Courtesy: UEFA.com


Perica proud of Croatian achievement

Friday 5 December 2008

by Elvir Islamovic from Zagreb

Croatia coach Mladen Perica believes just playing at the first UEFA European Under-21 Futsal Tournament is a "historic success" and hopes his squad will learn from the experience.

Daunting challenge
Having pipped the Czech Republic to the finals on goal difference, Croatia will take on hosts Russia in their Group A opener in St Petersburg on Monday, before facing Italy and Slovenia. And Perica, nicknamed 'Štrla', is aware that will not be easy. "There is no doubt that Russia, the hosts of the tournament, and Italy, are the main favourites in the group," he told uefa.com. "But, from our perspective, Slovenia are very good too. We will battle with Slovenia for third place. We have already played against Slovenia twice in the last season and we won both matches, but they played without their best player then and we are a little bit weaker now. It will not be easy, that's for sure."

'Anything can happen'
With that in mind, Perica is reluctant to pile expectations on his squad. "Just to play there is a huge success for us," he said. "It's a historic success actually. We will not have any pressure in Russia and anything on top of that will be another success. But, I haven't said that to my players. I told them that we are not going there on holidays, that we can cause a sensation. We can be surprise of the tournament. Anything can happen in those matches."

Spain held
He added that his players are up for the challenge. "We have already proved that we are capable of a surprise," Perica said. "We drew 2-2 against a very strong Spain side in a warm-up and that's a miraculous result for us. It will be a great thing to play against such strong teams as Russia and Italy. We can learn something from those opponents."

Defensive strength
Perica has built his team from the back. "Our biggest advantage is a good defence," he explained. "But, we are lacking in attacking play. We have to improve that. Our biggest strength is Mate Bugarija and 18-year-old Dario Marinoviæ, who was probably the best player in recent games. Every point in Russia will be like a huge victory for us. We have reached our capacity; we can't do much better than this. In the last two years, we have achieved great success for Under-21 futsal in Croatia. If we could improve something, it would be our offensive play."







Posted by Luca Ranocchiari --> luca.ranocchiari@futsalplanet.com