The subterranean corridors of Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium late on a July night in 2018 were a great place to be if you were Croatian. Not so much if you were English.
As the players who had just ended England’s World Cup dreams for another four years filed past and out towards the team bus, they sang their own version of a very famous song.
‘It’s not coming home, it’s not coming home,’ Luka Modric and his team-mates sang. ‘Football’s not coming home.’
They meant it, too. Irritated by what they perceived as the superior attitude of the English, Croatia’s march towards a final that was ultimately to be lost to France was walked to a drum beat of satisfaction.
‘The context is really important, you know?’, Slaven Bilic, once a successful Croatian manager himself, tells us from his home in Split. ‘But it was definitely a thing in 2018 and it didn’t help England. I was there with ITV and I remember us talking about it. I spoke to a few of the players and it had motivated them a little bit. It had been presented in Croatia as the England players were not respecting us.’
This is where Bilic feels it’s important to make a distinction. The former Everton and West Ham defender played 44 times for his country and was manager when Croatia inflicted another agonising defeat on the English, at Wembley 19 years ago to end the Euro 2008 qualifying hopes of Steve McClaren and his team.
Croatia celebrate beating England in the 2018 World Cup semi-final in Moscow
England had gone ahead through Kieran Trippier’s early free-kick but goals from Ivan Perisic and Mario Mandzukic dashed their dreams
Slaven Bilic knows the Anglo-Croatian relationship better than most, and masterminded his nation’s win at Wembley to ensure England did not qualify for Euro 2008
So he understands the complexities of the relationship between the two nations who will meet for the ninth time in competition in Dallas on Wednesday.
‘Like I said, you have to know the context,’ Bilic explains. ‘It’s not from the English players’ mouths. They are not stupid. They play this game. They know you don’t go round publicly belittling Andorra or Estonia or whoever it is. You show respect.
‘But the thing is that it’s the media and maybe some of the fans that Croatian people hear it from. On a daily basis, the Croatian media is translating what happens and what is said in England. Whether it’s the Premier League, the national team or whatever. That doesn’t happen the other way round.
‘England is a powerhouse nation so we knew about the song they sang – “it’s coming home” – and we knew that the journalists were saying that England would win it.
‘And you know what? We have had a song too. It said we were going to be champions. But I bet that song didn’t make it into the pages of the Daily Mail, did it? That fundamentally is the difference.’
Nevertheless the rancour ran pretty deep after that game in Russia. Modric himself, in the current squad at the age of 40, said after the game that England ‘need to respect the game more and be more humble’, while three years later – before the teams met in the Covid-delayed group stage of Euro 2020 – he was on the front foot once again, this time calling the English media ‘arrogant’.
England won that one by a single Raheem Sterling goal at a quarter-full Wembley but Croatia have had their moments against England.
Bilic was manager on that wet night in November 2007 when his emerging team beat England 3-2 as McClaren stood helpless under an umbrella on the touchline.
Raheem Sterling celebrates after scoring the only goal when the teams met at Euro 2020 at Wembley in front of a quarter-full Wembley
It was revenge of sorts for the ‘Wally with the Brolly’ match which ended Steve McClaren’s England reign
I ask now whether, given his relationship with English football, he has ever had pause to feel remotely bad about what happened. Croatia had, after all, already qualified before the game even started.
‘I would lie if I said so,’ he says with a laugh. ‘I had even played with some of those England players. I played with Rio (Ferdinand) at West Ham and played against others. We knew each other and respected each other but we played for Croatia and wanted to make our fans proud and make a statement as a team.
‘I felt for Steve. I saw the “Wally with the Brolly” headline. Would I have done it? Would I have held the umbrella? No, but I have met many people in football and Steve McClaren is one of the good people. And a top coach. They didn’t lose the game because he did that.
‘And one thing stands out apart from the victory and the pride. The behaviour of the English players was unbelievable. They lost like gentlemen, you know? I told my players to learn from it.
