“Suddenly, and out of nowhere, had come Dalic” — Luka Modric
October 2017 and Croatia face the last two qualification games for the World Cup in Russia. Ante Cacic’s team top Group I but only goal difference is keeping them above Iceland and only two points separate the top four countries: Croatia, Iceland, Ukraine and Turkey. It’s very much up for grabs.
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Croatia had lost 1-0 in Turkey in September just as they had lost 1-0 in the away game before that in Iceland — to a late, painful goal. Domestically the mood was sceptical. But next Croatia had Finland at home. They expected three points. Those would cement the lead in the group and given Iceland had a tricky trip to Turkey, the anticipated victory over Finland would leave Croatia with a sure route to qualification.
On the night, however, not only did Iceland win in Turkey, Croatia conceded another last-minute goal to Finland. It was Croatia 1-1 Finland. It was Iceland top. “It was a colossal blunder,” Modric said.
It was certainly not the way Modric had hoped to mark his 100th cap. Croatia now had one game left and, effectively, first place and automatic qualification were gone. Worse, Croatia’s last match was in Kyiv and Ukraine were level on points with them. Croatia might not even make the play-offs. Davor Suker, the great player who became president of the Croatian Football Federation (HNS), had to act.
“The atmosphere in the dressing room was depressing,” Modric wrote in his autobiography. “In the evening, Davor Suker sat down with several of the more experienced players and told us he had decided on replacing the manager. The next morning, we learned that Ante Cacic was no longer head coach. Zlatko Dalic was his replacement. I hadn’t met Dalic before.”
Modric was not alone. Dalic had spent the previous seven years working in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and before that in Albania, so although he had played for 17 years in Croatian domestic football — from 1983 to 2000 — had managed three clubs, been briefly an assistant to the under-21s and held significant contacts — including Suker and the influential Mamic brothers, Zdravko and Zoran, from Dinamo Zagreb — Dalic was hardly an obvious choice in 2017. Plus, he was given one game and 48 hours to make a difference. Suker called it “shock therapy”.
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What Dalic was not given was a contract, nor did he insist on one. “When I got the chance,” he said, “I didn’t have time to think, I just headed to the airport.”
In a room at Zagreb airport, Dalic spoke to the players as a group for the first time. Then they boarded a flight to Kyiv. Croatian football was up in the air.
The national team, soon to be in a World Cup final, had no vision of such a future. Croatia had gone out at Euro 2016 in the first knockout round to Portugal after fans had fought among each other at the Czech Republic game; they had failed to get out of their group at the 2014 World Cup. Then there were those Mamic brothers and the shadow of corruption they cast over the game from Dinamo and the HNS. The Dinamo-Hadjuk Split rivalry is a piece of internal geographical tensions and when Modric testified at the Mamic court case in Osijek regarding the transfer fee from Tottenham to Dinamo in 2008, he was lambasted. “In the course of a day, I became the most hated person in Croatia,” Modric said.
In addition, there had long been stories of camp stresses — Modric and Mario Mandzukic, for example, had barely spoken to each other since the 2014 World Cup. Now Dalic, a 50-year-old who had not won a cap and who had left his last job at Al-Ain in Abu Dhabi nine months earlier, stood before them. At the airport. “The situation,” he said, “was very bad.
“But after that gathering, everything went better. I told the players I believed in them, that’s when they started believing too. I insisted only on togetherness. I believe the turning point was this statement when I first assembled the team at the airport.”
Charged with finding order from chaos, Dalic had no time to restructure tactically. Instead, he focused on changing attitudes — towards one another. He knew that for players over 30 such as Modric and Vedran Corluka, this could be their last chance at World Cup qualification.
“When you enter a dressing room full of players who have a settled life and existence, the egos burst in all directions,” Dalic would later explain. “I told the players that we all have to put the ego aside and dedicate ourselves to the group. It was not easy, but the players helped me; some knew it was their last chance and they supported our common goal.”
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Dalic, Modric said, “filled us with confidence. The atmosphere in the team changed radically.”
