Croatia beat the Czech Republic 2-1 in the UEFA Nations League, League A, stage one on Friday evening. Luka Modrić opened the scoring before Adam Karabec equalised, but Marco Pašalić's late strike secured the visitors three points in Prague.
Modrić found the net in the forty-seventh minute, catching the Czech defence on the break. Karabec responded quickly, firing home in the fifty-fourth to level the score and shift the momentum back to the hosts.
And here's the thing about this match — by then you'd expect a draw, but Croatia had other ideas. Pašalić broke through in the seventy-seventh minute to restore the visitors' lead. The Czechs thought they had restored parity when Matej Radosta's effort found the net, but a VAR review cancelled the goal five minutes later.
The statistics tell the story of a game Croatia controlled without dominating possession. They registered 127 attacks compared to 59 for the hosts, and their expected goals of 1.78 versus 0.99 shows they created better chances. Czech goalkeeper made four saves, but Croatia's 144 passes into the final third told you where the pressure sat.
We had given Croatia a win in our preview at seventy-eight percent confidence, and the result followed the projection. To be fair, the visitors did not need to be flawless — they just needed to take the moments they created and hope the hosts missed theirs.
By then, Croatia moved into second place in the group with three points from one game. The Czech Republic sit fourth after their defeat, though with only one match played the table tells you very little. Cup football has its own rules, and this was only the opening chapter.
