Mini football figure - Croatia

Croatia

The Croatian national football team is the football team of the Croatian Football Association. The selection's greatest success to date is the World Cup runner-up title (2nd place) at the 2018 World

Cup in Russia. It also reached third place at the 1998 World Cup in France and the quarter-finals at the 1996 European Championships in England and 2008 in Switzerland and Austria.

History

After the Croatian Football Association was founded in 1912, it took another 28 years before a Croatian national football team competed at international level for the first time. This match, played against Switzerland in 1940, marked the beginning of the first phase of Croatia's international history. On 14 July 1941, the Croatian Football Association became an official member of FIFA and played several international matches, but apart from the matches against neutral Switzerland, only against countries that were allied with or under the influence of the German Reich. Croatia's incorporation into the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia after the end of the Second World War interrupted its FIFA membership and the history of Croatian international matches for several decades.

For decades, Croatian players played for the Yugoslav national football team. In the course of Croatia's independence efforts at the beginning of the 1990s, the first independent international match of a Croatian selection team took place on 17 October 1990, when a US selection team was defeated 2-1 in Zagreb. The first captain of the "new" Croatian team was Zlatko Kranjčar and the first goal scorer was Aljoša Asanović, who had given the Croatian team the lead in the 29th minute of the match. Two more matches followed until the final declaration of independence on 25 June 1991, before play initially suffered as a result of the Croatian war. Until the end of the war, hardly any home matches were played.

After Croatia gained sovereignty, it was readmitted to FIFA on 3 July 1992. The team did not take part in the qualifiers for the 1994 World Cup in the USA, but subsequently qualified for the 1996 European Championship and qualified for the 1998 World Cup, where they finished third, and established themselves among the European football nations. With the exception of the 2000 European Championship and the 2010 World Cup, the team has qualified for every major tournament since rejoining FIFA.

Due to racist incidents in the match against Italy on 12 July 2015, UEFA's Control, Ethics and Disciplinary Body decided on 23 July 2015 to penalise the Croatian Football Association with a one-point deduction in the 2016 UEFA European Championship qualifying campaign. Furthermore, the HNS was fined EUR 100,000 and must play two matches without spectators. The Poljud stadium in Split was suspended for the remaining qualifying matches.

Fan club

The Croatian Football Association HNS founded the fan club "Uvijek vjerni" (German: immer treu, derived from the Latin motto semper fidelis) in March 2008. The federation organises the allocation of tickets for international matches through the club according to a points system.

The national team is sponsored by the Croatian beer brand Ožujsko.