High Five for a Fresh Start

November 15th, 2009 | by: Mario | Comments Off

Despite nicking a few decent results in recent times (a draw with Portugal comes to mind), football’s minnows Lichtenstein proved to be nothing more than than a shy sparring partner to a mixed lineup of “Vatreni” that Bilic had come out with. Croatia came up with a convincing 5:0 victory, putting one past the visiting goalie as early as in the first minute of the match. Coach Bilic introduced some new faces, notably (Mate) Bilic, Gabric and Bartulovic.

The one with the familiar last name stole the show though, netting two times and setting up Eduardo two times for the Crozillian to tap in. It was nice to see Eduardo back to his scoring habits, especially due to his impending Arsenal trials as his teammate Van Persie seems to have picked up an unfortunate lengthy injury. Back to Lichtenstein, Drago Gabric, the former Hajduk Split prospect, also had a decent game, supplying Bilic with a nice assist for that fast-but-not-quite-Guinness opening goal.

Get your highlights while they’re still fresh (a.k.a. active):

All in all, a decent showing in front of a nicely packed Cibalia stadium in Vinkovci. But speaking of crowd, well apart from confirming that there’s other venues than Maksimir to play in, we’ve also confirmed that the crowd is at least as intolerant (that’s a kind word considering the kind of chants our people cheer to nowadays) as the one that gets to see Bilic Boys on a more regular basis. All we do with this kind of chanting is give credibility to those categorizing us as extreme nationalists. But though it is Sunday, I’m not about to turn this into a sermon, so let’s get back to the footy side of things.

And what exactly have we learned from this friendly?
Well there’s not much you can learn from a friendly, is there? You try a few solutions but it’s not the real deal unless there are points at stake and motives aren’t in question.
That said, it’s nice to see some new faces introduced to the team. While the core of the team will pretty much stay the same for the next qualifying cycle, bringing in fresh motive and competition will do good to enrich the atmosphere around the team. And Bilic might just have a few more faces at disposal after Drazen Ladic’s U 21 selection successfully overcame the 1st of two major obstacles thrown their way in November.

I mentioned in the previous post on how a couple of players had been moved from the senior side to help out the U 21 cause. This paid off at once, as Rakitic immediately made an impact, scoring a winner in a narrow 2:1 victory away at Cyprus. The result is all the more important as the only defeat our youngsters suffered so far was against the same opponent back in June, and it keeps us well within the reach of group leaders Slovakia, whom we incidentally face on Wednesday. Keep at it Ladic Lads*.

*Bilic Boys. Ladic Lads. Hell yeah.