After a 2-0 loss against Norway, Croatia's chances of qualifying to EURO 2016 now depend on other teams
Yes, a woman is writing a review of tonight's game. Not the first one I've written or the first game I've watched.
Everything looked good on paper before the kick off. So many international stars, firm favourites and all that jazz. But we keep forgetting our head coach is Niko Kovač. And boy does he like to experiment. At least tonight, since it was a crucial game, we thought he'd tone down those tactics no one understands, least of all the players, but even his substitutes were either very late or very wrong.
After the first 15 minutes, we could have blamed the anemic game on the sun, adjustment to the pitch (which was fantastic unlike the one in Baku few days earlier), but after 20 minutes it smelled like a disaster. Throughout the game it seemed that they had no idea, no motivation, just as if the whole qualifications were not on the line in this one single game. Luka Modrić was losing the ball left right and centre, you could count the players who were able to connect three passes on the palm of one hand (and still have few fingers left over), players seemed completely lost and most of all, Mandžukić was simply not in the game today, so forcing him to play the entire 90 minutes was just not understandable.
We received two goals, both scored by the same player Jo Inge Berget who never scored for Norway before (anyone thinking of Thuram and the World Cup '98?) and both goals were scored in an identical manner.
And then Mr. handsome (Niko Kovač) got in front of the camera with his comment "We didn't deserve to win tonight, you just have to go head first and give it your very best and that's not what we did tonight". And when the journalist asked him why wasn't Croatia going head first he simply washed his hands and answered "You'll have to ask the players". Yes, blame them. And only them.
Niko Kovač (and his brother Robert also.... )
So after tonight's disastrous game and yet another proof that this is just a group of great individual players but a very long way from a great team, we will once again depend on other teams to see whether we will make it to Euro 2016 or not.
Next qualifying game is on October 10th against Malta and we hope the team will get out of hibernation by then.
