The Argentine national team fears the stubbornness of their Croatian counterpart as the two teams meet today, Tuesday, at Lusail Stadium in the semi-finals of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.
Argentina reached the semi-finals for the sixth time in their history after beating the Netherlands 4/3 on penalties after they drew 2/2 in regulation and extra time last Friday. While the Croatian national team reached this stage after a spherical adventure in which they knocked Brazil out of the tournament as they drew goalless in regular time in their match last Friday, before the excitement continued into extra time which vomited into time of the Croatian national team. team tied 1/1 In the last minutes, both teams resorted to penalties, which eventually smiled at the comrades of star veteran Luka Modric.
This will be the third meeting of the two teams in the World Cup and the first in the playoffs, as they previously played in the group stage of the 1998 World Cup in France and the last World Cup in Russia in 2018.
The two teams traded victories in their previous matches with Argentina winning 1–0 in the first match and Croatia taking a big 3–0 win in the other match.
Zlatko Dalic, Croatia coach, is looking to lead his team to repeat this historic victory for the second time in a row, stressing that he intends to repeat the method he used in the previous match to stop the Argentine magician Lionel. Messi.
The Argentina national team expects its star Lionel Messi, having raised his goalscoring tally in the current version of the competition to 4 goals, to become the second in the list of scorers in the 2022 World Cup, together with the Frenchman Olivier Giroud, with a difference of one goal behind the Frenchman Kylian Mbappe (leader).
The Croatian national team, which for the third time in its history participates in the golden square of the World Cup after the editions of 1998 and 2018, wants to eliminate the other pole of football in South America by overtaking Brazil.
Croats are betting on 37-year-old veteran Luka Modric, who set a record 24 years away from the World Cup after becoming the oldest midfielder to start in a World Cup quarter-final since Germany’s Lothar Matthäus, who achieved that number at the World Cup 1998 against Croatia. The winner of this confrontation will face the winner from Morocco and France tomorrow, Wednesday, in the final match at Lusail Stadium next Sunday.
