Croatia beat Morocco 2-1 to clinch third place in the World Cup when the European team topped the tournament’s surprise package at the Khalifa International Stadium on Saturday night.
This was Croatia’s second third-place finish, their first since the 1998 World Cup when they beat the Netherlands by the same score.
frantic opening
A frantic opening saw the European side take the lead after just 7 minutes when Josko Gvardiol flew a header past Yassine Bounou into the Moroccan goal following a well-worked free kick.
Two minutes later, Morocco restored equality when Archaf Dari reacted more quickly after a free kick from Hakim Ziyech to head home Dominik Livakovic from five meters.
The game soon settled down after the first ten minutes with Croatia looking calm and collected with the ball dominating possession with Luka Modric and Mateo Kovacic holding strong in midfield.
Morocco played on the counterattack
Morocco were happy to sit back and defend heroically and every time they regained possession they looked to hurt Croatia at half-time.
Modric came close to adding his team’s second of the night with a left-footed shot, but he was disrupted by Bonou, who saw him late but collapsed on his line to push the loose ball away from Marko Livaja to keep the score level.
Despite Croatia’s six shots on goal in the first 30 minutes, Morocco would have easily won 2-1 if Achraf Hakimi hadn’t struck his cross just behind Youssef El-Nesyri, the latter who was ready to pounce in front of goal. open.
Three minutes before the break, Mislav Orsic shot hard from the right and kissed the post on the way in. Croatia deserved to be ahead and came out better of both teams after the break.
The 2018 runners-up should have received their own penalty after Sofyan Amrabat brought down Gvardiol, but Qatari referee Abdulrahman Al Jassim stopped play to the dismay of the Croatian bench.
Seconds later Livakovic denied El Nesyri with a superb point-blank shot to maintain his team’s lead.
The Moroccan striker could have leveled the score in stoppage time, but his header went into the roof of the net and Croatia held on for victory.
This was the eleventh time in a row that a European team had finished third in the World Cup, with Brazil being the last team to beat Italy 2–1 in 1978 as the last non-European country to win the third-place playoff.
Photo credit: IMAGO / Bildbyran
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