France, Croatia bring differing styles to tournament final
Talented traditional power has to contend with relentless underdog forged by hardships
MOSCOW — There has never been a World Cup final between such widely disparate teams as the France-Croatia matchup Sunday.
France is an established soccer power, playing in its third title game in 20 years. With a population of 67 million, it has sent 204 players to the World Cup since 2002, the most of any country. And its national team players’ transfer fees are worth more than $1.2 billion, collectively.
But they are aware of the game’s import.
“The trophy is so close that we want to touch it,” French midfielder Blaise Matuidi said. “But before touching it there is still 90 or 120 minutes, and we will have to put everything on the line. I think that this is the game of our life.”
Croatia wasn’t even an established country, much less a soccer power, a generation ago. With a population of just more than 4
million, it is the second-smallest nation to make a World Cup final, and the players on its team are worth $339 million.
All of which gives Croatia the advantage, defender Dejan Lovren said.
“We love to be the underdogs,” he said.
Croatia is decidedly that. It does have a huge advantage in one area.
“Our mentality,” Lovren said of a mindset and toughness that were forged in a civil war through which many of the players lived. “War, all these things, and even now the situation is not the best. It’s unbelievable how many talents we have in sports.”
That character has been on great display here, because if France has yet to be beaten in Russia, Croatia has refused to lose.
Both teams won their groups, but in the knockout stages France rallied to beat Argentina, then shut out Uruguay and Belgium.
Croatia, meanwhile, trailed in all three of its knockout games before winning each in extra time or in a penalty-kick shootout, making it the first team in World Cup history to win three straight extra-time games and the first to overcome three deficits en route to the final.
That also means Croatia has played 360 minutes in the knockout rounds, the equivalent of one more full match than France, which also had an extra day of rest between its semifinal and the final.
Given the speed and physicality of a French attack led by Antoine Griezmann, Kylian Mbappe, Olivier Giroud and Paul Pogba, fatigue could be a problem for Croatia.
France’s defense has proved difficult to break down. It gave up one goal in the group stage, then struggled a bit with Argentina in the final 16, giving up goals just before and after the intermission to trail for the only time in the tournament.
Meanwhile, Gareth Southgate and Roberto Martinez are looking for ways to motivate their squads for the third-place match between England and Belgium on Saturday. For Southgate, it’s about continuing the maturation of his young England team. For Martinez, it’s about salvaging “that winning feeling” despite the disappointment among players and fans of a team that had been a fashionable pick to win it all until it failed to score against France.