Slaven Bilic: Croatia’s secret? Thinking for ourselves

By Slaven Bilic, former Croatia defender and then manager; now Watford head coach.

It was a very proud moment beating Brazil. After 1998, when we went to the semis and won the bronze medal, most people were saying: “Never again, no chance.”

Then Russia 2018 — unbelievable, they did better than our ’98 team in getting to the final. Then those same people said again: “That’s it.”

And now for a third time? It’s amazing. I don’t know how many teams were in consecutive World Cup semi-finals — and I’m talking big countries, so how does a nation the size of ours (there are under four million people in Croatia) do it?

Obviously we are talented, that’s for sure, but it’s more than that. Physically we’re good, mentally we’re good and we’re very good in team sports. In basketball, handball and water polo, we’re also one of the best in the world.

In those kinds of sports — when it’s about your mate, about helping each other, when it’s about a group and not just individuals — we have that togetherness and unity.

Croatia’s team spirit is fundamental to their success (Photo: Lars Baron/Getty Images)

Because we’re a small country, our players have known each other since they were 10, 11 years old. Most of them come from Dinamo Zagreb and Hajduk Split, so they know each other. My generation in ’98 — Zvonimir Boban played for Dinamo Zagreb and I played for Hajduk Split, together with eight or nine other players. I’ve known Boban since we were 10. We were not team-mates, we were friends.

Sometimes in big countries with big leagues and big clubs, you’re not that friendly. I remember talking to some England internationals who said when they gathered together for a call-up, (at meal times) you’d have a Chelsea table, a Manchester United table, a Liverpool table. In Croatia, it isn’t like that. They call each other on a daily basis, not only when they play for the national team.

We have good coaches and academies, too. When I was starting, you normally started at under-10 — now it’s under-seven or under-eight, but you also have private schools that ex-players are running, where they’re starting at the age of five.

In Croatia, you’re training all the time. In my day, in the early 1980s — it was still (a united) Yugoslavia then — you had school in the afternoon and we trained in the morning. If school was in the afternoon, we’d train in the morning.

You join Hajduk Split or Dinamo Zagreb, play in the under-10 championship in your town, and then when you are 14 or 15 you’re already playing against under-14s from another city and training every day. It’s quite serious.

Slaven Bilic helped Croatia reach the 1998 World Cup semi-finals and his country has continued to deliver since (Photo: Shaun Botterill /Allsport)

The way it used to be, they didn’t teach you a lot of tactics when you were 11, 12. It was all about skill and technique. We were in front of this wall every day for a minimum of half an hour. Left foot pass off the wall, right foot pass, left, right, one touch, receive, everything against the wall. Then you hang a ball on a rope, so it’s a few inches from the ground, and pass against the wall… and if it bounced, no good. So you practice, practice, practice.

A person should fight to find his or her way in the game. And they should learn how to answer questions asked of them in football. As a manager, if a player is expecting you to tell them how to do everything, then they’re going to expect you to tell them how to shoot, how to pass, where to put the penalty etc.

That’s one of the reasons why Croatians are good, because you don’t really have those things there. At the end of the day, it’s up to you.

GO DEEPER

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Croatia is not exactly a country without any money or without nice pitches, so that as a kid you have absolutely no chance. We have enough of that in terms of facilities. The players have boots, they have pitches that are OK, they have some computers analysing games. But they also don’t have too much of that. That means you have to learn. And it means you have to earn things for yourself. That’s a big part of the mentality we have.

In Croatia, we have a new wave of people trying to get into football, but I’d like to keep it like it is because you’ve got to earn things the hard way. Things aren’t handed to you. Take Germany. It wasn’t a surprise to me that they went out early in this World Cup, like they did in 2018.

They’re too… how would we say in Croatia? The seasoning is good but they use too much. Just too much of everything. With shooting practice for a striker, you should put your full-backs on the flanks to send crosses over. Now they’ve invented equipment which automatically sends the crosses over for them. It’s too much.

One of the reasons their run to the semi-finals this time is so amazing is that Croatia are playing without a striker who’s on the level of their midfielders — i.e. at the top level. We just don’t have one of those. We have four strikers — one plays for Dinamo Zagreb, one for Hajduk Split, one for Osasuna (10th in Spain’s La Liga last season) and the fourth is Andrej Kramaric, who is more like a second striker.

Andrej Kramaric is one of Croatia’s attacking options but far from an out-and-out striker (Photo: Alex Pantling/Getty Images)

Zlatko Dalic has done an unbelievable job. People were saying that because he didn’t have a great managerial career in Europe — because he went to the Middle East and did a good job there and then people said the 2018 World Cup was a one-off — that it wasn’t about him, it was about the generation of players, about Luka Modric. It is always about the players at the end of the day but they have to believe. For Dalic to do it again now, I don’t have enough words to describe it.

He’s the one who brings that calmness, that belief. He’s not loud. It’s not, “My way or the highway” or whatever. He’s very clever, very good and very calm. He transmits that mixture between calmness and energy.

Winning on penalties against Brazil showed us that, yes, they’re about luck, but how composed were our players? It was like they were shooting in a five-a-side game after training. The last World Cup, in Russia, we went through against Denmark in the last 16 on penalties, then (did it again) against Russia in the quarter-finals; now Japan in the last 16 here and Brazil in the quarter-finals (two more wins via shootouts). We can’t wait for penalties!

I didn’t expect us to beat Brazil. If we play five or six games against Brazil, we’ll probably lose three or four, draw one or two and win one, and that one was this game.

I do fancy us to beat Argentina (in Tuesday’s semi-final), however. We’re a better team. And nobody’s got a midfield like we have, in Modric, Marcelo Brozovic and Mateo Kovacic. They manage the game so well, dictate a slow pace, a fast tempo, and they can keep the ball against any team.

Argentina are a good team but they completely depend on Lionel Messi, even if he is the best player there is.

They should be prepared for extra time — and penalties…

GO DEEPER

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(Top photo design: Eamonn Dalton)