From the bloody Balkan War to World Cup heavyweights: the creation of Croatia as a football nation

(CNN) Panama, Mauritania, Georgia and Eritrea are four countries with populations roughly equivalent to that of Croatia.

These four nations share a participation in the World Cup: that’s when Panama played at Russia 2018, finishing the group stage with three defeats and conceding 11 goals.

Croatia’s World Cup journey is a completely different story. In six World Cup appearances, the country has reached the semi-finals three times, while four years ago Croatia made the final, ultimately losing to France.

Croatia only gained its independence in 1991, during the bloody Balkan War which lasted until 1995, and its population is just under four million, although it is not known would never have known given the way she traded blows with soccer superpower Brazil in the quarter-finals, before winning a penalty. shooting.

This success is largely due to David taking down Goliath, given that Brazil’s population is 214 million.

Next up for Croatia will be Lionel Messi and Argentina – population: 45 million.

Igor Štimac, who appeared in all of Croatia’s 1998 World Cup matches during its run to third place, told CNN that the country’s recent history has helped forge elite competitors.

“Our people have gone through many difficulties to survive, for their independence, to fight for it, and to face the aggression we suffered from our neighbors,” Štimac, who led the Croatian national team between 2012 and 2013.

“These things help us to remain with great mental strength, great discipline, to remain humble and to survive with pride, whatever difficulties lie ahead.

“But we cannot say that only the last war that took place here contributed to these things, because wars have taken place several times in this region. There is also something in this region in terms of climate and of culture.”

Croatian football journalist Srđan Fabijanac, who was on the ground in Doha to follow this current iteration of the national team, said team harmony proved vital in another extraordinary World Cup for the country. Vatreni (the ‘Blazers’)

Fabijanac considers the team – built with a mix of experiences such as Luka Modrić, Ivan Perišić and Dejan Lovren with new faces such as Joško Gvardiol and Borna Sosa – as a “family”.

“You saw what happened in this World Cup: Brazil has excellent players, Portugal has excellent players, Germany has excellent players but in my opinion, they have morale and they don’t have a team,” Fabijanac told CNN. “That’s the problem. Croatia are too strong a team.”

Rubble

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, democracy movements took over much of Eastern Europe, including Yugoslavia. With the election of non-communist governments in four of Yugoslavia’s six republics, the Federation began to collapse and ethnic divisions resurfaced.

In 1991, prosperous countries croatian republic sought to create a loose confederacy or dissolve the union altogether. Serbia, less wealthy, opposed it. In June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence.

Fighting soon began when the Yugoslav army, composed mainly of Serbs, attempted to prevent Slovenia from establishing its own border posts. In July, fighting also broke out between Croatian forces and Serbian militiamen.

Among the other republics, only the smallest – Montenegro – joined Serbia. The two remaining republics, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia, voted in favor of independence.

In 1992, the Bosnian Serb minority, aided by the federal army, attempted to create enclaves for themselves and besieged Sarajevo.

By the time the United Nations excluded Yugoslavia from its General Assembly, some 20,000 people had died and up to two million people had become refugees from the fighting and “ethnic cleansing.”

In 2018, Lovren recounted his memories of fleeing as a young child from war-torn Bosnia in 1992.

“I just remember the moment the sirens went off,” Lovren said. “I was so scared because I was thinking about ‘bombs’ or that something was going to happen now.

“I remember my mom took me and we went to the basement, I don’t know how long we sat there, I think it was until the sirens went off. Afterwards, I remember my mom, my uncle, my uncle’s wife, we took the car and then we went to Germany.”

Lovren’s family settled in Germany, but after seven years they were asked to leave and had to start their lives again in Croatia.

Fabijanac admits that even though some members of the team were not even born during the bloody Balkan War, it is something that still weighs on the country and stimulates its players.

“We want to distance ourselves from the events of the 1990s,” he explained. “There are sports, but we have very strong national emotions and that is why Croatian footballers always play with all their heart for the national teams.

“Because we are a small country, we are experiencing a very, very horrible war which has caused a lot of trauma to many people in Croatia.

