Great news for the national team as we picked up a very talented new player that will make our team stronger. He also just moved to the Bundesliga where he will play for Schalke. http://www.jutarnji.hr/sport/nogomet/clanak/art-2007,6,23,,79631.jl ajde ajde idemo. pozdrav svim hrvatima ovdje! bog ljudi
Yes, we are rather curious about him really...Curious enough to pay €3m for a 19 y.o players at least. So he opted for Croatia the same day he left Switzerland? Smart kid!
I really don't know why we have our youth national teams when we can simply send scouts around the world searching for players with names ending with -ic.
Yep, he knew what he was doing. Probably made the decision a while back and then played undecided in front of the media until the Schalke contract was signed and one foot on the plane. Anyway that's quite a Swiss team you guys are building there, first Petric and now Rakitic. These are bitter days for our national team - first Kuzmanovic to Serbia and now Rakitic to Croatia. I'm not really mad at them for choosing the country of their roots, I'm mad at them for representing us first at the youth level. It's a waste of time and resources for our football association (apparently the development of such youth players costs our association EUR 15,000 annually.) Have fun with him, and please let us be for a while... (I'm sure there are talented players in Austria, Germany or Australia)
I don't see where the problem lies he is croatian, and feels croatian. his parents are from croatia, and he speaks our language. besides if it came down to that are we really croatian then too? we all live in diaspora here, but we are loyal to our nationality and that makes us croatian. o how would that be any different with rakitic?
Hey it's not the players fault that they're parents left their homeland, or even their parents' .. u can't be bitter over how a player has feelings to his background. and croatia unfortunately is a country that has half it's population in croatia and roughly the same number of people outside of the country. we are a small nation and need to look for help
If you read carefully I'm not bitter about him "feeling Croatian" - I'm bitter about him putting on our jersey, even at youth level, and wasting our time and money. FIFA really should introduce some kind of financial compensation for the other association. If you feel Croatian, then please feel like it from the beginning. So are we.
i totally agree with u on that the money could have been invested on a more patriotic swiss player than him. but that's life, sometimes u gain sometimes u lose, and i think fifa should make changes to charge people for switching national sides by repaying the investment that went into him..
