Bijac in goal held out for a meeting with the Serbs in the final.
Poor night for our clubs. Rijeka very disappointing playing against 10 men from the 54 minute and in the end Elfsborg came closest to winning by hitting the post late on. The return leg is being played on artificial surface and Rijeka’s chances are minimal. Looks like no Europa League play off for them and in all likely hood it will be a play off for Rijeka against Olimpija/Sherrif for a spot in the group stages of the Conference League.
Osijek were unlucky to concede late on from the spot, but they are also up against it having to travel away to Zira in Azerbaijan.
Hajduk once again was very poor and although 0 – 0 away is promising I would not discount the Slovaks when they come to Split. Hardly any chances or shots on goal in the match. The only chance fell to the Slovaks in the first half when they missed a sitter.
Not looking good for our UEFA coefficient, it will be up to Dinamo to prop us again.
I believe that the “club coefficient” is now being used instead of the “league coefficient”. That’s why Dinamo are in such a good position for CL qualifying. All of our other teams need to start pulling their own weight in Europe now to get better future qualifying spots.
Club coefficient is used to determine if you are seeded or not and also when you enter the qualifying and yes Dinamo has a high enough coefficient that they go straight into the play-off for Champions League and they were seeded for the draw. This is a huge advantage.
However, the league or country coefficient is important in determining how many of your clubs/teams participate in UEFA comps and which comp.
Currently Croatia is ranked 19th meaning that we have 4 teams in UEFA comps which is probably fair considering the strength of the HNL clubs. However, if we were to improve our ranking below 15, we would probably have 2 clubs in Champions League qualifying, two in Europa League and so on. Our clubs would also have the advantage of joining the various comps at a later stage i.e. third qualifying round or possibly the play-off round.
Unfortunately, I cannot see us improving our national coefficient due to financial constraints. Apart from Dinamo rumored to have a budget close to or above 40 million, all our other clubs struggle financially.
I read somewhere in the media, that you need a budget of around 20 million to regularly make the group stages of Europa and Conference League. Hajduk is probably below 15, Rijeka and Osijek below 10 and the rest well below 5 million.
Thanks for the info. I think all of our teams should be good enough to make it to the conference league, but everyone’s been underperfoming in Europe for years. Hopefully things change this year, and some of our teams actually qualify. I would love to see Dinamo in the CL, but realistically they’re more suited for Europa league, where they actually have a chance to go deep.