Darijo Srna had a different role, as he had Marcelo Brozović in front of him, so he could go up front, and the role of Ivan Strinić was to support Ivan Perišić, who is not as strong defensively as Brozović.
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Luka Modric’s skillful volley from outside the box was the difference in Croatia’s 1-0 win over Turkey. “We had no time to talk about whether he will be back in time for the Czech game”.
In the stadium however, a fan in a Croatia shirt jumped from the stands to join the players while they were celebrating Modric’s goal.
“His father was gravely ill for a while”, Mise said. “If you read Croatian newspapers they always say we need to do something so we can forget about them but that team was so good”.
“I didn’t play well today, but my team-mates fought well”.
Tufan missed a sitter before deciding to fix his hair instead of closing down Luka Modric who scored the winning goal.
“I was a bit exhausted late on, but the adrenaline is high and with such great support from our fans in the stands, it pushes you on and lifts you, so you forget about the tiredness”.
Rakitic was deployed in an advanced midfield role and was sometimes stationed ahead of Croatia’s main goal threat, striker Mario Mandzukic. Unfortunately we never start well in these tournaments.
Despite the hype that comes at the start of a tournament for every team, Turkey’s key players just failed to show up on Sunday as they were handily disposed of by their Group D rivals. He broke the momentum for Turkey asking for medical help, showing experience Croatian team lacked eight years ago in Vienna.
Recollecting the 1998 semi-final in Paris, when Croatia lost 2-1 to France, Corluka, who is 30, said: “I was on the grass somewhere when Suker scored in the semi-final and then I turned my head around and I saw it’s 1-1 because [Lilian] Thuram equalised after 20 seconds”.
“We will do our best and keep fighting. but unfortunately we never start well in those big tournaments”, said Turkey coach Fatih Terim, whose team put up a fearless challenge in the first half but then ran out of steam. In fact, Poland were in such control of the game that the Irish just had one shot on goal in the entire match. That might be tempting given the fact that, already, it would take a collapse to deprive them of a last-16 spot but Group D would be a useful one to top – particularly if it means they avoid an early knock-out match against highly-fancied Belgium.
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Shkodran Mustafi opened the scoring with a powerful header off a Toni Kroos freekick in the first half. “So we need to calm down a little bit and go step by step because we have a good team, good players but the other teams have as well so let’s calm down”.
