CROATIA COACH IS EYEING A PREMIER LEAGUE CLUB
HE IS the unknown coach who is about to place a World Cup final appearance at the top of his c.v. And if he has his way, Zlatko Dalic will soon be coming to a Premier League club near you. At 51, Dalic has spent much of his career working in the backwaters of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. He was only parachuted in to manage Croatia last October. Dalic, once a defensive midfielder of little repute, took his small country to Russia by beating Greece in a two-legged play-off and has risen to worldwide prominence by guiding his talented, gutsy team to tomorrow’s final in Russia. Dalic does not lack confidence. Brash and talkative, he spoke for an hour the day after his team beat England and made it very clear he has ambitions beyond tomorrow’s France face-off. ‘In the big European leagues
you look for brand names and it’s all wrong,’ Dalic said. ‘People get big jobs just because they were big players. But what does that mean? ‘I started at a small club. I told them straight away that a big name equals a big mistake that will cost big money. ‘Nothing was given to me on a plate, unlike some managers in Europe who can manage because of their name. ‘But I always said: “Give me a Barcelona or a Madrid and I will win titles”.’ Dalic worked in the Middle East between 2010 and 2017 and has won big trophies in that region. Asked by Sportsmail if he would come to the Premier League, he was coy. He said: ‘I can’t really think about that now because it may give the wrong message to some Croatian people when we are about to try to become the best team in the world. But maybe. Now we have to try to do something big.’ Last year, when he was asked to take the Croatia job, Dalic refused a contract until after he had qualified for the World Cup. ‘If we hadn’t won the play-off against Greece then what would that piece of paper have meant?’ he said. ‘Nothing.’ If that hints at bravado, then it appears what really drives the Croatia coach is a need to be respected and accepted. It has been a theme of his team’s World Cup campaign as his players have used what appears to be something of an inferiority complex to urge themselves on against bigger, richer nations. Dalic said: ‘Throughout my career and my life I’ve always taken the hardest path and had to fight. ‘I didn’t want to stay in Croatia, be a middling coach and live off handouts. So I went abroad. ‘We are not respected in Europe, even though Croatian coaches like Slaven Bilic and Niko Kovac (manager of Bayern Munich) have great results. I started at the bottom of the ladder and in a year I was the best coach in Asia. ‘I managed the best club in Asia. I reached the final of the Champions League in Asia. You cannot sneeze at that. That brought me huge experience. ‘I was there for seven years and it was a hard path but I believed in myself. ‘When Croatia called, I never had any doubts or dilemmas. I knew what we could do on the basis of my faith in myself and the players. ‘People like me, Kovac and Bilic, this is the proof that we know what we are about. But we’ve been underrated as coaches. ‘Now we have all shown we can achieve things and we are proud.’ Croatia will start as underdogs against France tomorrow after playing three lots of extra-time to reach the final. ‘Probably we will be the only team at the World Cup who leave having played eight games in terms of time on the field,’ said Dalic with a smile. ‘This is extremely hard but it seems to me the harder the circumstances, the better we play football.’ Facing Didier Deschamps, Dalic is up against one of the coaches he may have been referring to earlier. But the ex-Chelsea midfielder is a former big-name player who has already proved his pedigree as a coach. ‘He already has cups and I have nothing like that in my cupboard,’ said Dalic. ‘But perhaps that means I want it more and have more of a motive to win. Don’t worry... that was a joke.’ With Zlatko Dalic, it is sometimes hard to be sure.