There was a tactical instruction, too, to block Ukraine’s full-backs and Modric was relieved of some defensive duties. It worked. In eight second-half minutes, former Leicester City striker Andrej Kramaric scored two. Croatia had made it to the play-offs.
Dalic was lauded. But still, there was no contract, and there was even some uncertainty as to whether he would lead the team for the play-offs against Greece four weeks later. When it was confirmed, Dalic steered Croatia to a soaring 4-1 home win in the first leg. Modric said he “could feel something new happening”. The second leg was 0-0.
Croatia had made it to the World Cup with a manager without a contract. “Something special was taking place,” Modric said. “Suddenly, and out of nowhere, had come Dalic. Now everything was falling into place. People believed in us once again.”
Far away in northern England, David Rouse was monitoring these developments. Rouse is a former Bury and Macclesfield Town goalkeeper who became a coach at Manchester United and QPR before being offered, in late 2014, “an adventure” in the UAE. Al-Ain were looking for a new goalkeeping coach. Their manager was Zlatko Dalic.
Rouse and Dalic spoke on the phone and Rouse moved to the Gulf. He encountered a coach he describes at different points as “meticulous”, “intense”, “private” and “pragmatic”. Another term Rouse uses about Dalic — and it was in connection to the Ukraine game and the Greece play-offs — is “problem-solver”, as in: “It didn’t surprise me he did well; Zlatko’s a problem-solver.”
Rouse, at Stoke City since 2019, worked with Dalic for two years. Rouse also knew Marc Rochon, a Scottish data analyst who had been at Portsmouth before moving to Al-Ain. Rochon continues to work with Dalic.
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“It was a big gamble,” Rouse says of the Ukraine game. “It could literally have been a one-game ticket for him, knowing how Croatia can be. Marc went with him and I remember asking what the contract was. He told me they hadn’t got one — ‘Zlatko’s just gone in and said he’ll do it and if we make it to the play-offs and get through then we’ll sort something out’. He and all his staff did that.
“There’s a lot of corruption in Croatian football… the Mamic brothers and Dinamo Zagreb. At the time, there was a bit of a cloud over Croatian football. So Zlatko coming and saying it’s not about the money was quite refreshing I think. The national team should be about national pride. I thought: ‘That’s brilliant, that’s the man I know’.
“In Emirati football, while they want a foreign coach to bring in his way, they want it done in an Emirati way if you know what I mean. So you’ve to be flexible. The number of British coaches who gone out there and lasted six or eight months… it’s because they’re inflexible. Zlatko was detailed and intense, as I said, but he was pragmatic.
“He’s not a man of many words. Off the field, he’s quite private. But on the pitch, he’s very intense, he attacks everything. He had a lot of staff from Croatia and myself from England but he would take all the tactical and coaching work. The support staff were there literally to support the sessions. He’s very hands-on and meticulous with it. In the UAE, I don’t think the coaches were as detailed. Zlatko was modern, more akin to what I was used to in the Premier League.
“That was one side, the other was his man-management. It was excellent. I’ve worked with great man-managers, the likes of Harry Redknapp and Neil Warnock and Zlatko was able to do that.”
The internal politics of UAE football saw Al-Ain’s board change twice while Rouse was there. That brought inevitable instability and when Al-Ain lost the 2016 Asian Champions League final to South Korea’s Jeonbuk, relationships deteriorated. Within two months — January 2017 — Dalic was out. (His replacement was Zoran Mamic.)
“He managed it with a lot of dignity,” Rouse says. “There was a lot of pressure. Other coaches would complain, but he never did. He just dealt with the problems, even at the end. We got to the Asian Champions League final, missed a penalty, were the better team over two legs; but our players had a dip after that. There was pressure on Zlatko to leave — they can be quite mercurial. The way he dealt with that, he was magnanimous, walked away with his head held high. It was another side to him. He could have been a much bigger personality if he’d wanted to be, but his ego was always secondary to the team. I loved working with him.”
