The irruption of the player of the Real Madrid Luka Modric, who scored the second of the three goals for the Balkan team from a penalty, allowed Croatia achieve a long-suffering triumph, despite the final 3-0, over malt.
The Croats were forced to resort to the presence of their top stars in the second half to break the resistance of the Maltese team.
A script that did not fit into the Croatian coach's plans Zlatko Dalic, which initially left key players like himself on the bench Modric, the athletic Sime
Vrsaljko or the interistas Marcelo
Brozovic and Ivan
Perisic.
Bet of which the Balkan coach was forced to back down at the start of the second half, after the gray 0-0 with which the Croats went to rest.
And it is that despite the insistence of the locals, the Croatian team, with the exception of a header at 14 minutes of Mario
Pasalic, who ran into the crossbar, were barely able to create clear scoring chances.
Dalic gave entry nine minutes into the second half to Luka Modric, Ivan Perisic or Josip Brekalo.
Changes that did not take long to provide greater clairvoyance to the offensive game of the Croatian team, who managed to break the Maltese “wall” in the 62nd minute with a goal (1-0) from Ivan Perisic.
The goal seemed to give new vigor to the current runners-up in the world, who in the last half hour of play made clear the distance that separates both teams.
Difference that the madridista was in charge of transferring to the scoreboard Luka modric, who signed the 2-0 penalty after 76 minutes, and Josip
Brekalo, that established in the 90 the definitive 3-0.
The result allows Croatia to snatch the first place in group H from Russia thanks to their better goal difference, after the defeat (2-1) conceded this Tuesday by the Russians during their visit to Slovakia.