STARTING XI
REMAINING SQUAD MEMBERS
3 best players not in the squad:
Prior to the Croatian national team, if a player was born in Croatia and played only for the Yugoslavia national team, then I considered them here. Dragan Holcer was difficult to define to one nation. He is often listed as a Croat, but he was born in Germany, grew up in Serbia, played for Yugoslavia, and had Austrian and Slovenian parents. I assumed he qualified for Yugoslavia through his Slovenian heritage, so I considered him in my team for Non World-Class Nations instead. While Croatia's achievement of reaching the 2018 World Cup final is the greatest achievement of any nation from this region, including the Yugoslavia national team as a whole, there are more players from the 1950's than other decades. I can try to understand this by looking at Yugoslavia's strong Olympics silver medal winning team of 1952 - they lost to a Hungary team in the final who are considered the greatest side to never win a World Cup (5 Croatians make it from this Yugoslavia team). The 2018 and 2022 World Cup teams were also heavily led by the midfield players, particularly Luka Modric, and the talent wasn't as spread out across the team as it appeared to be in the 50's. Holcer's omission made Horvat a definite starter at centre-back for me, and I then chose Zebec as a centre-back to accommodate Jarni on the left. Zebec can move to left-back if necessary due to the two central defenders on the bench covering him, so there was no need for Ivan Surjak in the squad as a left-back or wing-back option. I considered Marcelo Brozovic for the bench as a holding midfielder, another member of the 2018 Croatian team that reached the World-Cup final, but Perusic was probably better than him. Rakitic was close to the starting midfield spot, but I chose Prosinecki instead. Boban, Boksic and Skoblar can then cover the front 3. I then needed a right-wing option for the squad, and while he mainly played on the left, I found Ivan Perisic to be the best option. Ivan Hitrec took the final spot as the best player not yet included, while Mario Mandzukic couldn't due to the quality of strikers in the nations history. Players by Decade: 1950's (7), 2010's (5), 1990's (5), 1970's (2), 1980's (1), 1960's (1), 1940's (1), 1930's (1) Top 10 Croatian Players of All-Time (World Class Players in Bold - 10)
(& their all-time positional rank)
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