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Uncertainty in the UAE was preparation for what Dalic would find in Croatia. After Greece, he did receive a contract to 2020, but when Croatia lost a warm-up to Peru in Miami in March 2018, some inside the HNS questioned his position. The Ukraine and Greece results had enhanced Dalic’s credibility, but it did not bring him authority.
“In America, after the Peru game, they (HNS) wanted a change,” Dalic would say. “Fortunately, there were smart people who stopped it… I know more than some people think, I know they called the players after the Peru defeat.”
Dalic had publicly challenged senior members in his squad after the Peru game. It was a bold move and one Modric did not like. But Dalic remained in charge for the Russia World Cup.
Born in 1966 in the old Yugoslavia, Dalic was a defensive midfielder. His town, Livno, is now in Bosnia-Herzegovina and its team, Troglav 1918, are in Bosnia’s third division. While playing locally, Dalic was spotted by the legendary Yugoslav goalkeeper and coach Vladimir Beara and recommended to Hajduk Split. It was 60 miles away and a family story is that Dalic’s father Ivan used to cycle to Hajduk matches.
Dalic began at Hajduk in 1983 and had three separate spells there via clubs in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro. His playing career spanned the fall of old Yugoslavia, Croatia’s declaration of independence this month 30 years ago and the Balkan wars. At Euro ’96, the new team’s first tournament, Croatia lost to Germany in the quarter-finals but two years later, Croatia exacted revenge at France ’98. They defeated Germany 3-0 in Lyon and although a semi-final loss to France followed, Croatia won the third-place play-off against Holland. At home, they were hailed as the “Bronze Generation”.
Dalic was in France as a supporter but had started his coaching qualifications in 1994 while still a player. He ended his playing career at NK Varteks in Croatia and began coaching there. In 2003, Miroslav Blazevic — Croatia’s manager in France — took over. Dalic assisted for two years as a coach and sporting director and when Blazevic left in 2005, Dalic was the successor. He thought he was on his way.
He moved to Rijeka but a strong start to the 2007-08 season petered away and they dropped from second to fourth. Dalic was sacked. “It suited me, my ego grew,” he said. “But it hit me fast. That rapid decline was a great school for me. I was wrong in my relationships with the players and towards the media. Then I got fired, the only one in my career. I was very ambitious so I thought: ‘Who will replace me?’. It was my third year of coaching. I experienced a shock.”
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He moved to Albania, back to Croatia and then to the Middle East. He was 41 when he left Rijeka and 50 when he got Suker’s call. Along the way, he said, he mellowed — “At the beginning of my coaching career, I may have wanted to achieve something with shouting and aggression, but over time, I realised that this is not the best way… my experience from Asia has taught me to solve everything by talking. I am the one who decides, but I have to explain to them why I am doing something. If they see that I know something and I can help them with that knowledge, that is the only way I can get them to accept me. The formula is: knowledge and friendship.”
This particularly applies to international level, when players join up temporarily. It is why he had said at Zagreb airport: “I insisted only on togetherness.”
In Russia, near Saint Petersburg, Croatia gathered at a camp called Woodland Rhapsody. According to Modric, Dalic consulted regularly with him, Mandzukic, Corluka, Ivan Rakitic and other experienced players. It was a knitting process. As Modric said: “The central element of the coach’s job is to create good morale in the team. In those few days, the players are together. What is needed is to establish good chemistry in the dressing room, choose a formation that is the most suitable and motivate the players with a positive approach. Dalic proved to be very successful in this. The team felt his positive energy. That’s why the players followed him.”
The priority of togetherness — “zajednistvo” — led to a dramatic act just five days into the tournament. Dalic sent home a key striker, Nikola Kalinic. Kalinic had scored the second goal in the home play-off against Greece. Once of Blackburn Rovers, Kalinic was at AC Milan. He said he had a sore back and refused to go on as a substitute in the first game of the World Cup against Nigeria.
