Match starts at 20.30
--
Tomorrow Croatia will start with their friendly matches and first one they'll play against Austria. After tomorrow's game Croatian national team has to play three more games, with Iran, Poland and Spain, before World Cup starts.

Croatia is playing against Brazil for about 20 days; it will be their first match on the World Cup 2006 and players want to prove that they are capable to take point/points from world champions and leave them to fight for the next round with Japan and Australia. But, before that (taking points from Brazil) Croatia has to take serious those friendly matches, try to play on the highest level and register as many victories as possible and with that - boost their morale and self confidence for the biggest football event this summer. In qualifications for the WC 2006 Croatia finished 1st, in front of Sweden, Bulgaria and Hungary, with no losses and 2 wins versus Sweden (0-1 and 1-0). They were just great and too strong for all the teams. From that point on nothing has changed; same players and same coach will give all they can to make some results.

Now, something about Austria. The most important is that they didn't manage to qualify for the WC. In qualifications Austria was in the group with England and Poland and even if they played well, drew with England and lost only 3 games they finished third. Aware of that they won't participate on the World Cup in Germany, they started to build a new youth team for the EURO 2008 and in coming matches (also against Croatia) Austria's coach Hickersberger will try on with that youth power.

On today's training few Croatian players were exempted (Niko and Robert Kovac, Srna, Modric, Tudor and Simic), but tomorrow everyone will be in the squad, maybe some of them will start the match from the first minute. Only one Croatian player won't play tomorrow for sure: Josip Simunic, he is injured (knee).

Austria will be in full squad, but with couple of young talented players. Their probable squad will be: Payer, Standfest, Stranzl, Scharner, Iberstberger, Leitgeb, Aufhauser, Prager, Ivanschitz, Janko and Linz.

Croatia has more quality players than Austria and comparing players from this to teams, we can see that Croatians are better on every (or almost every) position. Prso and Klasnic in the front, than Kranjcar and Niko Kovac as middle fielders and Tudor/Tomas and Robert Kovac as central defenders, it sounds really good. I'm not saying this because I'm from Croatia, I respect Austria and their players and I think they'll become for two or three years the same team as Croatia is today. But now with several unexperienced players against tough and solid Croatia, it's going to be a really hard task. Away win with 8/10.

Pick won. Austria - Croatia 1:4