Captain Bogdanović: I Don’t Know Who Will Stay if Croatia Misses World Cup

The Croatia men’s basketball team lost to Poland in their 2019 World Cup qualifier game earlier this week, leaving a big question mark on whether the team will advance to the tournament at all next year. 

Although they were the big favorite to win, Croatia lost to Poland 79:74 in Gdansk earlier this week, further weakening their chances of participating in the 2019 FIBA World Cup in China. The captain of the national team and Croatia’s best player – Bojan Bogdanović – did not hide his disappointment about Croatian basketball’s latest failure, reports Gol.hr on September 19, 2018. 

After the Croatia basketball team landed at Zagreb Airport following the tough Poland defeat, captain Bogdanović was the only player with the power to stand in front of the microphone for interviews. 

“It’s a very difficult defeat for us, now we are far from the World Cup. While there is still hope, I think we have to fight and hope for the best, although I repeat – from this perspective, China is far away from us,” Bogdanović said to Nova TV.

Croatia is currently the last in the group with three wins and five defeats – and only the top three teams advance to the World Cup. In theory, anything is still possible. But in practice, Croatia will play all four remaining qualifiers without their best players – Bogdanović, Šarić, Zubac, Žižić and Simon. Since Croatia already lost with them against Lithuania and Poland, without them, the odds have fallen even more out of favor for Croatia. 

“Every summer I hope that we can reverse something again. It has been like this for practically seven to eight years and every year, year after year, but again I hope for better Croatian basketball. Although from this perspective and especially after a new heavy defeat, it is hard to believe,” Bogdanović said.

The captain points out that he honestly believes that even without the NBA players, Croatia can get to the end, but only if they improve their approach. And what if this isn’t the case? Not advancing to the World Cup would also mean missing out on the 2020 Olympics.

“We’d practically skip two summers, which is around three years. It’s a long, long time to this European Championship and I do not know who will stay and who will not,” explained the Indiana Pacers player. 

We can only hope that the year to year frustration will not halt Bogdanović’s desire to bring Croatia a big medal in a major competition. At the 2021 Eurobasket, Bogdanović will already be 33 years old, which is a disadvantage even for the standards of Croatian basketball. This could be Bojan’s final opportunity to turn his national team dreams into reality.

 

Subscribe to our newsletter

the fields marked with * are required

Email: *
First name:
Last name:
Gender:	Male Female
Country:
Birthday:	[DD] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 [MM] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 [YYYY] 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023

Please don't insert text in the box below!