‘We are like a neighborhood in a Brazilian city’, says coach from Croatia

Croatia coach Zlatko Dalic, 56, compared his country’s size to that of his World Cup quarter-final opponent, Brazil.

“Brazil has 200 million people, we are only 4 million, so we are a bit like a neighborhood in a Brazilian city,” said Dalic this Tuesday (6) in an interview with journalists.

Croatia, finalist of the 2018 World Cup, eliminated Japan in the penalty shootout on Monday (5) and secured at least the third best participation in its history in the tournament – ​​it was third in 1998.

The coach said he was proud of his team for having shown courage and mental strength to reach this stage and declared that his team will try to show good football against Brazil, one of the big favorites, on Friday (9). The game will be at 12 pm (Brasília time).

It will be a game different from all the ones we’ve played so far, because Brazil likes to play football”, said Dalic.

“If we look realistically, Brazil are the best team in the tournament. They have a great team, it’s scary, it’s a big test for us,” he added.

The coach stated that “there is nothing better” than facing the canary national team in a World Cup. “Perhaps we would have preferred it to be in the final rather than the quarter-finals,” he said.

“We want to do our best, we’re not going to give up before the game. We want to balance the Brazilian quality with ours and play football against them.”

Dalic continued: “We have to be very smart in our approach. We can’t be too open against Brazil, but we can’t be too closed either.”

Croatia have changed a lot in the four years since the last Cup, but they have eight veterans who took part in the Russia feat in their squad, including captain Luka Modric and striker Ivan Perisic.

Dalic asked, however, that this group not be compared to the team beaten by France in the 2018 final in Russia.