Lionel Messi is just two wins away from
that exclusive World Cup trophy. the
Argentine superstar has won everything
that is there to win in World football.
except the biggest prize, but he will
face a strong Challenge from Luca
modric’s Croatia in the semi-final . later
today this is Messi’s Last Dance for
Argentina and the six-time world player
of the year has scored four goals in
five games . his assist to nahuel Molina
in the quarterfinals against 2010
runners-up Netherlands was a thing of
beauty . but Argentina blew a two-goal
lead deep into stoppage time and only
prevailed the penalty shootout . they have
never been eliminated from the World Cup
after making it to the semi-finals, but
they haven’t won the tournament . since
Diego Maradona inspired their second
Triumph in 1986. now Messi and Argentina
are full of confidence and believe they
know how to get the better of the
croatians.
we always analyze the previous match and
we try to see, what we can do better and
to repeat the things. we did well to see
where we can hurt the opponent . that
doesn’t mean we only look at ourselves,
we analyze Croatia a lot , they have great
players and we know they complicate
things for a lot of teams and we know
where they can hurt us.
they clearly have players who can do
that obviously, I’m not going to say now
what their strong point is,
we worked a lot on where we can attack
and hurt them. and where they could have
a weakness, that’s what we’ve always done
and sometimes it works out ,sometimes it
doesn’t ,but that’s what our job is to do.
the fans would have surely wanted an all
South American semi-final between Brazil
and Argentina. but Luca mod reaches
Croatia at other plants Diva treni or a
gold down in extra time against the
five-time world champions in the
quarterfinals . but dug deep to bounce
back with a late equalizer and force a
penalty shootout which they won . Croatia
have never lost on penalties in the
world cup and are aiming to reach the
final for the second consecutive Edition.
they have already ended the World Cup
dreams of Neymar and believe they have a
plan in place to stop Messi . head coach
zlatko dalich also feels that reaching
back-to-back finals will be Croatia’s
greatest footballing achievement.
all right,
we are among the four best teams in the
world , that is an extraordinary success
for Croatia, it’s a great thing to be
among the four best national teams for
two World Cups in a row . however we want
more ,we are playing the great Argentina
a terrific team led by Lionel Messi . they
are highly motivated but they are under
greater pressure than Croatia. at this
particular moment in time we have
analyzed our opponent , we know how they
play we know where they want to take the
game ,and we’re preparing for them.