Croatia beat Morocco 2-1 in the World Cup third-place playoff on Saturday to secure a top three finish in the tournament for the second consecutive edition.
Runners-up in 2018, Croatia also came third
in the 1998 World Cup, beating the Netherlands 2-1.
Josko Gvardiol put Croatia in front after a
well-designed set-piece play. Lovro Majer lobbed a free-kick to Ivan Perisic,
who peeled away from his marker to head the ball to the middle of the box where
Gvardiol was perfectly positioned to nod the ball into the net with a brilliant
diving header.
But it only took two minutes for Morocco to
find the equaliser, also from a free-kick, as Croatia's Majer tried to clear
the ball but miscalculated his header and missed badly, setting up Morocco's
Achraf Dari, who was alone in the six-yard-box to send home a close-range
header.
Croatia scored the winner three minutes
from the break when Mislav Orsic netted a dipping, curled shot from just inside
the area that went in off the post. They held their lead through an absorbing
yet goalless second half.
The Real Madrid midfielder, 37, has yet to call time on his international career but this was likely to be his last World Cup appearance as the 2018 runners-up took third spot in Qatar following a 2-1 win at Khalifa International Stadium.
If Modric is about to bow out, a rising
star of Croatian football opened the scoring with the masked Josko Gvardiol
heading in early on, only for Achraf Dari to level less than two minutes later
for a Morocco side still fatigued following their semi-final loss to France.
A fine Mislav Orsic effort had Croatia,
well beaten by Argentina in the last four, ahead at the break and they held
that lead throughout a stop-start second half.
If this is to be the Lionel Messi World
Cup, Modric deserves more than a footnote on the tournament where he once again
led an unfancied Croatia further than some of the biggest names of the game.
His powers may be on the wane and, with no
Ivan Rakitic or Mario Mandzukic, he is helping to nurture the next batch of
Croatian talent who will look to continue to defy the odds.
Yassine Bounou, one of the goalkeepers of
the tournament, was almost left red-faced in the opening minutes as he slipped
while passing the ball out and instead came close to turning it into his own
net.
He was soon beaten by brilliance rather
than bad luck, however, with a well-worked Croatia free-kick seeing Lovro Majer
loft the ball for Ivan Perisic to knock across goal and into the path of a
diving Gvardiol, whose header was out of the reach of Bounou.
The lead was short-lived, Morocco firing
back from a set-piece of their own - Hakim Ziyech's cross unwittingly headed
over the top of the defence by Majer, allowing Dari to nod home from close
range.
After a spell with few chances, Bounou once
again had to undo a mess of his own making, this time bravely palming away a
loose ball after he had spilled a Modric shot almost straight at the feet of
Marko Livaja.
Dari's header was Morocco's only effort on
goal in the opening half-hour and it remained that way as Achraf Hakimi's
drilled cross was behind the onrushing Youssef En-Nesyri.
The Morocco forward then flicked on a
corner at the front post with no-one arriving to turn it home with the African
side starting to make in-roads as the half progressed.
Ziyech fired wide but their dogged defence
was breached soon after in superb fashion, Livaja sliding a pass out to Orsic
just inside the box and the Dynamo Zagreb player made no mistake with a curling
strike past the out-stretched glove of Bounou.
The second half became an attritional
affair as the strain of playing seven games across the tournament began to take
its toll on the two sides.
Both Jawad El Yamiq and goalscorer Dari
limped off for Morocco while an emotional Andrej Kramaric was forced off for
Croatia.
Croatia felt they should have had a penalty
when Gvardiol was clipped but their calls were turned away by Qatari official
Abdulrahman Al Jassim.
With players tiring, the evergreen Modric
ploughed on, becoming the oldest outfield player to feature in seven World Cup
matches in one tournament and still chasing down defenders in the closing
stages as he bowed out of the tournament with another medal.
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