One thing is pretty certain before the World Cup semifinals on Tuesday evening (13.12.2022, 8 p.m., live ticker sportschau.de) against Lionel Messi and Co.: The Croatians will not freeze in awe of Argentina. Your announcements not only sound credible, they are also often backed up with actions.
When defender Josip Juranovic was confronted by a journalist with Argentina’s enormous quality after training on Sunday afternoon (December 11, 2022), his answer came quite spontaneously: “We don’t need to be afraid of anyone.” Of course, the right-back derives this certainty from the fact that the World Cup favorites Brazil had been knocked out a round earlier, although this game seemed lost up to the 117th minute.
Resilience and Frustration Tolerance
But Juranovic also sees a fundamental strength of this generation of Croatian players, which makes them more resilient than any other team at this World Cup: “The secret of our success is our cohesion and unity. We not only play like a team, but like a family.”
Juranovic explains why this small country keeps up with the biggest in the world, even though it doesn’t even have as many inhabitants as Berlin and just a quarter of Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires: “We have a great motivation to make our country proud.”
“We always said: It goes on”
The scorer of the very late 1-1 equalizer against Brazil also believes the secret of Croatia’s success is a question of faith. Striker Bruno Petkovic explains: “We’ve gone through two overtime periods lately. We conceded a goal against Brazil at a very difficult time. But we always said: ‘It goes on, we can do it. That self-confidence helps us a lot.’
Croatia celebrates collectively – here after beating Brazil
Boss Luka Modric also emphasized after the Brazil coup: “We were almost defeated, everyone declared us dead. But we have shown that we never give up, that our faith is enormous.”
First the work, then the success
Perhaps there is also an explanation: Unlike teams that have since been eliminated, such as Spain 7-0 against Costa Rica, England 6-2 against Iran or Brazil 4-1 against South Korea, Croatia has not had a game in the entire tournament in which everything from himself ran. Even when they beat Canada 4-1 in the group stage, Croatia had to work hard for 70 minutes before the game went reasonably safely.
Coach Zlatko Dalic, who led the Croatians to the World Cup final in Russia four and a half years ago, almost sounds as if he doesn’t want any sure-fire games. He seems to love it when his team works hard to win: “Croatia is at its best when it counts. Then Croatia is always successful. Croatia is pride, courage, faith and patriotism‘ he explains pathetically.
Balanced record and a World Cup swatter
The Argentinians recently experienced how uncomfortable these patriots are to play in Russia. On June 21, 2018, the two teams met in World Cup Group D at the Nizhny Novgorod stadium, and Messi was also in the starting eleven. It was still 0-0 at half-time, but then Croatia turned up the heat and scored a smooth 3-0 win through Ivan Rakitic, Ante Rebic and Luka Modric.
Overall, the international match record between Argentina and Croatia is balanced, there have been two wins and one draw. If the Croatians had won after the final whistle on Tuesday evening, it wouldn’t have been a sensation.