Four years ago, Croatia surprised and reached the finals of the World Cup, and at the competition in Qatar, they did not disappoint and reached the quarterfinals. On the eve of the match against the national team of Brazil, coach Zlatko Dalic and captain Luka Modric said that they will do everything to advance to the next round of the competition.

Zlatko Dalic: “Brazil is the best, but we will try to win”

“There is no better motivation than playing in the quarter-finals with Brazil, everyone dreams of this match, we know what Brazil means in the world of football, we have nothing to lose.

We have to do our best, be a worthy opponent, but don’t forget that Croatia is one of the eight best teams in the world. Croatia is a small country, it is good to succeed in two World Cups, our ambitions do not end there, we will try to win tomorrow.

Brazil is the best team in this World Cup, danger is coming from everywhere, we have to not leave any spaces, if we open up the game we will have problems. But when they lose the ball, they have problems, we have to take advantage of that.

What if I could dance with my players as Brazil coach? They have their own way of celebrating, they are united, they rejoice, they have character, these are their traditions and this is their right. Is that disrespectful? I don’t know, I wouldn’t want my players to celebrate like that, but they have different cultures and they like to dance.

We have a new team, 18 new players that were not there four years ago, we cannot compare. We have very good players, but in 2018 they played for more prestigious teams and we had a team that played together for ten years. We need time to build, to get into the top eight teams in the world is already extraordinary.

This team has yet to show what they can do and I think the World Cup is a fantastic opportunity. It is important to recover after extra time against Japan, there will not be many changes against Brazil” – Zlatko Dalichquoted by Agerpres.

Luka Modric: “Let’s hope that tomorrow we will change the tradition”

“It’s probably the biggest match, against a big favourite, they’re always favourites, and what I’ve seen confirms my opinion. But we should not be satisfied with reaching the quarter-finals. We will play our football, we will make every effort to represent our country as best as possible,” Modric said at the press conference.

It is true that we have played against Brazil several times but without success. We hope that tomorrow we will change the tradition! Brazil has great players in midfield, defense and attack. We will have to be very aggressive in defense, play at a high pace, try to control them, stop them.

Fatigue? We will see, every match is unique, we have psychological strength and some stability in extra time, our last match gave us confidence, we know we can do it again.

I can only repeat what I said before, now I am not thinking about my future, I don’t know how long I will play for the national team, I am 100% focused on this World Cup, after it we will have time to think about the future” – Luka Modrichquoted by Agerpres.

Croatia and Brazil will meet in the first quarter-final of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar. The match at the Education City Stadium in Doha will start at 17:00 (Romanian time) and will be broadcast in LiveBLOG format on HotNews.ro.