2023-06-18 21:36:00
The national teams of Spain and Croatia faced each other in the grand final of the League of Nations in Rotterdam on Sunday. The Spaniards wanted to win this competition after losing to France in the previous edition. In turn, the Croatians were finally looking for a trophy, after winning silver and bronze in the World Cup, which would be the crowning achievement of this great era of Luka Modrić, for whom it could be the last appearance in the national team. Who will achieve their goal?
Penalty kicks determine the Champions of the Nations League! A wonderful deciding eleven
The first half of this match was dramatically poor. Both teams didn’t turn up the pace and hardly created any scoring chances. In the 12th minute, after intercepting in the rival’s half from outside the penalty area, Gavi made a slight mistake. A moment earlier, after Fabian Ruiz’s cross, Dominik Livaković almost threw the ball into the goal, but fortunately the football only hit the post.
After several minutes, Croatia responded, and Andrej Kramarić could have been alone with the goalkeeper, but at the decisive moment he was blocked by the Spanish defender. Two meager but accurate headers were scored by Ivan Perisic, but they were saved by Unai Simon. The goalless first half ended with a header from Alvaro Morata.
Was the second half better? Well, unfortunately not. However, it started quite well, because Josip Juranović missed in a good position, while Marco Asensio’s and Mario Pasalic’s headers were narrowly missed.
After that, for more than 20 minutes, only Rodri’s powerful long-range strike was worthy of attention, which passed Livakovic’s goal. The substitute Ansu Fati brought a lot of interesting to the game in the end. First, in the 75th minute, the Barcelona player was preceded by Dominik Livaković, and Fabian Ruiz, lobbing the goalkeeper and defenders from 30 meters, shot slightly over the goal. Nine minutes later, the Spaniards made a good move and passed Mikel Merino, Fati had the best situation of the match, but his shot from the center of the penalty area was blocked on the goal line by Ivan Perisic.
Regular time ended with Marco Asensio’s off-target shot from the air and the goalless draw went into extra time.
It also lacked serious goal situations. Although Lovro Majer could have gone alone with Unai Simon in the 100th minute, but Nacho stopped him with a great tackle. Later, Dani Olmo hit the target from 16 meters, and Marcelo Brozović’s shot from several meters was too light to defeat the Spanish goalkeeper.
After the change of sides, Spain attacked, and although Croatia’s penalty area was churning once or twice, there were no shots on target at Livaković’s goal. In the end, the winner of the Nations League was decided by penalty kicks. Penalties, in which Croatia recently performed perfectly at the last two World Cups, while Spain dropped out of Euro and World Cup after them.
But this time the statistics could be thrown in the basket, although at least this match finally showed emotions. In the first three series, both executed penalties flawlessly, but already in the fourth Lovro Majer hit the middle so that he hit the left leg of Unai Simon. Thanks to this, the Spaniards in the fifth series had a shot for the win, but Aymeric Laporte only hit the crossbar.
Luis de la Fuente’s players got one more chance from their goalkeeper Simon, who defended Bruno Petkovic’s shot perfectly, and after a while Dani Carvajal with a wonderful “panenka” decided about the victory of the Spanish national team 5: 4.
Spain defeated Croatia on penalties (0-0, 5-4 on penalties) and became the winners of the Nations League in the 2022/23 season. “La Roja” won its first trophy since 2012, while Croatia again has to settle for a silver medal.
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