I'm not sure what to expect for the first game. In my opinion, I feel we are the better team, no question about it BUT we have a few question marks that need to be cleared up.
During the preparation, we've seen our team play in 4 games...Peru, Mexico, Brazil and Senegal. In each of these games we saw several combinations of starters and yet, I'm not really sure we saw our starting line-up on the field at the same time in any of the games...and with that said, we saw players being used in an experiment...out of position and mostly ineffective.
Did Dalic disguise things on purpose or were his rosters based on availability, players being healthy/injured, experiments, opponents....???
This morning I read that our attack will be tailored...Mandzukic up top, Perisic (Left) and Rebic (Right), Kramaric right behind the striker and Luka Modric returning to his regular position beside Rakitic...Badelj on the bench! I'm not unhappy to see Modric return to his original position, I think that's where he's most effective and comfortable. My question is, can Kramaric play that position and will he be effective? My guess is that Dalic wants his best players on the field at the same time, without damaging his line-up and with the hope that things will work out...Kramaric will score, Mandzukic will draw a lot of attention and Perisic and Rebic will have their duty to serve good balls with the option to slot the pass to Kramaric.
I'm not sure this will work but at the same time, I understand why Dalic may try this. He probably thinks his sacrifice is Badelj, but I honestly think the sacrifice is by not replacing Mandzukic with Kramaric and sitting Mandzo on the bench! If he did that then I'd probably play Rakitic behind Krama...cause he has great distribution in the final 3rd of the field and he can shoot and score better than Modric can....we'd get Badelj in his position and their would be less of a mystery.
I'm not sure this will happen, but its flying around today's news....thoughts?
