Football is a simple game. Twenty-two players run around for 120 minutes and then in the end Croatia put their foot through all their penalties.
What a genuinely magnificent and absurd achievement this is for Zlatko Dalic’s immovable object of a team. A second successive appearance in the World Cup semi-finals and the favourites stopped dramatically in their tracks.
The 800 words we’d written about Neymar’s perfect moment amidst 120 minutes of frustration and angst are now consigned to the bin, which is probably for the best. They weren’t very good, and in any case, Croatia’s outrageously unlikely win is much, much funnier and that’s what matters.
The quite wonderful goal Neymar scored after 105 minutes of Croatia Croatiaing harder and more stubbornly than they had ever Croatiad looked sure to be his big moment. A goal that took him level with Pele on Brazil’s all-time list to take them through to the last four. It was ideal.
Instead, the focus now lands on the wisdom of him being designated as Brazil’s fifth and final penalty taker in the shoot-out. It may be the glory penalty, but only if you actually get to take it. By then four perfect Croatian penalties and a save from Rodrygo had left Marquinhos with the Selecao’s entire tournament resting on his spot-kick, which thudded back off the post Orsic had slipped his penalty just inside moments earlier.
These are the margins at which Croatia operate. An inch here, a millimetre there. Even their equaliser on a well-worked counter leant heavily on a deflection – Marquinhos again, the poor sod – that sent it arcing just out of Alisson’s reach.
But it works for them. They refuse to buckle and refuse to accept they are beaten. The headline number about Croatia will always be the population of a mere four million, about a million of whom somehow appear to be professional standard footballers.
The numbers around their two successive runs to the last four (at least) are utterly bewildering, though. In 2018 they became the first team ever to reach the final having trailed in all three knockout games to get there; they’re one match away from repeating it. In five matches in Qatar, Croatia have led for precisely 46 minutes. Against Canada. World. Cup. Semi. Finalists.
They’ve reached a World Cup final and now a semi-final and in those five knockout matches managed to actually beat only England, and even that in extra-time. In both Russia and Qatar, they have got through the last 16 and…
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