It was a statement from Dalic, and another example of bubbling Croatian volatility. Rouse was watching. “If Zlatko has old-school things, it’s how he wants people to be within the team ethic,” he says. “He’s forward-thinking with analysis, but hearts and minds is a big thing. The best coaches bring people together and galvanise a squad. If you just know the tactical side, you’re pushing water uphill. Building a culture where everybody knows their role and agrees to sets of behaviour is vital. It didn’t surprise me when he did that with Kalinic.”
This was with Argentina on the horizon. But Croatia won that match 3-0 and vindicated not only Dalic’s decision on Kalinic, but his overall approach. Modric remembered the squad were given a day off afterwards, but none took it: “The gym was packed. Never in the 14 years wearing the chequered shirt have I seen so much self-initiated individual work.”
Croatia had changed. Squad harmony and consultative management were taking them to the World Cup final. Some of this does Dalic no favours and plays into the idea that this is “Modric’s team”. Before meeting England in the semi-final, for instance, Dalic suggested a switch to a 4-4-2 diamond formation to get Mateo Kovacic into midfield; he was considering omitting Ivan Perisic. Modric and others were not so sure. They thought Perisic could expose England’s probable 3-5-2. Dalic listened. Perisic played and scored the equaliser.
When Mandzukic scored the extra-time winner against England, Croatia were in the final and Dalic had surpassed the achievement of Blazevic’s Bronze Generation with his “Silver Generation”.
He invited Blazevic to the final, where eight of those who had started against Finland in Cacic’s last match, started against France. Croatia lost the final, but they had become a team.
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The welcome home, when an estimated quarter of the country’s four million people were on the streets of Zagreb, was interpreted by some as an act of unification as well as celebration. Stipe Pletikosa, once of Spurs, called Dalic “a sociological master”. Dalic talked it down: “I’m not a magician, I’m just doing a job.”
He was awarded a contract extension to 2022. Yet old doubts re-surfaced quickly. Within a fortnight of the final, Dalic was saying of the HNS in a television interview: “Nobody defends me. They don’t need to defend me. I will defend myself.” It seemed he might leave.
But he stayed. Others left — Mandzukic, Ivan Strinic and goalkeeper Danijel Subasic retired from international football, and Rakitic followed suit soon after — and when the Nations League format began with a 6-0 loss to Spain, HNS eyebrows were again raised. Even last November, despite having qualified for the Euros by winning a group including Wales and Slovakia, Dalic was telling his superiors at a pre-match press conference: “If they think I am not good enough, let someone else take over.”
He has stated a desire to manage a club in one of the “big five” leagues, though the one club Dalic has been linked with consistently is Fenerbahce. They currently have no manager or sporting director and just one of many headlines in Turkey this week was: “Zlatko Dalic is on the agenda again in Fenerbahce.”
For now, he remains in charge of Croatia, who face England at Wembley on Sunday and Scotland at Hampden Park on June 22. At 35, Modric endures. He produced a sprightly, inventive hour against Belgium in Brussels a few days ago. He could be the best player at Wembley and Hampden Park, make no mistake. Dalic watched the Champions League final and thinks Croatia’s role on Sunday may be like Chelsea’s.
But this is Croatia, and planning is fraught. Kramaric, 29, with 20 Bundesliga goals for Hoffenheim last season, has caused some fresh unease with his public declaration that not only should he be in the starting XI but that he should pick his position, expressing a desire play as a deep-lying forward — “even the grandmothers from the village know what my position is and what I play in the club”. Dalic may not have found this helpful.
Then there is a generational separation that Dalic and Dejan Lovren have commented on. Nikola Vlasic, 23, Josip Brekalo, 22, and Josko Gvardiol, 19, were not in Russia, but they are contenders for Wembley. “A change of generations has taken place and true togetherness needs to be rebuilt,” Pletikosa said, ominously.
Given Dalic’s emphasis on togetherness and Modric’s appreciation for it, this could be a problem for Croatia. Fortunately for them, it is one Zlatko Dalic has solved before.
(Top photo: Quality Sport Images/Getty Images)