DOHA, (SONNA) — Anyone who says that the play-off for third place should be gone away with because nobody wants to play it, would be well advised to watch a replay of the entertaining game produced by Croatia and Morocco on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
Croatia were the well-deserved winners after first half goals from Josko Gvardiol and Mislac Orsic gave them a 2-1 lead to repeat their third-place finish from 1998, and the reactions from both teams and fans show that the result of this game did matter a lot.<\/p>\n
Both coaches named competitive sides, with Luka Modric and Ivan Perisic starting for Croatia, while Sofiane Amrabat, Hakim Ziyech, Youssef En-Nesyri and Sofiane Boufal gave Morocco a familiar looking line-up.<\/p>\n
It was completely different from the cagey 0-0 draw when the two teams kicked off the tournament almost a month ago, with Morocco keeper. Yassine Bouno almost put a clearance into his own net under pressure, before two quickfire goals made it 1-1 before 10 minutes were on the clock.<\/p>\n
Croatia opened the scoring with a free kick that went straight from the training ground to the pitch, with Perisic heading a free kick across goal for Gvardiol to score with a diving header in the seventh minute.<\/p>\n
Two minutes later, Achraf Dari took advantage of the deflected ball off Modric after Hakim Ziyech’s in-swinging free kick, making it 1-1 for Morocco with a free header.<\/p>\n
Both teams were playing with relative freedom and control from end to end: Modric’s effort had Bouno saving and scrambling to clear from Perisic, while at the other end Achraf and Ziyech combined for Achraf’s cross to just evade En-Nesyri.<\/p>\n
Croatia retook the lead in the 42nd minute after Morocco failed to clear their lines after a move involving Modric and Lovro Majer broke down.<\/p>\n
The ball fell to Mislav Orsic, who curled the ball in off the post from an angle using his instep and left Bono stranded.<\/p>\n
The Croatians started the second half strongly, with Orsic’s shot deflected into the side netting and Majer’s cross deflected away from the onrushing Kramaric.<\/p>\n
Kramaric had to leave the match with a muscle problem, while Dari and Jawad El Yamiq also limped off for Morocco as the game and the tournament took their toll, with the match becoming scrappier as a result.<\/p>\n
With five defenders now sidelined for Morocco, Amrabat had to drop into the back four.<\/p>\n
Source: Xinhua<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" DOHA, (SONNA) — Anyone who says that the play-off for third place should be gone away with because nobody wants to play it, would be well advised to watch a replay of the entertaining game produced by Croatia and Morocco on Saturday night. Croatia were the well-deserved winners after first half goals from Josko Gvardiol […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":411079,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-411078","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411078"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":411080,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411078\/revisions\/411080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}