Croatia have secured a third-place victory at this year’s FIFA World Cup in Qatar, beating Morocco 2-1 on Saturday evening.
Josko Gvardiol, one of the stars of the tournament in Qatar, headed Croatia into the lead in the seventh minute at the Khalifa International Stadium but Achraf Dari brought Morocco level right away.
Mislav Orsic’s terrific curing strike late in the first half ensured Croatia took home the bronze media, the 11th World Cup in a row where a European teams has finished third in the World Cup.
Morocco, the fairytale side of this year’s tournament as the first African and first Arab team to make it to the semi-final, fought hard during the second half with some attacking football. But Croatia were able to gain increasingly more amounts of possession, and even wen they had a penalty claim disallowed in the last ten minutes of the match did not let Morocco get another goal to level the score.
“It was a great game, we still can’t measure what happened today. Only after a few days we realised we will realise how big this victory is,” Orsic said after the game.
“It was the most important game of my career and I’d like to dedicate it to my family and all the Croatian fans.”
Morocco coach Walid Regragui said he was “a bit disappointed” with a second consecutive defeat but that “they did everything”.
“Our players got very tired. We’re going to learn a lot from this World Cup and we know we’ll need to come back even stronger,” he said.
Morocco, who had never gone beyond the last 16 before this World, had signalled their intent with a spirited display against 2018 runners-up Croatia.
Source: News24 Sport, CNBC, Al Jazeera, Euro News, image from Twitter: @brfootball