Euro 2024, day six
Croatia don't click, Germany broadly do, Shaqiri still has it
Hey, everyone! Three more games here, I hate writing these intros when I already wrote the rest of the newsletter first so let’s jump in.
Croatia 2-2 Albania
Started slow, grew into it, same old Croatia. But the result didn’t come.
I think we can give Croatia at least a little bit of credit in that they’ve twice “won” the xG now with just one point to show for it. But at the same time, they’ve only played well in select periods. They looked atrocious in the first half against Albania. They did a terrible job defending a fairly straightforward inswinging cross and Qazim Laçi got Albania ahead. From there, Croatia just did nothing in the first half. Plan A is not clicking at all.
They took of Marcelo Brozović and Lovro Majer at half time for Mario Pašalić and Luka Sučić. These are players who at least in theory could offer more threat arriving in the box rather than Croatia’s usual passing grind. The energy levels did improve, but they got the equaliser from more of a classic Croatian passing move finished by Andrej Kramarić, certainly not for the first time. They just produced wave after wave of good attacking football to get ahead in the second half, even if their second goal was a scruffy one. Croatia are still capable of turning it on at times. I was surprised how much they ceded control late on. Keeping the ball in late stages should be the most Croatian thing you can do on a football pitch, and they couldn’t do it. Something is definitely wrong there. They just totally switched off to concede the equaliser.
Look, were Croatia better than Albania? Yes, probably. Can I really sit here and say they deserved the three points? No. This was a weirdly sloppy performance in which they only heated up for periods of the game. It’s just not good enough. They need a big result against Italy now, and that should be much harder than this.
Albania don’t look great shakes either, and this might be a group where only two teams qualify. One would expect them to lose to Spain, and Croatia probably have to beat Italy to go through. This was a really exciting game that will now be forgotten as neither side progress far.
Germany 2-0 Hungary
That German attack, huh? It really is something. Better hope no one ever tries to match it.