Three months ago England and Croatia left the same World Cup. On Saturday in Rijeka they met again, and the Croatia England scoreline showed how differently the two have taken their exits. The angle comes from World Soccer Talk’s note that no beaten World Cup finalist had ever lost by seven at home.
Croatia 0, England 7. Harry Kane scored inside eight minutes, and England were four up by half-time. Kane and Bukayo Saka both scored twice, with Jude Bellingham, Anthony Gordon and the substitute Morgan Rogers also on target, and Kane’s pair took his record England tally to 89. It was the kind of night that happens to small nations, and Croatia have not been a small nation in football for the best part of three decades.
The numbers are brutal. It was the heaviest defeat in Croatia’s history, beating a 6-0 loss to Spain in September 2018, and it made them the first former World Cup finalist to lose by seven goals on home soil. Before Saturday, no visiting side had ever scored more than four against them.
That 2018 precedent is the real story. The 6-0 in Spain came less than two months after Croatia’s run to the World Cup final in Russia. Eight years later, the pattern has repeated within weeks of another World Cup. This summer Croatia finished second in Group L and went out to Portugal, 2-1, in the round of 32 in Toronto. Cristiano Ronaldo scored a penalty and Gonçalo Ramos struck late to win it, the same Ramos who has since become Portugal’s answer to the Ronaldo question, and Croatia had a late Joško Gvardiol equaliser ruled out for offside. Zlatko Dalić stepped down after the exit, and Slaven Bilić took over. In this Nations League window Croatia beat Czechia 2-1, then lost 4-1 in Seville and 7-0 in Rijeka, conceding eleven goals in two matches.
Luka Modrić was there for all of it. He won his 200th cap at the World Cup against Panama, and on Saturday he was back in the starting line-up after being rested in Seville. Afterwards he said that for the first time in his national-team career he felt “ashamed”. Bilić, who described a side in transition as the golden generation fades, was blunter still about what the result demanded of everyone involved, apologising to the fans and to the children in the stands.
England took the opposite road out of the summer. They went out of the World Cup in the semi-finals to Argentina and finished third, a tournament that will be remembered as another missed chance. In Rijeka they looked like a team that had used the disappointment rather than been flattened by it. Gordon’s goal was his fourth in his last four England matches, and Thomas Tuchel and his players called it a complete performance. Earlier in the week, after the squad had swum in the Adriatic, Tuchel had warned them against slipping into holiday mode. They did not.
It is worth keeping the result in proportion. This is the Nations League, not the World Cup, and an ageing Croatia could not provide an elite test. England had already beaten Croatia 4-2 in the World Cup group stage. The examination that matters comes next: Spain away in November, against the world champions who went on to beat Argentina in the final and who put four past Croatia on Tuesday. If England can do to Spain even half of what they did to Croatia, Saturday will look like the start of something. If not, it will look like a good night against a team in decline.
For Croatia, the question is harder. Jutarnji List told its readers the country had become San Marino, which is unfair to the result and true to the feeling. A golden generation rarely ends with an announcement. It ends with a run of results that nobody believed possible, and then one that nobody can explain away. Croatia have had their 6-0 and now their 7-0. Bilić’s task is to make sure there is not a third.
Sources: beIN Sports, The FA, World Soccer Talk, Sky Sports, ESPN, Goal, LiveScore, UEFA, Bolavip, VAVEL.
