Bad News, Witch Hunt

August 30th, 2009 | by: Mario |

As if the task ahead wasn’t difficult enough, yesterday at approximately 17.03 CET it got to a whole new level of difficulty. It was then that our own little wizard Luka Modric was carried off after having collided with one of England’s finest, Lee “The Destroyer” Boywer.

It looked bad right there at the spot, and it certainly didn’t look better some few hours later, when news started circulating that Modric has indeed fractured his fibula and was facing a lengthy 8-12 weeks recovery period. While the exact info on his recovery is yet to be revealed, as Modric is about to undergo further examination, this awful news means Croatia will have to go through the upcoming qualifiers climax without it’s classiest player.

Conspiracy theory:
But it’s just that, theory, though I’ll still give it couple of lines. We know we lost Eduardo to an awful injury some 18 months ago, and now yet again a Birmingham player managed to hospitalize another one of our most prized assets, this time in the shape of Luka Modric. That’s two, arguably most important players of our national team, mauled down mercilessly in an year and a half period. Though the magnitude of injury is, thankfully on Luka’s behalf, incomparable, the timing on this one left us all disappointed and angry. If not a little paranoid, all things considered. Yet putting aside everything, all we can do is wish our little man a swift road to recovery. Get well soon. Oh and a word of advice for Corluka and Kranjcar: call in sick for the Birmingham fixture.

Witch hunt:
I can’t explain how mad I got while watching the Man Utd vs. Arsenal game yesterday, when the home crowd did its best “Justice League” impersonation and booed every time Eduardo came in contact with the ball. The same crowd, which sees it’s own heroes do what Eduardo did against Celtic, yet their heroes aren’t singled out and persecuted like Eduardo is/was, but instead sung praises every time they nick the goal for their beloved club. Hypocritical boos sprung forth by double standards the responsible body has put forth. Either ban absolutely everyone who tries to “cheat”, or do absolutely nothing and let the nature of the game take its course. This way, the only injustice done is to those who are actually caught diving. How? Well they have been trialed, found guilty and punished while their “diving” colleagues somehow escape the witch hunt, while still performing under the spotlight of the world’s brightest footballing theater, the Premiership. There’s no “setting an example” here. Just have the common curtosy to treat everyone the same. At least then you’ll have something to feel righteous about.

Tags: Croatia, Eduardo, Luka Modrić, Modric

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Comments

By ivan | August 31st, 2009 at 11:22 am

Tough break for our Luka (no pun intended). Hopefully he will be back for the two 2nd place playoff games. It is a bit of a setback for us but in my opinion we will be fine in the midfield. We are deep with quality creative midfielders. It will be interesting to see what Tottenham do before the transfer window closes Tuesday. I wouldnt be supprised to see Kranjcar move to the Spurs. With Kranjcar in his final year of his contract his Transfer Value is only 8mill (a bargin since Niko can sign with any team come January and Pompey will recieve nothing for him).

As far as the “Diving” issue …. Im a big fan of our Brazilian Croat but it was a dive. I have no problem with him getting a 2 game champions league ban. Its time for Fifa to step up and once and for all get rid of diving in the sport. I understand what Mario is saying though, everyone does it and it isn’t fair to single Eduardo out. Diving needs to be stopped, every player who dives should get suspended. 2 games for first offense, 5 games for second etc. We will continue to see diving untill Fifa gets serious about stopping it. Its bad for the sport. Here in North America I always hear about soccer being a “sissy” sport because players fall down with the slightest contact. I have stopped watching the Italian leauge because of it. Players get a little contact and they fall down like they been shot, roll around for 5 minutes, get sent to the sidelines and 2 seconds later they are back on the pitch running at full speed. It needs to be stopped.

Posted from Canada

By Lovel | September 1st, 2009 at 1:37 pm

Didn’t see the tackle, but thats terribly unfortunate. I still think we should beat Belarus and we can draw with England. This timing reminds me of Igor Tudors injury while playing for Juventus before the 2002 World Cup in which we were matched up with Italy.

By Mario | September 1st, 2009 at 2:47 pm

@Ivan: True, we do have a good crop of creative midfielders. Though looking at it now, hardly anyone of them (Kranjcar, Sharbini, Rakitic) has any experience playing a CM, keeping in mind Modric’s work rate and the amount of pitch he covers defensively. Most of our “backups” are natural AM’s with tendency to drift in from the left. We’ll see how Bilic copes with it soon enough.

As for Eduardo, well today he was officially banned, and I’ve no idea what to make of UEFA anymore. There’s a lot of people saying UEFA has “opened a can of worms”, and that’s about as good a comparison as any. I agree of course that diving should be banned and exterminated from the game in whole, but I don’t think UEFA has the balls or means to do this the right way. Banning Eduardo was more a case of retreating under pressure then it was demonstrating a firm hand. By my account anyway.

@Lovel: It wasn’t a bad tackle, just an awkward one. It was more the fact that Lee Bowyer was on the other end that got us all up our feet. And I agree, 4 points from the next 2 fixtures sound like a solid result. Igor Tudor? Wow, haven’t heard that name in a while Lazy bloke that one, no matter how talented he was.

By Kevin | September 1st, 2009 at 3:15 pm

Kranjcar to Tottenham official today. Pretty excited about this move, I’ve wanted to see him at a bigger club for awhile now. Modric being out really pisses me off. It could be a huge loss, or it may not make much of a difference. I hope for our sake its the latter. Injuries kill me.

Posted from United States

By ivan | September 1st, 2009 at 6:37 pm

Yes Niko to Tottenham. Thats 3 Croats on the same EPL team (that has to be a record). From all reports the transfer fee was between £2m-£4.5m and Niko signed a 4 year deal. Everton was also in the mix for Kranjcar but Kranjcar decided to go to the Spurs. It will be interesting to see where he fits in once Modric comes back. Another last minute move was Klasnic going to Bolton. Hopefully Klasnic can make an impact there, he was very disapointing at Nantes in France.

@Mario… Yes we have a lot of attacking midfielders on the national team. For that reason alone i think its imperative that Vukojevic be among the 4 midfielders. He is less attacking minded then Kranjcar, Rakitic or Srna. I think Bilic will go with 2-4-4. …. Even though Pletikosa hasnt been our starter the last couple games, he got a bad knee injury during a club team practice. He needs surgery and is expected to miss the next 6 months.

As fot Eduardo, lets hope that this is the start of something from UEFA. I would like to see this happen on a regular basis. I was watching a hi-lite show this week and at least 5 players took simular dives to Eduardo. Its wrong to single out Eduardo and if UEFA wants to be taken seriously then they should take a look and ban everyone who is found guilty of diving.

Posted from Canada

By Sol | September 4th, 2009 at 2:59 pm

And so we all have our mortal enemies before the WC.

Our best players were being held prisoner in Madrid. Some have managed a jailbrake now and are back on the playing field. Some of them all still stuck in jail (van de Vaart and van Nistelrooij most particularly).

Well, I guess at least we can be happy that they’re not braking their legs….yet.

Good luck Croatia, you deserve to win, now especially.

Posted from Netherlands