Is time up for the Croatian national football coach?
Croatian national football team is in a serious crisis, it’s place at the next year’s European Championships is in doubt after defeat against Norway yesterday. That is the situation which Croatian Football Federation president Davor Šuker did not expect. After the defeat in Oslo, he said that the goal is to qualify for the championships in France, because “Croatia must be there”, reports Index.hr on September 7, 2015.
Šuker did not disclose how secure is the position of the national team head coach Niko Kovač. At the press conference after the match, Kovač said he will not resign and that Croatia is now more important than anything else.
However, Šuker said that the Executive Committee of the Football Federation will meet in a few days for its regular meeting and will discuss everything that is going on. In other words, Niko Kovač’s position is not safe anymore and he could soon disappear from the Croatian football.
“Position of the coach in all national teams always depends on the results. We know what it means. When we qualify, everybody is happy, and when we do not qualify for the European Championships or the World Cup, then we have to make certain decisions. I am not thinking about the coach at this moment, we will know more on Wednesday”, said Šuker and added: “We have to do an analysis of everthing that happened. Where we were in April, where we were in June, and where we are now. We know that Norway has to play against Malta and Italy, so chances still exist.”
Kovač took over Croatia in early 2013, and through additional qualifiers managed to go to the World Cup, where Croatia embarrassed itself, but the Croatian Football Federation was not particularly upset. Everything was going according to plan until Baku, when the place at the European Championships started to slip away. Now they could decide to oust Kovač, who has been publicly and repeatedly criticized by Zdravko Mamić as well, which is usually a very significant sign.
