Ivan Perisic wants to replicate the France 98 feat with Croatia’s current squad. Croatia stormed to the semi-finals during their maiden World Cup 20 years ago with a much-celebrated team featuring the likes of Zvonimir Boban, Robert Prosinecki and Davor Suker. Convincing wins over Nigeria and Argentina mean the Balkan nation are through to the knock-out stages for the first time in 20 years.
“There has been a lot of comparison between those two teams,” said Inter winger Perisic. “They did a miracle in France in 1998. I was nine years old watching those games and dreaming about being in a similar situation. Now we are here and we hope to catch them or come close to them. We are ready to do that.”
Croatia threatened similar exploits at Euro 2008 and Euro 2016 before crumbling in the knockout stages. Perisic hopes the experience of those setbacks can ultimately serve them well in Russia.
“We weren’t among the favourites before this tournament and we didn’t deserve that anyway,” he added. “For the last 20 years we haven’t been able to achieve a similar result like we did in France. We were maybe close at the Euros in 2008 in Austria but we missed a little bit of luck. Hopefully that will turn around at this tournament. We just need to continue doing what we did so far.”