Croats waited for a penalty – Newspaper Kommersant No. 226 (7427) of 12/06/2022

The Croatian national team reached the quarter-finals of the Qatari World Cup, extending their amazing series of victories in the play-off matches, which were one and a half hours short of determining the winner, which began at the previous world championship. Following the Danes, Russians and British, the Japanese could not resist it. The Croatians defeated them in a penalty shoot-out after a 1-1 draw in regular and extra time.

This match proved that it could be quite an entertaining spectacle, also because it brought the teams together, each of which, probably, looked terribly convenient from the point of view of the other opponent. The Croatian national team, with its average starting age close to 30 years old, with its minimal rotation of the first team in the group stage (coach Zlatko Dalic used only 16 players), seemed like the perfect victim for the Japanese with their bet on perpetual motion. The Japanese team, with its tendency to combine swiftness with mistakes, tactical and technical, out of the blue seemed the perfect victim of the Croats – patient, able to lure other people’s gifts better, perhaps, than any other participant in the Qatari championship. And in this sense, it was very different from the Germans and Spaniards beaten by the Japanese in the group, for whom patience and caution are by no means the main strong point.

The game confirmed all ideas about the layout, even strengthened it.

The Japanese national team immediately tormented the Croats with flank breakthroughs and their pressure – so high that once goalkeeper Dominik Livakovic had to get out in a confrontation with forward Daizen Maeda on the goalkeeper line.

And the Croatian national team was immediately convinced that they would be given moments from time to time when Takehiro Tomiyasu, apparently nervous, threw the ball to Ivan Perisic, and he suddenly discovered that there was no one in front of him except goalkeeper Shuichi Gonda – you can give it to a partner , you can beat yourself, any option, in principle, is suitable. Perisic chose something between a strike and a pass – and it came out slurred.

Then everything went according to the same simple scenario.

The Japanese relied on frisky legs and crosses into the penalty area – mainly, of course, from the bottom, because the superiority of the Croatian defense in growth over the attack of opponents hurt the eye.

The Croats relied on a cold-blooded and unhurried rally of the ball, suggesting that sooner or later empty areas in the rear of others somehow formed. They did show up. And the Croatian fans, apparently, for the umpteenth time already remembered that in 2018 they had the magnificent Mario Mandzukic at the forefront, in front of Luka Modric, and not, as on this evening, the sluggish Bruno Petkovic: Mandzukic would have been ahead for a long time .

And so the Japanese took the lead before the break. A corner kick led to the goal, God knows what kind of feed into the Croatian penalty area was already in the account – approximately in the zone for which Dejan Lovren from Zenit was responsible – and a series of rebounds. After her, the ball, like a lucky lottery ball from a drum, rolled out to Maede, ready to send it to the net.

The break did not change anything either in the Japanese national team, which was understandable, or in the Croatian national team – neither in personnel terms, nor in terms of attitude to the game. And yielding, she remained just as calm, but almost indifferent, as if everything suited her. But if anyone thought that such an approach in the playoffs of the World Cup was a sure way to death, they were mistaken. The Croats, lazily rolling the ball to each other, restored the balance quickly.

The combination was simple, but it still exuded the highest class, expressed, in particular, in such brevity: Lovren hung, Perisic, even though there was a good dozen meters to the goal, put the ball into the corner with his head.

And the most surprising thing is that it was the first goal of Ivan Perisic since the spring: for months he didn’t score either for Inter or for the national team, despite the fact that he was at the forefront all the time, and then he scored, and at such an important moment.

And the advantage, no longer conditional, but actual, slowly passed to the Croats. And Gonda had to be on the alert all the time, in the game, and once he had to help out after Modric’s amazing hit in the nine. But the Japanese held on, and this match honestly deserved the first overtime at the Qatari World Cup.

And overtime was the territory of the Croatian national team at the previous World Cup. In 2018, she did not complete any of the three play-off matches on the way to the final in regular time, but every time she survived against the Danes, Russians, and the British. Now she was trying to survive without the leader Modric, whom Zlatko Dalic put on the bench, which, apparently, shocked everyone who was worried about the Croats: how could it be without him ?! For example, in the penalty shootout, to which the match, of course, eventually reached safely. But the Croats managed without Modric. Enough long-armed and not knowing what jitters are, repelling the first two Japanese blows, and then taking another Livakovich.

The Japanese suffered a second consecutive offensive defeat in the starting round of the World Cup play-offs: four years ago, they lost – 2:3 – to the Belgians, leading in the second half with a score of 2:0. Croats went to the next round.

In the quarter-finals, they will face the winner of the late evening Moscow time match between the national teams of Brazil and South Korea.

Alexey Dospekhov