Unknown quantity is proving his worth
IT cannot be said that his social media pronouncements are profound, yet the fact Zlatko Dalic has a mere 38,000 Twitter followers seems to say everything about the way he has crashed in on the World Cup semi-finals.
He is the unknown of the semi-final managerial quartet, a man who has taken a long, hot road through the deserts of the Middle East to stand in the path of England. The Croatia manager is not one to doff his cap to coaching royalty, though.
When Argentina manager Jorge Sampaoli failed to congratulate or even acknowledge him on the pitch after that devastating 3-0 defeat to the Croatians in St Petersburg, Dalic let his feelings be known.
‘I have never left the pitch before shaking hands with the coach of the opponent, whether I won or lost,’ he remarked. ‘I even gave him a Croatian kit before the game. Now I hope he will remember it forever.’
Puncturing the big egos actually seems to bring him pleasure, after 12 years spent trudging along the managerial low road.
‘The big guys went home and we are left with the workers,’ he declared on Monday in Moscow, where the Croatians have been acclimatising to the Luzhniki Stadium far more than England, who are using a training field near the venue for tonight’s match.
He was no less uncompromising when sending striker Nikola Kalinic home after the first game because he refused to come off the bench against Nigeria.
Amid the endless platitudes of the World Cup press conference circuit, the 51-year-old’s bluntness is a rare commodity.
‘We’re knackered,’ was his assessment after the quarter-final win over Russia. He made half-time changes, he admitted, because he had got his first-half tactics wrong.
He had by no means been the first choice to replace Ante Cacic last October, when given three days to acquaint himself with the players before having to beat Ukraine to win a play-off spot.
He had been an exile before then — building a career in Saudi Arabia and the UAE after his career in Croatia — where he managed the Under-21s — did not take off. He was feted as manager of UAE club El Ain, twice taking them deep into the continent’s Champions League.
Defeat in the 2016 final of that competition makes him the only one of the four managers with a shot at this World Cup to have been vanquished by Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors of South Korea, though he did great things with a group of moderate talent. Things then deteriorated. One disgruntled fan printed a mock one-way plane ticket back to Croatia with his name on it during a league game. He was sacked soon after.
He’s been bold these past eight months — pushing Luka Modric into a more attacking role which reaped immediate dividends and restoring Eintracht Frankfurt’s Ante Rebic to great effect. And finding a little more consistency, always the monumental problem where his nation’s team is concerned.
He’s also navigated the usual off-the-field toxicity which stalks Croatia even when they’re the talk of the football planet. Thousands of Croatians despise the national football federation — accusing it of an endemic corruption in which Modric has been implicated — and feel that success in Russia will only cement the power of malign rulers.
When the tournament is over, Modric will face a perjury trial, accused of giving false testimony in a corruption case which convicted Dinamo Zagreb kingpin Zdravko Mamic.
Newspapers in Zagreb report anti-Modric graffiti in the same squares where fans have been celebrating. In that environment, the candour and self-deprecation of Dalic helps, as does his propensity to get players running through walls for him.
‘Above all I try to have a good relationship with the players,’ he said before the tournament. ‘Not to be their “friend”, but to have an honest, open and trustworthy relationship. We have a talent to show the world.’