On Sunday, the Balkan nation will play France for the biggest prize in football – Goal Croatia’s Ante Buskulic tries to explain how they’ve got here
The pitch was small, bumpy and dusty. There were no floodlights, no locker room, and barely any grass.
But the little blonde kid from Zadar didn’t care. He had a badly-worn ball. He had a Davor Suker shirt. And he had a dream.
Maybe, just maybe, if he had been in some major club’s academy, with three coaches around him, with proper boots, playing on an artificial surface and changing in a five-star locker room, little Luka Modric would have lacked something; the key ingredient: hunger.
With Croatia reaching World cup Final- and believe me, it has come as a bigger shock to their own supporters than for football fans around the globe – everyone keeps asking, “How?! How on Earth can a country with population of merely four million people be playing in football’s biggest game? How can Croatia keep producing world-class footballers?”
Well, one thing has certainly worked in our favour: genetics. Dejan Lovren joked, “Our mothers and fathers must have been great at making love!”
But there is something in that. Many members of the Croatia squad excelled in other fields. Sport was clearly in their blood. If you have ever seen Ivan Perisic play volleyball or basketball, you will know what am I talking about: pure talent.
Of course, kids in other countries can be just as naturally gifted. And many have access to better coaches and a higher standard of training facilities. But then, maybe that has worked in Croatia’s favour.
Modric may have had no place to shower where he trained growing up but he did have a determination that he was just as good, just as talented, as kids the same age as him in countries with more resources.
In every one of the ‘overseas’ tournaments or matches he played in, he was intent on showing that he was on the same level as those who grown up in an academy with the kind of luxuries he could only dream of.
Indeed, the Croatian Under-17 team used to gather before European qualifiers at the main train station in Zagreb. Not at a special training complex (there isn’t one!), not at a team hotel, but the train station!
But it didn’t affect or dissuade them in anyway. They just wanted to represent their country.
“Sport is in our blood,” Niko Kovac told FAZ . “Croats love to compete, to be better than the rest.
“Also, since we don’t have strong economy, sport is the way to make money, even to find your happiness abroad.
Outside of the game, many people are living hard lives. Some struggle to survive from one month to the next and many young educated people are forced to go abroad in search of a job, and a better life.
