By the skin of their teeth Croatia progressed to the World Cup quarter-finals on Sunday evening and if this was cause for great celebration for four million Croats it’s also a blessing to the rest of us too. We get to see them again.
More accurately we’re afforded another opportunity to luxuriate in the flowing, sometimes flawed but always bewitching midfield of Vatreni and with two of its most accomplished components now the wrong side of thirty that’s not going to happen much anymore, especially on the global stage. Granted there will undoubtedly be one more Euros and possibly even a tired final hoorah at Qatar 2022 but this is a masterpiece slowly being beaten by time, time being a construct that not even this exquisite coterie of deep-lying playmakers can navigate with a through-ball. We need to enjoy them while we can for such rare beauty doesn’t come along often.
Let’s begin in the shallow end with their names. Rakitic. Modric. Brozovic. Kovacic. These are technically gifted players who require a technical tongue to pronounce them. Saying their names necessitates a linguistic give-and-go and maybe Sam Allardyce was actually onto something with his ‘Allardici’ complaint because the exotica of their monikers matter. It fits them. It elevates them. More pertinently seeing their artful probing and shrewd movement enacted by Jones, Smith, and Williams would be so odd as to be off-putting.
Then there’s the kit: a checkerboard design that aptly evokes cerebral play. The unusual aesthetic of the shirt can make a grown man swoon and that’s before they’re embellished by a trio of talent so expressive with the ball at their feet that England would surely have stuck them out wide for decades unsure what to do with them. Here though they’re integral: raking balls to switch play; conjuring ball retention in the tightest of areas; tippy-tapping mesmerising angles at pace before leisurely slowing things down to take in the big picture. For Croatia, they are everything, not just their heartbeat but lungs and brain too.
And they are sumptuous to behold, this rotating triangle that always features Luka Modric and Ivan Rakitic – a pairing who between them boast over 200 caps, four league titles and five Champions League winner’s medals while individually each has the chops to destroy teams single-handed – and often Marcelo Brozovic box-to-boxing with effortless style. On other occasions Milan Bedelj slots in, a defensive midfielder with the guile of a number ten, or Real Madrid’s Mateo Kovacic, a 24 year old whose polarised nicknames sum up the multifariousness of Croatia’s engine-room. Most call him ‘Il Professore’ for his intelligence. A former manager refers to him as ‘Raging Bull’ for his fight.
All have the wherewithal to unlock the tightest of defences. All are masters of the pre-assist. All are woven silk in a centre-circle that used to be bolstered by granite and steel.
This, of course, comes with a price and for many years - and right now before our very eyes this summer - balance and shape can suffer. Against Argentina, the trigonometry was perfect with Brozovic screening and allowing Modric and Rakitic the freedom to terrorise their out-of-sorts opponents. Nine days later however versus the Danes the collective became individualistic with each player underwhelming as a consequence. With Croatia’s heart, lungs and brain misplaced it was unsurprisingly a disjointed performance but here’s where we reach the rub: the reason why the Vatreni will always be as beloved as they are respected.
Because four hours earlier Spain’s midfield three were fluid and smooth in their organization, dove-tailing into each other’s positions with the ease of an old Rolls Royce going through the gears. And it was utterly and profoundly boring to watch.
All of the great teams and all of the great players have flaws: recurring problems that can sometimes not be solved. That makes them interesting. And when those problems are erased that makes them exhilarating and splendorous.
Reveling in the improvised orchestration of the Croatian midfield is one of the joys of modern football. It’s a treat for the eyes and a balm for the soul.
Let’s hope it continues for a little while longer or at least until they encounter England.
