Croatia gets 2010 campaign off to flying start

September 8, 2008

Saturday Croatia and Kazakhstan kicked off their qualifying campaigns and Croatia started the best possible way with a 3-0 win over Kazakhstan. The game was held at home in Zagreb, where a crowd of 25,000 packed the Makismir Stadium to cheer on their teams as they tackled the first obstacle of the qualifiers.

From the start, Croatia dominated the match and had a confidence boost when captain Niko Kovac scored the first goal in the 13th minute. Around the 21st minute things started to look down for Kazakhstan as a yellow card was issued to Farkhadbek Irismetov; nearly 15 minutes later, Luka Modric was waiting on the edge of the box when he received a pass from Ivan Klasnic and turned it into a second goal. Throughout the second half Croatia maintained a 2-0 lead and the game looked rather decided, but sub Mladen Petric found the back of the net one last time making the score a final 3-0.

Now that Croatia has a comfortable win they will keep hopes high for their next match when they will go head to head with England on Wednesday. England met Andorra and won 2-0, but the press says they are far from convincing if they are to beat Croatia. In an interview England’s coach said, “Croatia will be another game,” in comparison to Andorra. England will be wishing for the best results and of course hoping for the game to go in their favor, but Croatia is a very well composed team with great ambitions and they will be very hard to get around.

Croatia’s midfielder, Luka Modric has mentioned that, “we’ll be at least as good if not better after the way we played in the Euro and I’m sure we will come out on top in the end.” Once again, England will be pushing for a victory after suffering two crucial losses to Croatia last year, but perhaps a bit of forward thinking is all the Croatian squad needs to drive on through.

Jill Guthrie

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