“And sports and players in football and other sports are national heroes. And that’s the reason why they always play for the national teams at a higher level than the highest. When we play for the national team football, in any sport, we play at more than 100%, we play at 110%.

“They deployed their last atomic force on the ground to do something for the country.”

A new story

The Croatian Football Federation applied for and was admitted to football’s world governing body, FIFA, in 1992, and to the European governing body, UEFA, in 1993.

“We have football in our blood. Every male child in Croatia wants to become a footballer,” Fabijanac said. “First they learn to walk, then they take a soccer ball or something to play soccer.”

Fabijanac added: “For a small country like us, it’s very important to have this fantastic national team because my granddaughter is three years old and she doesn’t play with dolls, she plays with the ball and only says : ‘Modrić, Modrić, Modric. It’s something incredible.”

It didn’t take long for Croatia to establish themselves on the international football scene.

First, Croatia reached the quarter-finals of Euro 1996, beating a star-studded Denmark in the process.

Two years later, in their first ever World Cup appearance, Croatia reached the semi-finals of the 1998 edition in France, eventually finishing third.

Thanks to its first golden generation of players – led by Davor Šuker and with Robert Prosinečki and Zvonimir Boban adding a touch of stardust – Croatia qualified with two wins from their group, then beat Romania and Germany in the round of 16, before losing. to France, eventual winner, in the semi-final.

Šuker finished top scorer in the 1998 tournament and with his distinctive red and white jersey as well as his propensity to shock football’s traditional heavyweights, Croatia immediately became a neutral favorite.

Štimac said his former teammates and his team had a responsibility to lay the foundations of Croatia’s modern football heritage.

“Our generation is the one for whom we had the most difficult path because we were responsible for creating a cult of Croatian culture in football and setting the path for generations to come,” Štimac told CNN.

“And as a newly recognized country, it was obviously very difficult when you are such a small country in the world of football and no one appreciates considering you as an important element or subject.

“And from that point of view, we had the most difficult situation and we came out of it well and that obviously helped the generations that followed.”

The arrival of Zlatko Dalić as Croatia coach in 2017 also proved crucial.

Appointed after the team qualified for the 2018 World Cup, Dalić had the pressure on his shoulders.

With many of the team’s star players in their prime, especially the three midfielders Modrić, Ivan Rakitić and Marcelo Brozović, Croatia were expected to put in a good performance.

Croatia did more than just perform well.

Thanks to the harmony that Dalić was able to create within the team, Croatia exceeded all expectations by reaching the final – showing remarkable courage and resilience to win twice on penalties. goal, followed by an extra-time win over England in the semi-final – before being subdued. by France in the final.

Returning to Croatia and receiving a hero’s welcome, with over 500,000 fans turning the streets of Zagreb into a red and white tapestry to celebrate the players’ success, the team was celebrated for surpassing the so-called “bronze” generation of 1998.

“In the past we also had very good teams. In 1998 we had maybe much better players at the time like Boban, Šuker, Prosinečki, (Robert) Jarni, but maybe they don’t share not the same chemistry between them to do what this team has done over the last few years,” Fabijanac said.

“We only have one star, that’s Luka Modrić. The other players are not stars, like Kylian Mbappé, Cristiano Ronaldo or Neymar. But the rest of the team is a family and does the right thing. more important to us.

“When Dalić became head coach, when he chose the team… he looked for characters.”

With Modrić at his best and goalkeeper Dominik Livaković in imperious form and with a team seemingly capable of scoring a goal out of nowhere when needed, this Croatian side continued to surprise, just as they did years ago. is four years old.

“When we represent the national team, all egos have to go,” Stimac said.

“There is no place in the Croatia national team dressing room for big egos, and everyone knows that. No one is bigger than the team, no one is bigger than the “coach and that’s what keeps us going.”

In 1998, Štimac came off the bench to face Argentina and players like Gabriel Batistuta and Juan Sebastián Verón.

On Tuesday, Croatia will meet Lionel Messi and the next generation of Argentine stars, knowing that two victories separate them from a new era of glory.