Croatia got their 2026 FIFA World Cup campaign underway on Wednesday, June 17, with a 4-2 loss in the England vs Croatia match to one of the tournament favourites. The defeat was at least in part due to coach Zlatko Dalić’s tactical blunder, but more on that later.
Here, we look at what the loss means for the rest of Croatia’s World Cup prospects going forward.
The Formational Change That May Have Derailed the Start to Croatia’s World Cup
Croatia’s World Cup campaign began with a defeat in no small part because Dalić chose to change the team’s tactical shape for the England game in particular. Overthinking in terms of tactics and formations ahead of big games has burned coaches and managers throughout history.
Dalić has led this team since the autumn of 2017 and has generally used a 4-2-3-1 formation, which he sometimes alters to a 4-3-3. In any case, when it comes to competitive matches at least, he has always relied on a back four.
This time Dalić went with a back-three, and made very public that he would use that formation, particularly against England, reverting back to a back-four in the matches against Panama and Ghana that are to come.
The backline is likely the most volatile part of a team, tinkering with it too much can never be good. But as much as Croatian fans hate to hear this, the England match was certainly always going to be a bonus game for the Vatreni, meaning that the points needed for advancing to the knockout stages of the tournament would surely have to be collected against Panama and Ghana.
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England vs Croatia Impact
It is still difficult to say what impact Wednesday’s reality check will have on the players. Due to the fact that Dalić will almost certainly change the formation back now, it is somewhat limited what the England result will tell us about the next two games.
The one thing we know for certain, is that the Vatreni will have to win at least one of those two group matches left, while minimally getting a draw in the other.
While Croatia have managed impressive results, particularly at the two most recent World Cups, their history at the tournament overall can be described as a failure, largely due to underperforming against lesser-known opponents, who are usually from outside of Europe.
In 2002, to give just one tournament’s example, Croatia’s World Cup campaign got off to a losing start to Mexico, before they came back to rally to victory against a strong Italian side, and ultimately crashed out at the group stage, with a loss to then-World Cup debutantes Ecuador.
Panama and Ghana are both teams from outside of Europe as well, needless to say, and the Panamanians in particular are quite unknown in Croatia. In that way, sadly, history could certainly repeat itself in a bad way for the Vatreni.
Even so, judging by the performances of both teams in Ghana’s last-gasp 1-0 win over Panama, Croatia don’t deserve to be in the knockout stages of this tournament, if they don’t at least get four points from their encounters with those two teams.
On that note, Croatia’s World Cup journey might have a positive ending yet.
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