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Tearful Croatia manager Zlatko Dalic was trying but failing to put on a brave face in front of the assembled media the morning after the night before.
The country’s fate at Euro 2024 wasn’t yet sealed — that was to come a few hours later when Slovenia’s draw against England meant Croatia couldn’t finish as one of the best third-placed teams — but Dalic knew the end was nigh, not just for this tournament, but for a celebrated generation of immortal players and possibly even himself.
Croatia have been one of the best-supported sides in Germany. Fans have travelled in their tens of thousands to Berlin, Hamburg and Leipzig; they have been boisterous, colourful and loud. They always are at major tournaments, but not normally en masse. Not normally outnumbering the Italians by four to one.
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“This means the national team has become a movement,” an emotional Dalic said on Tuesday.
“It is a cult, a symbol of the nation. I ask them to stay together and to follow this national team, to love it both when it loses and when it wins.”
Croatia’s remarkable performances in the last two World Cups, reaching the final in Russia in 2018 and the semis in Qatar in 2022, plus a Nations League final last year where they lost on penalties to Spain, have swelled their support tenfold.
But the core of that team are, in football terms, old. Luka Modric is 38 and his fellow midfielders Marcelo Brozovic (31) and Mateo Kovacic (30) are on the wrong side of 30 (the trio have a combined 381 caps to their name). Ivan Perisic is 35, Andrej Kramaric is 33 and Ante Budimir is 32. Dalic has been in charge for seven years.
After a painful group stage exit, with Italy’s late, late equaliser on Monday consigning them to third place, is this the end of an era for one of European football’s best teams of the last decade?
In a similar vein to Gareth Southgate with England, Croatia’s drastically improved results from 2018 onwards haven’t spared their manager from severe criticism back home after poor performances at this Euros.
To label the tournament as a disaster would be too harsh — had their matches against Albania and Italy finished in the 94th and 97th minute, Croatia would have earned six points instead of two and qualified from Euro 2024’s group of death.
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Goodbye Luka Modric? This was tournament football at its most brutal
But given the highs of the last two World Cups, there is huge disappointment, some anger and a lot of finger-pointing as to where things went wrong. This was Croatia’s worst performance at a major tournament since the 2014 World Cup when a 3-1 defeat by Mexico saw them fail to progress from their group.
“I take full responsibility for this failure,” Dalic said, while declining to talk about his future.
While Dalic can do nothing to stop the ageing process of Modric and Co, there is a valid argument he has lacked a succession plan for the spine of his team.
A 2-1 victory away at Portugal in a pre-tournament warm-up did little to convince Dalic, or indeed fans and media back home, that Croatia’s team needed a refresh. Indeed, the result raised expectations and cemented a glass-half-full belief that the golden generation was capable of one last hurrah.
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Dalic selected the same XI for the first group game against Spain, but what he failed to take into account was that Portugal were without several key players, including Cristiano Ronaldo, Pepe, Joao Cancelo and Rafael Leao. Plus, you know, it was a warm-up. “After a good game against Portugal, a great performance, it was stupid to change anything,” Dalic insisted.
Of the older players he has stayed fiercely loyal to — and given the unprecedented success those players have helped bring to Croatia, to discard them now would be an extremely difficult call to make (“As long as I live, I will be grateful to them,” he said in Germany) — Brozovic has earned the most criticism, with a feeling that a year in Saudi Arabia with Ronaldo’s Al Nassr has softened his intensity in defensive midfield.
Fringe players such as Ajax left-back Borna Sosa didn’t get a look in, with Perisic starting there against Albania and generally looking like a 35-year-old who suffered an anterior cruciate ligament injury last season (albeit he should be commended for recovering in time to play in Germany), while Atalanta’s Mario Pasalic was also underused.
Younger stars of the future such as Dinamo Zagreb 21-year-old Martin Baturina, dubbed the next Modric, only played five minutes during the tournament. Luka Sucic, a sprightly, energetic midfielder from Red Bull Salzburg, also 21, belatedly started against Italy and was one of their better players.
There are others coming through, such as highly-rated attacking midfielder Lovro Zvonarek, 19, at Bayern Munich, but he hasn’t yet been called up and only played five times in the Bundesliga last year.
Dalic didn’t seem to have a clue what his best XI was. Of his outfield players, he changed the right-back, left-back and centre-backs, he played Josko Gvardiol in different positions and selected six different names in the three forward positions.
Only the tried and trusted central trio of Modric, Kovacic and Brozovic — hailed as the world’s best midfield by Dalic in 2022 — stayed the same.
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They certainly weren’t the problem, but there was a lack of energy and creativity at times within them and certainly around them. Modric couldn’t finish two of the three games and while still their talisman — leader and goalscorer against Italy — he lacked rhythm, having only started 18 league games for Real Madrid last season. Kovacic started 16 for Manchester City and Brozovic was in Saudi Arabia.