‘They lost everything that night and knew they were going to be slaughtered. Not for an hour, not for a day but for life. But they were so professional. They congratulated us. It has stuck in my mind. (David) Beckham, Steven Gerrard, Frank (Lampard). Amazing.’
Croatia face England as underdogs in Dallas but their FIFA ranking of 11th identifies them as a threat to Thomas Tuchel’s team.
Bilic, 57, has watched this season’s Premier League with interest and indeed the way Tuchel has assembled his squad for America.
‘I was talking to my friends and saying it’s still a great league but I don’t remember many games that were really exciting to watch,’ he says. ‘It’s suddenly become so pragmatic, so negative. I know there’s great pressure. You must get results. But, come on, it was much better before.
‘One thing stands out apart from the victory and the pride. The behaviour of the English players was unbelievable. They lost like gentlemen, you know? I told my players to learn from it’
‘I was talking to my friends and saying the Premier League is still a great league but I don’t remember many games that were really exciting to watch’
‘The coaches have to deliver every time and so they go safe. Let’s try to play without exposing ourselves. And the logical way to do that is by long balls, second balls, throw-ins and set plays.
‘I am impressed by Thomas Tuchel. He is a great manager but this is his first international job. I have to applaud him because he has made some brave decisions. He didn’t call up the players the majority of coaches would have called.
‘But he has decided he wants the team to play a certain way, like a Premier League team. Nobody has done that before and nobody knows if it’s going to work. And I am not sure. I really am not sure.’
Having last managed West Ham nine years ago, Bilic is regularly linked with a return. On one occasion he turned it down.
‘Yeah, once it was on me but I don’t want to talk deeply about that,’ he says. ‘Everyone knows it’s my club and always will be.’
Bilic turned some offers from TV to work at this World Cup in America and instead will watch it at home. The coach who elevated Modric from the fringes to the centre of his team 18 years ago, Bilic thinks the former Tottenham and Real Madrid star can still have an impact at the World Cup.
‘I am not saying this because I am in love with him but because he is the maestro,’ explains Bilic. ‘He has the ability to dictate the pace of a game. Very few players are like that. Andrea Pirlo was the same. He was ageing like wine. As he got older he got better. It’s the same with Luka.
‘He always finds space. It will be interesting against Declan Rice and Elliot Anderson and maybe Jude Bellingham. Powerhouses who can run all day. Is he going to make them play slower? Maybe.’
And this, Bilic feels, will be the key to the opening game of Group L in Texas. He expects England to dominate the ball but for Croatia to have their moments. The only time Tuchel’s England have played teams in the world’s top 20 – Senegal and Japan – they have lost. ‘If we score it could become tough and very nervy for England,’ he says.
Bilic elevated Modric from the fringes to the centre of his Croatia team 18 years ago
Can Modric throw a spanner in the works for his old Real Madrid team-mate Jude Bellingham?
‘Everyone knows West Ham is my club and always will be’
Moreover, England will arrive burdened by great pressure. It was always thus. This is not an arrogant group, but then the 2018 squad wasn’t either. Gareth Southgate took that team to a semi-final meeting with Croatia on the back of humility and collective will. The motivation of that Croatia team was clear, nevertheless, and it will be the same on Wednesday.
‘The pressure is always on England and we do know this every time,’ says Bilic. ‘You have the strongest league. England is producing unbelievable quality players. Based on history you are definitely not favourites, but your league is amazing. You won the Conference League, the Europa League and you were in the Champions League final. And it’s not as though there are no Englishmen in those teams. You are dominating in club football and it goes back 20 years.
‘So that makes you favourites every time you come to these tournaments and yes it doesn’t always help you. There is a big pressure on Croatia but the country is rooting for them. If they don’t play well, they will kill them in the media. But right now it’s all support.
‘I remember times in England when there was lot of talk before games about scandals and non-football things and this and that. The pressure can be too big for them. We have seen that.’
