July 16, 2018 — Croatia’s World Cup feat sent most football oracles and talking heads into tantrums about heart, grit and tantrums about “underdogs.”
They should’ve admitted they haven’t been paying attention.
The build-up to the World Cup final crescendo included a flood of high-profile columnists and jabber-fest football TV roundtables labeling Croatia as “underdogs.”
Their arguments were myriad, from Croatia’s diminutive size to its football federation’s history of graft.
The term underdog itself comes from the barbaric ages of the 18th-century when dog fighting was still acceptable. The losing dog would inevitably end up beneath the winner, birthing the phrases “top dog” and “underdog.” Only later did America’s Christian values of humility and toil merge with sports to transform “underdog” into a byword for an athlete or team that surpasses expectations.
But in Croatia’s case, expectations were too easy to surpass; they were set too low.
The arguments for why Croatia was an underdog betrayed an ignorance on the part of the prognosticators.
Croatia wasn’t an underdog.
Size Doesn’t Matter
If population determined athletic prowess, China and India would place top five in nearly every sport.
Listing Croatian’s 4 million people as a “wow” factor and calling it a “small country” is tantamount to going out to dinner and asking the waiter, “How tall is the chef?”
HNS And FIFA Share A Moral Compass
Mentioning the Croatian Football Federation’s rampant corruption without also noting FIFA’s own troubles ignores an important bit of context and unique perversity. One can’t consider Croatian football’s questionable moral fiber a negative factor when the sports own governing body regularly faces corruption allegations.
Lackluster Sporting Infrastructure
Claiming Croatia doesn’t have the football infrastructure of a bigger nation ignores this entire region’s eight-decade history of producing high-caliber athletes.
The former Yugoslavia churned out exceptional national squads, clubs and players across several sports at an astounding clip, all thanks to direct state investment and social engineering.
That infrastructure remains, albeit in a lackluster state in some parts of the country. The often politically-manipulated sports fervency lives on as well, continuing to manufacture both athletes and unity — as Maršal Tito intended.
These Are Pros
Croatia’s squad was not a ragtag group of weekend warriors from a pub league.
These are lifelong professionals nourished by the country’s youth-hungry development system then sold off to better-equipped clubs when they plateau.
They then continue to develop, get filtered and play at the highest levels of the sport.
Economies Don’t Matter
Let’s say a World Cup overlaps with a global recession. Does every participating country’s squad get analyzed through the prism of a dilapidated economy? Or does having a lackluster economy only matter when all other semi-finalists are well-off?
Once again, if GDP, median income or GDP-to-national debt ratio mattered, the global sports hierarchy would look radically different.
There Was One Underdog
To my fellow Croats and bandwagoneers: I get it. You want to romanticize this run because nobody stops to think about Croatia more than once a decade. Those of us paying attention aren’t too surprised though.
Here’s the deal: The nation’s soccer apparatus creates these sorts of players with some regularity – moral arguments about “how” notwithstanding.
As a result, Croatia had a very good squad in Russia – arguably great thanks to some unexpectedly stellar performances by Vida and Lovren.
The core of this Croatian national has been the same for almost a — the latest additions being Ante Rebić and Ivan Strinić. Only one thing truly changed.
All this group of players needed – all it ever needed – was a manager who made it all click. A succession of gaffers tried. None succeeded before Zlatko Dalić.
Croatia’s run — and statistically dominant performance at the final — can be attributed to Zlatko Dalić, who tinkered without philosophizing. He let this squad get out of its own way, and motivated them with humility and steadfastness. It’s managing 101 at its finest.
Dalić is the only true revelation in all this.
