Croatia, a fishing ground for talent

Croatian football is booming. It is a small country (just over four million inhabitants), but with a passion for baseball that exists in few places. The level goes up every year and that has led the big leagues to look more and more at the young players trained there. The best example is in Spain, with Deportivo Alavés.

In 2018-19, as part of their international expansion plan, they acquire ownership of NK Istra 1961, from the first Croatian, with a triple objective: to bring the footballers to whom Alavés B is too small, to serve them as a preliminary step for young players from other markets (America or Asia) and to train Croatian footballers. In all three points there have been good results. Young Spaniards have gone there (Dani Iglesias, Antonio Perera), they have developed local talent (they sold Rocco Zikovic to Salzburg for 1.5 million plus 2 for objectives at the age of 16, the most expensive sale in history in Croatia with that age) and they have just hired Japanese Taichi Hara (22 years old) for Alavés after he played for Istra since last January. In addition, with good sports performance: they were cup finalists and maintained the category this season.

To learn more about this project and Croatian football, there is no one better than Mikel González (Bilbao, 1987), current director of NK Istra. Sergio Fernández, Alavés sports director, signed him from Eibar five seasons ago, to give grassroots football a boost. “In Croatia, very young players are constantly being projected to First. In second Croatian, the regulations require you to line up at least three U-20 starters in each game. First, there is no such law, but the young player is exposed early in professional football because clubs need to sell to be economically profitable. Croats are very powerful physically from an early age, that allows them to adapt quickly ”. A bet on the young people that already curdles in the absolute Croatian: Gvardiol, Bradaric, Ivanusec …

Mikel González knows perfectly the Croatian team that will play against Spain. “I like it more individually than as a group, anyone on the list could play in the Spanish First Division. In this European Championship they have had a lot of discontinuity in the game ”. As the greatest virtue of Dalic's, he considers that it is a team that “dominates you, submits you because technically they are very good, with long possessions due to the talent of their three midfield players and with vertical players on the outside.” The weak point believes that it is “in the defensive phase, after loss they are not able to press and recover quickly, they become long and suffer in transitions”.

In 2018 they were runners-up and González believes that “the starting eleven may be very similar to that one, it is a high-level selection that will make things very difficult for Spain.” Respect for the rival, although optimism for the selection of Luis Enrique: “Spain has many options to pass if it is able to impose its idea of ​​the game and is right up front, it must defend itself with the ball and long possessions, preventing its rapid transitions,” he concludes.