Ivan Rakitic has said Croatia is united as never before ahead of the World Cup final on Sunday and brushed off a series of distractions around the squad, saying they have had no impact on preparations for the biggest match in the country’s history.
“This is a historic game not just for the 13 or 14 players and the squad but also for everybody who is a Croat,” Rakitic said. “There will be 4.5 million players on the pitch.
“I think that you only need to take a look at the footage coming from Croatia to see what’s been going on over the past month. It cannot be described with words, that amount of joy, togetherness, unity, pride, it’s incredible … If there was a stadium big enough for 4.5 million people it would be full.”
Croatia, who got past Denmark and Russia on penalties and needed extra time to beat England, have played more minutes than any other team at the tournament.
The World Cup final will be the 71st game of the season for the indefatigable Rakitic, who has played 55 times for Barcelona and 15 for Croatia. The night before the semi-final with England he was fighting a fever but recovered in time to play.
Rakitic brushed off concerns about tiredness and said the importance of the game would spur the squad on: “There will be excess power and excess energy, no worries about that,” he said.
“We will carry one another, we will get the energy, we know that this is the biggest game of our lives, and we want to leave the pitch with our heads held high and to be able to say we’ve done everything. We just need a little bit of luck to get the desired result,” Rakitic added.
He thought the Croatia team had “reached hearts around the world” with their run to the final, and predicted that, in addition to 4.5m Croatians, there would be “hundreds of millions of people rooting for us on Sunday” against France.
Preparations for the tournament were overshadowed by a court case against Zdravko Mamic, one of the most influential figures in Croatian football, in which Luka Modric has been charged with perjury and the defender Dejan Lovren is also being investigated.
Many Croatia fans were extremely ambivalent in their attitudes to Modric but, with the midfield playmaker now a serious contender for the Golden Ball, success on the pitch has helped heal divisions in the country over the team.
A further problem erupted during the tournament when a video was released of the defender Domagoj Vida shouting “Glory to Ukraine” after Croatia had beaten Russia.
The squad apologised and sent home the former international Ognjen Vukojevic who, like Vida, played for Dynamo Kyiv and featured in the video saying: “This victory is for Dynamo and for Ukraine.”
The Russian crowd at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium relentlessly booed Vida whenever he touched the ball in the semi-final against England. Rakitic grew prickly when asked about the incidents.
“There is not much to discuss,” he said. “I understand that your job is to find something to write about, you have to embellish things a little bit. We respect you obviously, we know that you have a job to do and our opinions might differ but that doesn’t really matter.
“There really wasn’t any kind of a scandal and we really had no bad intentions and, this whole affair with Vida, I think we have managed to put it all behind us, we are here to achieve great success on the pitch.
“I think that everybody now has this very positive image of Croatia, of our players and the way we behave and this is all that matters.”