Kramarić bemoans bad luck with Croatia on brink of group stage elimination

Andrej Kramarić, who was joined by manager Zlatko Dalić in Croatia’s post-match press conference, bemoaned his team’s bad luck after a heart-wrenching late Albanian equaliser saw the side drop points for the second time in two games at EURO2024. With just one group stage match remaining, Croatia are running out of time to reverse their fortunes.

Croatia’s campaign has been underwhelming to say the least, taking a humiliating defeat at the hands of Spain on matchday one before struggling to break down a resolute Albania side. After recovering to a 2-1 lead after conceding early, the Vatreni let in a late equaliser, meaning they will take just one point from their first two matches.

What did Andrej Kramarić say?

Speaking at full time, Kramarić said: “This is football, this is why everyone loves football. In the last seconds sometimes you score to win, sometimes you lose. Unfortunately, today it was the latter. Before the game we knew we had to do everything to get three points but unfortunately, we only took one. Everything is still open. We are well aware we will be playing a top team in five days against Italy. Everything is clear, we have to win, we have to give our maximum and we are focused on the match.”

He continued: “We are ready for Italy, we are prepared. Football is unpredictable. If you look at Spain… they had three chances and scored three goals. If you look at the statistics we had more expected goals… today it was clear that this is how the match is going to be. We would be much happier if we hadn’t conceded the last goal, but this is not the first or the last time this will happen. We will continue to give our best as we did in this match, but we hope to be a bit luckier against Italy.”

He added that Croatia struggled to break down Albania’s low block, pointing to a lack of creativity before fortunes were reversed at half time.

“It wasn’t simple to play the first half against a low block, it isn’t simple to cross this back line,” he said. “The pitch was dry and slow which kept us from having a fast flow in the game and creating space between our lines. In the first half we couldn’t create anything. In the second half it was a different image. We were more dominant, aggressive, we opened more space, we even led, scored two times.”

He also lauded Albania’s confidence: “Albania believed in themselves and took this goal even though, according to how I see the match, we should have won in the last ten minutes.”

Kramarić closed with some dry wit. “Croatia can’t do anything the easy way, we have proved this so many times. We will try to prove again that we are good… we won’t be lacking energy, we are all aware of the situation we’re in. We will do our best to take these three points against Italy.

What did Zlatko Dalić say?

Croatia’s head coach Zlatko Dalić commiserated with his forward, agreeing that Croatia were “slow” in the first half and Albania were dangerous on the counterattack.

“We really had to put everything in to get to 2-1,” he said. “We put everything that we had, and for 45 minutes our opponent couldn’t pass halfway, then in extra time… we conceded this goal. The most important thing is that we are still alive. This last match decides everything, we have to win against Italy. Croatia do everything the hard way, but the second half was encouraging.”

He deflected culpability as he highlighted that Croatia fell back in the late stages and were punished, saying that “We didn’t tell them to draw back, we tried to push for the third goal… we shouldn’t have allowed Albania to come to us, they reacted successfully and that’s it. This extra time was very bad, we drew back, and there was the struggle again without any need to play like that.”

Croatia will face Italy in their final group stage match in what will be another difficult test as they attempt to dodge an embarrassing early elimination. Follow that game, and every fixture of EURO2024, here on FromTheSpot.