Scorer. Leader. Record-breaker.
🇭🇷 Luka Modrić 👏@Vivo_GLOBAL | #EUROPOTM pic.twitter.com/W5cID41gTq
— UEFA EURO 2024 (@EURO2024) June 24, 2024
Undeniably, a huge issue was their leaky defence. Croatia conceded just four goals in qualifying but let in six in three games here.
One of their key weaknesses was their inability to defend crosses — particularly in-swinging crosses.
In the images below from their first group game against Spain, you can see a packed penalty area, with eight Croatia bodies in the box as Lamine Yamal is about to cross. No one picks up Dani Carvajal (one of the smallest players on the pitch) as he ghosts through. At the moment he makes contact, there are four Croatia players nearby who are not challenging for the ball.
This was something teams must have spotted, as Croatia conceded a similar goal in Euro 2024 qualifying during a 2-1 defeat to Wales in October 2023.
This time it was on the other side of the pitch, but as Dan James shapes to cross, Croatia clearly outnumber their opponents with bodies in the penalty area. Another in-swinging ball from wide and Harry Wilson makes first contact to glance the ball into the corner of the goal.
Surely they would have learned by the second group game? No. Against Albania, it was more of the same from the right flank. As the ball reaches Jasir Asani on the touchline (below), note the huge gap between centre-backs Josip Sutalo and Josko Gvardiol (slide 2) — with the latter getting dragged out to follow his man into a wide area.
Brozovic tries to plug the gap in defence, but it is too late. Qazim Laci makes a purposeful run through the heart of the pitch and heads another in-swinging corner past Dominik Livakovic. Albania’s subsequent equaliser in the final seconds? Another cross that Croatia fail to deal with.
Those gaps between Croatia’s centre-backs have been a theme this tournament and it is a structural issue often catalysed by their ball-dominant midfield trio.
In the first goal they conceded against Spain, the sequence starts with Kovacic and Brozovic dropping between the two centre-backs to build out from the back. As the sequence progresses, left centre-back Marin Pongracic plays a ball down the line and Kovacic is the deepest player on the pitch for Croatia — with their full-backs very high (in yellow, slide 2).
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When Spain turn over possession, that gap between the centre-backs is too wide and there is not enough pressure on the ball as all three Croatia midfielders are congregated in the centre circle (slide 3). A simple pass to dissect the centre-backs sees Alvaro Morata make a straightforward run through the middle to finish one-on-one.
This wasn’t the first time Croatia were so open in the game. The warning sign came 10 minutes earlier on another occasion when they lost the ball in the middle. As shown below, they were far too expansive and vulnerable in transitional moments, with Spain able to play passes through the heart of their defence.
If Dalic was in a defiant mood after the Spain defeat, ranting about how Croatia deserved more respect given they have won three medals in six years but are still perennial dark horses, whereas England have won one World Cup more than 50 years ago but are a “great team” (his words), then post-Albania reality seemed to have hit.
“We couldn’t do anything right,” he said of their first-half performance. “We were very slow, we have never lost so many easy balls in midfield.”
Croatia also hadn’t been shown a single yellow card in their first two matches, something that irked Dalic. “This is an indication that we are not aggressive enough,” he said. “We don’t follow through to the end, we stand far away, we lack aggression.” He also said it was clear that Perisic was older than in Qatar. Ouch.
Dalic gave the players a day off after Albania, presumably for them to ponder how angry they could become (it worked, they picked up six yellow cards against Italy) and set about planning the XI for their final group match. His solution to his midfield losing too many easy balls was to pick more midfielders.
The formation against Italy was effectively a 4-6-0, with attacking midfielder Kramaric the central striker.
To an extent, it worked — with Croatia exerting more control than at any time in their previous two matches, but it was also the safe option. They had no pace up front and were blunt in attack, meaning they couldn’t cement their lead. Then desperate defending cost them in the 98th minute, with four players drawn to a rampaging Riccardo Calafiori, leaving Mattia Zaccagni free to break their hearts.
Zaccagni’s composure and finish in the final minute… 🥶#EUROGOTT | @AlipayPlus pic.twitter.com/pHyMHLzfot
— UEFA EURO 2024 (@EURO2024) June 24, 2024
The enduring image of Croatia’s tournament will be of a distraught Modric posing for pictures with his man of the match award. Another medal/trophy for Croatia’s cabinet, but this one was unwanted.
A generation that first began to emerge in 2008, then flourished from 2016 to 2023, appears to be over.
Croatia have been here before. In the 2002 World Cup, a woeful group stage exit marked the end of a generation that had taken them to the World Cup semi-finals in 1998 and a quarter-final at Euro 96. Davor Suker and Robert Prosinecki were among those to depart the stage then and now Modric and Perisic, two legendary stalwarts whose status as greats is already certain in Croatian football history, will likely do the same.
Croatia’s last dance turned into a lap of honour.
(Top photo: Maja Hitij – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)