This is True Croatia!

Croatia smashed Spain 35-27 in a playoff for the 5th to 8th place.

That what they owed us from the game with France, our handball players returned in the game with Spain, with interest. Current world champions had to admit to Cowboys that they were the best in this sport. For their victory and eight goals difference, Croatia proved again that we play the most beautiful handball. Due to that, we can only feel sorrow for Balic and his team for not being, as they should, in the quarterfinals.

Mirza Dzomba because of his injury was not on the playing field, so from the first minute in the standard line up of the team was Vedran Zrnic, and Drago Vukic played instead of Niksa Kaleb. The first attack ended with a goal of exceptional Ivan Balic, which brought us to lead. He scored seven goals and he carried the first half of the game.

In the first ten minutes, Balic hits six goals, and Spain returns with four seven-meter line goals, and Alilovic, who entered the game instead of Jerkovic for that purpose only, successfully stopped one of them.

Until the 8^th minute the result was even and after that Spain ran away with +2. Thanks to magic of Balic and goalkeeper Jerkovic, we succeeded in neutralising their advantage till the half of the first half. Our attack got wings and apart from jovial Balic, Vori woke up at the line and in the 20^th minute we came to the lead, it was 10-8. Playing with wings we did not have in the game against the French, in the last ten minutes of the first half made work. Zrnic and Vukic scored two goals each, and after one goal Balic gave, we were in the lead 16-12 at the end of the first half. An exceptional Jerkovic got eight defences.

 The second half Cervar starts with Dominikovic who got only few minutes in the end of the first half. Croatia goes on with good and attractive handball, and two Vori’s scores increased our lead to +6. To the Spain, the German duo-referee gave the fifth seven-meter line goal, but Jerkovic defended successfully. Lackovic, who had troubles with his hit in the first part, wakes up later in the game, and his cannon ball, which we missed so badly in the game with the Franch, hits five scores till the end.

Everything was as planned till the 40^th minute when the first excluding happened at the game, Vori had to go out, and after that in the attack Dominikovic was excluded, too. In the 43^rd minute, we were on +8, and then the Spain took 6-1 and came to 25-22. The game became vague, but ten minutes to the end, our relaxation stopped and Jerkovic defended two balls in a row. We watched the best handball in the world, again.

The world champions seemed lost in the game with Croatia, which just played games with them. Two minutes before the end, Cowboys had fun and it reached its climax in the great combination in attack, Lackovic and Balic with perfect Vukic’s zeppelin. We took the ball from the Spain in the last attack, but Balic did not go forward. He threw the ball far away to the spectators, and the result was 35-27. Jerkovic had 15 defences; the best shooter was Balic with 9 scores, Vori with 6, and Vukic and Lackovic with 5.

This victory, apart from prestige, got us to qualifications for the Olympic Games in Peking. In the case that we were not among the first seven, we would have become the European leaders in Norway in order to take part in OI.

Croatia plays for the fifth place with the better in the game Russia-Island on Saturday at 16:30 hours.

Petar Metlicic, the captain: -I am mused, if we had shown just half of this, we would have been the one who would warm ourselves now, not the French. We wanted to be fair, and it got back at us. I want to say that we are not history, so we are not finished yet. That was our bad day, and this competition system does not take it. We were more eager for victory, and they were not more tired than we were. We just wanted to buy ourselves out for the fall out. I think that German and Poland will play in the finals, as you know why referees pushed the home team, but the Polish has deserved it.

Slavko Goluza, the selector’s assistant: -We showed that when it was hard and when nobody counted on us, we were able to get back. The most important thing is that we got the qualifications for the OI. We got our self-esteem back. Travelling and changing the hotels worn us out so I do not know how shall we play on Saturday. It shows that the German subjected the whole competition to them.