ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

This article is about the Croatian national football team at the 2022 World Cup. Croatia took part in the final for the sixth time. Since the Croatians participated as their own association, they were able to qualify for 6 out of 7 world championships and were last vice world champions. Only in 2010 they did not play in the World Cup.

Qualification
The team qualified for the World Cup in Qatar via the qualification matches of the European Football Federation UEFA.

Games
Croatia met Russia, Slovakia, neighbour Slovenia, Cyprus and Malta in Group H. In the ten resulting encounters, the Croatian team carried seven victories. Twice they played draw and the first game was lost. The Croats began the qualification after the opening defeat in the penultimate place, were second after the second game, from the third to seventh game leader and fell back to second place by the 2:2 in the eighth game against Slovakia. In the last game they needed a victory against the league leader Russia to book the direct World Cup ticket. Until the 81 minute it was as in the first leg 0:0, then the Russian Fyodor Kudryaschov underwent an own goal to the 1-0 final score for the Croats, with which both teams exchanged places.

A total of 33 players were used, of which 21 were also in the squad of the Euro 2021, which interrupted the qualification. Only Ivan Perišić and Nikola Vlašić were used in all ten games. Nine missions had Marcelo Brozović, Andrej Kramarić and Mario Pašalić. Dominik Livaković was most often between the posts at six games. 17 players were used in at least half of the games. The goalkeepers Ivo Grbić and Ivica Ivušić (two games each) as well as Kristijan Jakić, Kristijan Lovrić, Borna Sosa, Josip Stanišić and Luka Sučić came in the course of the qualification to their first international games.

The Croats scored the fewest goals of all directly qualified teams with ten games (20). Guarantee for the qualification was rather the defense, which allowed only four goals – fewer goals only the English and Danes (3 each) conceded in the same number of games. The best scorers were Luka Modrić, Mario Pašalić and Ivan Perišić with three goals each, with captain Modrić playing only seven games. In total, eleven Croats met at least once, and they benefited especially from an own goal of a Russian. The first international goal scored during qualifying Marko Livaja in the sixth, Joško Gvardiol in the seventh and Lovro Majer (2) in the penultimate match.

Final table of the qualification round

Note: The second-placed Russian team was to face Poland in the play-offs, but was excluded from all competitions by UEFA and FIFA like all Russian teams after the attack on Ukraine.

Preparation
This time the preparation was in