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A Brief History..

April 28th, 2006 | By: Soze | 11 Comments »

The Grand Poobah, Senhor Bob, has prompted me to read this poorly written and uninteresting piece on Croatia and our football tradition. And since Bob pays the bills, I figured he wanted me to address it…..so here goes.

The author, Igor Ilic, possibly a Croat and obviously a pen for hire with limited journalistic scope and storytelling ability, decides to take us on a poorly guided trip down memory lane. The article skims upon our 1998 EC’96 and WC’98 finishes without really evoking any kind of nationalistic pride or truly providing a glimpse into our journey to the outcomes, which for the Croatian people was iconic

“Their 3-0 win over an albeit ageing German side in the quarter-final in Lyon that summer”….ageing German side??. In 1998 Oliver Bierhoff was 30, Jens Jeremies was 24, Jens Lehmann was 29, Oliver Kahn ws 29, Markus Babbel was 26, Christian Ziege was 26…they did have two older players in Jürgen Klinsmann at 34 and Lothar Matthäus at 37. So what then would you call the Brazil team of 2006, senior citizens?? Cafu - 35, RC - 33, Serginho - 34, Ronaldo - 29, Emerson - 30. Oh, and in case you did not know this..they are the favourites. Right Euler?

Igor also decides to take us on a journey of our war time football history of the 40’s, and tries to indulge us with his knowledge of players with Croatian heritage during Yugoslavia’s involvement on the international pitch. Mistake. In this part of the ’story’, the ‘author’ provides us with a gleeming contradiction in essaying. First you tell us how many Croatian players had prominent roles in the Yugoslavian NT and then you tell us about ethnic disparity towards Croats in favour of the communist ruling Serbs. Which one is it Igor? Huh? Which one?…Were we prominent or was our talent cast aside due to ethnicity?..Whatever, I doubt anyone is even going to pay attention to your incoherent ramblings.

He provides us with empty statements and no true answers. Why was the federation established in 1912 and only played it’s first game in 1990 Igor? Why? And also, according to you Igor, Croatia only played three games during the 40’s….not true. We actually played 19 friendlies.(10 wins, 4 ties, 5 losses) Get your facts straight, hack.

The worst thing about this article is that it made it on the pages of a highly visible and influential website. If people who do not know any better read this, they will be misguided by the lack of proper information provided.

To the powers that be at Yahoo! Sports. I suggest that for your future Croatia soccer news you contact the charismatic and knowlegable Croatia blogger Soze at WorldCupBlog.com. I hope you did not pay a lot for this story, since I would have been glad to have done a better job for two VIP passes to the world cup.

Tags: Croatia, Igor Ilic, Yahoo Sports

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Comments

By Milan | April 28th, 2006 at 9:45 pm

What a dick. After reading Igor Illic’s article it amazes me how such a poor piece of writing can be placed upon a well known internet site (yahoo). In one of the sentences “they played a couple of friendlies in line with the policy of the Nazi-sponsored Croatian puppet state” it is as if Igor copied and pasted from another article that had no idea what it was talking about and changed a few words so it wouldn’t sound identical.
As you stated Soze anyone who has little or no knowledge of the Croatian football history will be easily swayed into believing this is all that Croatia has accomplished.
And finally even though I can continue to write more arguments against Igor Illic’s article, why would he state political matters into his article with how the Croatians were treated as Yugoslavs in the team which wasn’t the case.
Thank you Soze for pointing out this ridicules piece of crap that yahoo calls an article and dissecting the false facts stated in it.

Posted from Australia

By kapcro | April 29th, 2006 at 11:47 am

Mr. Ilic wishes to dismiss Croatian football achievement by claiming that Croatia “snatched” third place in 1998. Nothing was snatched it was hard fought and earned. He doesn’t succeed in his article with minimizing the fact that Croatia was third best in the world. No small accomplishment, especially for a small country. Third place in the world stands on its own merit even if he wishes to trivialize Croatia’s opponents. His historical references gloss over Croatia’s international football involvement for that period. In 1939 the Croatian Football federation was seperated from the Yugoslav Federation. On the CFF site there is a picture of the 1940 Croatian National team that played Switzerland as Croatia won the right to represent itself in Royalist Yugoslavia. There are many more sources that provide information on that period of Croatia’s football if one wanted to look for them. Croatia’s contributions to all phases of football in many countries around the globe are well documented as well as the amount of its contribution to this WC alone. To discuss the post-war involvement of Croatia in football one need only reference people such as Miroslav Blazevic (a relation of mine) and others from that period as to what went on then and the sports atmosphere that existed in the totalitarian state of Yugoslavia at the time. Croatians only made up 3% of the Communist Party in Yugoslavia and that translated to a lack of representation throughout society including sports. Croatian football achievement has produced many successes despite the turbulent political history Croatia has suffered. Croatians take pride in the football tradition of our nation at any point in history and especially the recent successes of those that wear our colors. I’m sure that as time goes on there will be more successes that demonstrate Croatia’s football capability.

Posted from United States

By Crno Gorac | April 30th, 2006 at 4:09 am

Ustase!!!!

LOL nah sorry, I havnt been pissing you guys of for a week or so. Felt you guys missed me.

Posted from Australia

By Weekend’s Best - FIFA World Cup 2006 - World Cup 2006 Blog | April 30th, 2006 at 2:31 pm

[...] Some rewrite history, others write garbage (Croatia Blog) [...]

Posted from United States

By Lyle | April 30th, 2006 at 4:57 pm

soze,

i don’t think the article wast that negative about croation football.

it WAS a surprise to most people that Croatia was a semi-finalist in France. most people did not pick Croatia to do that well.

the guy is just trying to enlighten an ignorant audience about a not so well-known country in America.

Croatia, like Serbia and Montenegro, will always considered a little guy out there on the pitch, because it is a small country… even if a really athletic country.

America loves the little guy.

Posted from United States

By Soze | April 30th, 2006 at 6:52 pm

Hey Lyle, I do not think that the article was negative towards Croatian football….just written very poorly. It sounded like the guy just repeated random quotes he may have read somewhere without doing any proper research on the matter.

WC’98 was a great feat for the Croatian NT, but this guy did not evoke any pride in the success, just sort of glimpsed over and trivialized the placing. Kapcro said it right..the achivement was hard fought and earned.

What upsets me the most is that this guy got alot of information wrong, and the story still made on the Reuters news wire for others to pick up.

Even though I am a Croat, and have to cheer against SCG by virtue, if they ever made it to third place on the world stage by merrit, I would hate to see that trivialized by hacks like Igor Ilic.

By Soze | April 30th, 2006 at 7:00 pm

Crno, cigane, where you been. We’ve missed you here.

By Crno Gorac | April 30th, 2006 at 11:46 pm

Ive been chillaxing. Its always great to come back to my Croat roots once in a while though (Even though theyre Fascist).

Peace Guys!!!

Posted from Australia

By Euler | May 1st, 2006 at 3:25 am

Absolutely right, Soze!

Brazil have a veteran aspect this year, but in every betting site I could see we are on the top, absolute favorites.

It’s a nightmare to me, but true.

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Posted from United States

By nelson | July 14th, 2007 at 3:28 am

good team

Posted from Nigeria