Give me a Barcelona or a Real Madrid and I’ll win titles
HE is the unknown coach who is about to place a World Cup final appearance on the top of his CV. If he has his way, Zlatko Dalic may soon be taking club football by storm, too.
At 51 years of age, Dalic has spent much of his career working in the relative backwaters of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and was only parachuted in to the job with Croatia’s national team towards the end of World Cup qualifying last October.
But Dalic — once a defensive midfielder of little repute — took his small country to Russia by beating Greece in a two-leg play-off and has now 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 in the semi-final and made it very clear he has wider ambitions than what lies immediately ahead against the French tomorrow.
‘In the big European leagues you look for brand names and it’s all wrong,’ Dalic said of the club game.
‘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 with some managers in Europe who can manage because of their name.
‘But I always said: “Give me a Barcelona or a Real Madrid and I will win titles”.’
Dalic worked in the Middle East between 2010 and 2017 and has, indeed, won big trophies in that region.
Asked by Sportsmail if he might come to the English Premier League, he was slightly coy.
Understandably so with the biggest game of his life looming on the horizon.
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 Croatian job, Dalic refused a contract until after he had qualified for this tournament.
‘If we hadn’t won the play-off with 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 them 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 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 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 that 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,’ Dalic smiled.
‘This is extremely hard but it seems to me the harder the circumstances, the better we play football.’
With Didier Deschamps in the opposite dugout, Dalic is up against one of the coaches to whom he may have been referring earlier.
But the former Chelsea midfielder is a former big-name 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.
Throughout my career I have always taken the hardest path