Croatia

31 entrants predicted Croatia to win the World Cup

124 entrants are supporting Croatia

Top 10 Croatia supporters

Pos	Name	Po
1	ALAN JAZIC CANADA	103
2	crv Croatia	100
3	Scott Ferguon Scotland	98
4	Joe Strummer   Dubrovnik	87
5	SchroederE Palmy	86
5	Justin SFC	86
7	Robert Kerr Dumfries	85
7	Ivana Croatia	85
9	joe lynch   portsmouth	82
10	kezman  Zagreb, Bolivia	81

Group matches

Team profile

• Coach: Zlatko Kranjčar, 2004-
• World Cup appearances: 3
• First World Cup: 1998
• Best performance at World Cup: Third place, 1998

The Croatian national football team has played since Croatia's independence in 1990-1992 and is controlled by the Croatian Football Federation. The team played in their first major tournament in 1996 and have been a strong force in international football ever since, finishing third in the 1998 World Cup, led by Golden Boot winner Davor Šuker. They have qualified for every World Cup that they have entered as an independent nation. Between 1990 and 2004, Croatia has played 115 international games and had 56 victories, 36 draws and 23 losses. The team has been FIFA's "Best Mover of the Year" in 1994 and 1998.

Earlier history

Football was played in Croatia from the beginning of the 20th century, but before the 1990s the country was not independent. Before that, the players from Croatia participated in the teams of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1919-1939), Banovina of Croatia (1939-1941), Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945) and Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1945-1990).

For the Yugoslav periods, see Yugoslavia national football team. Due to political circumstances in Kingdom of Yugoslavia shortly before World War II, Croatian sports teams were allowed to compete under Croatian flag, so the first international of Croatia could be considered a 4 - 0 victory over Switzerland played in Zagreb on 2 April, 1940.

World Cup record

• 1930 to 1990 - Did not enter, was part of Yugoslavia
• 1994 - Did not enter
• 1998 - Third place
• 2002 - Round 1
• 2006 - Qualified

Encyclopedia information from Wikipedia article 'Croatia national football team'. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.