Croatia once again showed their class by defeating Morocco in a play-off to win their third top-three finish at the World Cup. As a consolation prize, Luka Modric ended his World Cup career with a bronze medal for Qatar 2022,thesportsbay.com reports.
The side headed by Zlatko Dalic came second to France four years ago, and with a third-place finish to go along with their success in their debut in 1998, they firmly established themselves as one of the best footballing nations.
The masked guy, Josko Gvardiol, headed the ball in from a well performed free kick in the seventh minute to start the scoring.
That lead was cut short two minutes when Achraf Dari headed home from a loose ball and it was game on from there.
Croatia who were bent on ending the tournament on a high note tried creating several chances and were in firm control.
Their perseverance paid off in the 42nd minute thanks to a beautiful finish from Mislav Orsic, who arced the ball over the goalie from just inside the left edge of the penalty area, the shot coming in off the far post.
Early in the second half, as Croatia sought to score a third goal against the nation that advanced to the World Cup semifinals for the first time in Africa, a deflected Orsic shot from 20 yards rippled the sidenetting.
Croatia maintained Europe’s dominance of this fixture, with European teams having now won 11 consecutive third-place games at the World Cup, Brazil’s 2-1 win over Italy in 1978 being the last time a team from another continent took the honours.
This was Modric’s 19th and last World Cup game of his stellar career. In Qatar, he became the first outfield player aged 37 or over to play in more than six games in a single World Cup.
While Modric has confirmed this will be his last apperance on this stage, the same likely applies for Perisic, who turns 34 in February. Here, both men completed three consecutive World Cups (2014, 2018, 2022) of starting every game (all 17) for Croatia. Only Lionel Messi (also 17) has started as many games at the World Cup in this timeframe.
