The ECHO’s Chris Beesley continues his daily series of articles on Everton and the World Cup running throughout the tournament in Qatar.
Barely a month after being deemed not good enough to play in an Everton defence facing a last-day battle to stay in the Premier League, Slaven Bilic helped steered Croatia finish third in the World Cup in their debut at the tournament. Following the break-up of the former Yugoslavia and the bloodiest conflict in Europe since the Second World War, a set of newly-independent nations from the Balkans started to compete in international football in the 1990s.
Croatia had already shown they were no mugs by qualifying for the knockout stages of Euro ’96 in England ahead of holders Denmark but two years later in France they made it all the way to the semi-finals. Jamaica (beaten 3-1) and Japan (beaten 1-0) proved no problem in the group stage and although a 1-0 reversal to Argentina saw the Croats finish runners-up, they defeated Romania 1-0 in the second round.
