It is quite a ridiculous idea. To come to the World Cup, four years after making it to the final as one of the best underdog success stories in the tournament’s history, thinking you could go one step further this time and win the whole thing. This is football after all, the No 1 global sport, not handball or water polo, the other two team sports at which Croatia are any good.
In those two sports the competition is much narrower and you also get a chance to win the world championship every year. It is not the Davis Cup either, which they have managed to win twice in the past 17 years, with two different generations of players.
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If you are a small nation, the best you can normally hope for in football is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play in the World Cup semi-finals or final. Many good teams from much bigger nations never get that opportunity, but here we are in 2022 with Croatia poised to play in their third semi-final in less than a quarter of a century. What’s more, they are not satisfied yet.
“In 2018 we wrote history, but now we want to repeat that,” the captain, Luka Modric, told Marca after beating Brazil on penalties in the quarter-finals. “I hope we can make that extra step this time.”
Mateo Kovacic, his playmaking partner in midfield, was even more direct: “We came here wanting to stay until the end,” he told HRT, the Croatian national broadcaster. “That was our goal from the start and nothing is done yet. We’ll do our best to achieve even greater things.”
They are all thinking it. The coach, Zlatko Dalic, has never got over the defeat against France in the 2018 final, always believing this team can do the impossible and convincing the players to share his belief. And now, having made it this far, they are ready to speak their minds: yes, they came here to win the World Cup.
But football, as we’ve known it all our lives, doesn’t work like that. Their success four years ago was already a freakish occurrence – never has such an outsider, the darkest of horses, reached the final, at least not in the modern age. The World Cup final is reserved for football superpowers and only those can hope for a second chance if they lose it. And yet Croatia, a nation of less than 4 million, is one step away from getting it.
What is a football superpower these days, anyway? Is it Argentina, who lost 3-0 against Croatia in Russia four years ago? Is it France, whom Croatia defeated 1-0 in Saint-Denis just six months ago to finish top of their Nations League group? Brazil? Already home. Germany? Ditto. Given the results in recent years, maybe the Vatreni should now be considered – dare we say it? – a football superpower of our times.
If so, they are a very special one. They have now played six knockout games in the past two World Cup tournaments without winning any of them in 90 minutes. Four of those went to penalties and every time they emerged victorious from the shootout. Every single time their opponent first took the lead – including the 2-1 extra time win against England in the 2018 semi-finals – only to be followed by a Croatia comeback. In Qatar, they have beaten only Canada so far, and that was after going behind early in the game. They have scored only twice in their other four matches and yet they remain unbeaten, unlike Argentina or France.
Maybe they can’t beat you, but they will also make it very, very hard for you to beat them. And the Argentinians better not take the lead against Croatia – if they do, they could be in serious trouble.
How do they do it? That is the question everyone is asking, but no one yet has offered a legitimate answer. Where does this exceptional mental strength come from? There are many theories flying around, many of them dealing with the esoteric, and you are tempted to go with some of them until you realise they can only explain why they are good – but not why they are this good. After all, this is a nation where often the only thing that feels organised is crime, with domestic football and everything around it particularly corrupt, and yet these players somehow find the way to stay among the world’s best.
“We are built differently,” tweeted Ivan Ljubicic, who won the 2005 Davis Cup with Croatia and later coached Roger Federer, after the Vatreni’s win against Brazil. Yeah, let’s go with that, the Croatians shrugged, it’s an explanation as good as any.
Because the Vatreni and their fans are not looking for explanations. They are looking for two more wins.
