Sunday November 14, 2021
Vice world champion of 2018
Own goal brings Croatian Bundesliga trio to the World Cup
Croatia will qualify as the seventh national team for the 2022 World Cup. The 2018 vice world champion benefited from a Russian mishap shortly before the end of the game. A Bundesliga trio cheers, a professional from VfB Stuttgart even initiates the decisive scene.
With a late own goal, soccer runner-up Croatia bought the ticket to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. In the “final” of Group H, Luka Modrić and Co. celebrated a 1-0 (1-0) victory eight minutes before the final whistle against Russia due to the mishap of Fedor Kudrijaschow and caught the 2018 World Cup hosts who had come as leaders .
Croatia, which competed with the Bundesliga trio Andrej Kramaric (TSG Hoffenheim), Borna Sosa (VfB Stuttgart) and Josko Gvardiol (RB Leipzig), is taking part in a World Cup in Qatar for the third time in a row and a total of five times since its independence. Tournament. The Russians, on the other hand, will have to fight for a World Cup ticket in detention in the playoffs next spring (March 24/25 and March 28/29) with the ten runners-up and two best group winners of the Nations League in detention. This means that Russia, which had already failed in the quarter-finals on penalties at the 2018 World Cup, is threatened with missing a final round for the first time since the 2010 World Cup.
Sosa was instrumental in Croatia’s winning goal. A flank from Stuttgart hit Kudrijaschow’s knee into the Russian goal and released the hosts. Russia could not fight back in the remainder of the season after national coach Valery Karpin’s team had previously limited themselves to defending their previous two-point lead through an extremely defensive style of play. Russia had left the decisive points in the race with Croatia for direct qualification in the first leg with a 0-0 win in its own place.
Croatia is confirmed as the seventh World Cup participant thanks to its success. In addition to the automatically qualified host Qatar, the German national team as well as defending champions France, world number one Belgium and Denmark had already bought tickets to the Gulf in Europe. So far, only record world champions Brazil have qualified in South America.