Croatia and Mali are playing a World Cup international friendly match on Saturday and the game starts at 10 am ET and is live from Gradski vrt City Garden in Osijek as the team prepares for Brazil and the WC starts up in South America in a couple weeks and the Croatian team is in the same group as the home nation.
Team Croatia gets to open the World Cup with Brazil and that match will be on Thursday June 12 as the tournament starts and Group A will be the first matches. Mexico and Cameroon are the other two in that group and the loser of this first game will have a tough task at advancing. The group stages will be tough this year for a number of nations, including the USA, as they have Germany, Portugal and Ghana on their schedule. Luka Modric is a centerpiece player for the team and he comes in after winning a title with Real Madrid after they won the Champions League trophy this season.
Croatia manager Niko Kovac has been working his team before the friendly and he knows they will get started early with the first game of the tournament. Croatia comes in after pulling a draw with Switzerland in March in their last friendly and that was against another team that will be in the World Cup competition. The same goes for the next matchup with Australia the week before the tournament and that will be another good test for the club. Croatia came in over Iceland and that was in a playoff and now the team is looking to get some momentum heading into Sao Paulo for the Brazil opener. Croatia has not had the best run with just three wins in the last 10 and this will be a chance for the team to gain some confidence against a nation that will not be in the World Cup.
Croatia struggled in the group set and then played against the Icelandic team and had a 2-0 win the second leg to advance and now the team has the Australian team coming after this friendly. The team had a nice run years ago and Mali comes in after a loss against Guinea and they did not make it into the World Cup and other games on Saturday include Portugal against Greece, Albania against Romania and Norway taking on Russia. The US is in the group of death with Portugal, Germany and Ghana, while other big matchups include England and Italy, the Ivory Coast and Japan as well as France and Honduras in the first round,
Check here for the Croatia and Mali live coverage for the World Cup friendly match.
