Don’t look now, but Croatia’s favorite villain from the World Cup is on a hot streak. Nikola Kalinić scored his third goal in his last four matches (all competitions) in Atletico Madrid’s 3-2 victory over Real Valladolid. Atletico currently sit competitively in third place and will be a force to reckon with doen the La Liga final stretch. Kalinić is playing well and Croatia could use another veteran striker on their roster. Does manager Zlatko Dalić believe in second chances?
Kalinić Goal
Croatia captain Luka Modrić showed off his brand new Ballon d’Or trophy in front of the Bernabeu faithful in before Real Madrid’s 1-0 victory over Rayo Vallecano. Modrić played 90 minutes, coming off in injury time, to a grand applause. Real Madrid remain five points behind leaders Barcelona in La Liga.
In Germany, a big congratulations goes out to Andrej Kramarić, whose 9-game scoring streak came to an end this weekend. He was 90 minutes short of hitting double digits but it wasn’t meant to be as Hoffenheim played out a scoreless draw against second-place Borussia Monchengladbach on Saturday.
Josip Brekalo scored an injury time insurance goal for Wolfsburg in a 2-0 victory over Nurnburg Friday night. The kid keeps impressing in Germany.
2 guys not mentioned are the 2Z’s …zizic and zubac.
Both seem to have fallen out of favor due to the small ball phenomenon and teams love affair with the 3.
Bill Walton has no faith in ZU though he shocked me his rookie year with some very good outings.last year he seemed to regress and this year almost no run,and only in blow outs
Zizic has a very high shot% and a good rebounder but again he’s an old school big man who seems to fallen out of favor with his coach
Bender and not so super Mario have really disappointed me they seemed to pass the eye test pre draft and many were filled by their 3 point shooting
They could both learn a thing or 2 from Bojan or Dario.
2 guys who are less athletic but have the heart and smarts to succeed with the big boys .
Jordan was never cut from his high school basketball team. That is a made up story which caught on.
Hezonja and Bender, its the same story, they came over too soon. They should have developed in Europe, like Saric. What a shame.
It’s hard to believe michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team and babe Ruth was 3rd all time hitter but also held a record holding strikeout stat.Maybe hezonja will improve,na maybe not but least he’s Makin 6.5mil a year.
Agree with you soul that it’s tough watching doncic and thinking about hezonja. Ultimately, hezonja is the much better athlete by conventional standards. Although, as we learn more about how athleticism goes beyond the easy to see things like jumping high and running fast, the sneaky athleticism of doncic is being more appreciated. But the bottom line is doncic and even a guy like saric sees and thinks the game in a way hezonja just has never been able to.
@ The truth
I’ve always found your basketball commentary to be consistently coherent.
Hezonja had a breakaway dunk that GF tried to run down.
Kukoč in ‘91 went down the lane in the half court set and yoked on Alonzo Mourning’s neck.
Hezonja fronted like he is a baller is sad.
Watching Dončić play juxtapose to Hezonja is just depressing.
Why Serb via Slovenia can produce legit NBA lead guards and we can’t even produce a quality Euro level lead guard?
Bogdanovic pacers and hezonja Knicks face off. Talk about two guys going opposite directions
Bogdanovic is quietly having his best season proving to be a serious nba player. 17 pts ppg on 49 percent from three and keeping Indiana chugging along while oladipo was hurt
Meanwhile, hezonja has essentially forgotten how to play basketball, completely unable to score or shoot and claiming its cause he’s focused on other things like defense. His play has been so bad that it’s lead to conspiracy theories that he has secret pictures of coach fizdale and that’s why he had him in the starting line up
Undoubtedly the highlight of his season was the dunk on the Greek freak and the stepover, which created such humour and Buzz because it’s soooooo hezonja to be terrible but act really good
I wonder if new york night life is getting to him and forcing his serious regression
Enough with this Kalinic talk. He is a quitter for the national team. No need for Dalic ever to call him.
modric with ballon on field pre-game.
played great.
mandzukic draws the foul for the pk in the 1-0 win.
(then has his gol ruled off because of same ronaldo who scored the pk he drew.)
Zoran Mamic brings Al Ain to Club World Cup semis vs River Plate
Do we need kalinic on this update?