Iniesta and Silva Kept Relatively Quiet After Bright Opening
As against Turkey, the Iniesta and Fabregas would often swap positions but at times Spain’s build-up play was affected by Fabregas’ movement who despite having a good first half would often find himself too close to Iniesta.
This would restrict passing options and make an already compact midfield further suffocating. Spain would end up circulating the ball without any real threat of penetration. The midfield maestro along with his former Barcelona teammate were amongst the top 3 passers of the match but their influence diminished in the second half and most of their possession was sterile.
Silva was the brightest of the three in the opening half finding pockets of space drifting inside from the right and combining well with Fabregas. To reduce his influence as the half progressed, he was marked more closely. Likewise, Nolito on the other flank too started finding it difficult to find space and time on the ball.
The two Croatian midfielders Badelj and youngster Rog were helped by Rakitic in denying space to the Spanish playmakers. The Fiorentina player made the highest ball recoveries of the night (12), the joint second highest tackles with 4, the joint-most interceptions (3) and also the most blocks(3). They were disciplined and quite impressive off the ball pretty shifting comfortably from side to side with number behind the ball preventing any balls in behind the defence.
Second Half and Substitutions
Del Bosque must have been a worried man at half time because it was the first time since Euro 2004 (10-Portugal) that an opponent had attempted 9 shots in the first half against them in the competition.
After the break, Busquets adopted a deeper position in between the two centrebacks to prevent Rakitic and Kalinic from pressing their build up play, but this allowed Croatia more time and control over the midfield. With Croatia in the ascendency, Nolito who had been kept quite was replaced by Villarreal’s Bruno Soriano at the hour mark in an attempt to regain superiority in the middle to partner Busquets with Fabregas on left of three ahead of them with Iniesta & Silva.
However Rakitic had been bypassed Croatia’s tactics and wasn’t too much of an influence going forward anyway. It seemed like Del Bosque wasn’t too eager to push for a winner even though Aduriz was introduced for Morata shortly afterwards.
Croatia were denied a suspicious looking penalty appeal from Pjaca who seemed to go down easily over Ramos’ leg and five minutes later the Real Madrid man had the opportunity to give his side the lead from the spot after Vrsaljko was deemed to have fouled Silva who was trying to reach a beautiful chip by Iniesta. Replays showed that the left back might have been pushed by Aduriz onto Silva but the decision stood.
What followed was quite peculiar as Modric on the bench told Srna where his Real Madrid teammate was going to hit the penalty and it was conveyed to Subasic. Busquets upon realising what was happening went up to Ramos and informed him of the same. The defender though waited for the keeper to dive, as Modric had predicted, and went to the keeper’s right but Subasic had waited and then come three yards off his line to make a comfortable save which would prove to change the whole dynamics of the tournament.
Cacic waited until the final ten minutes to make their first substitution as Mateo Kovacic replaced Rog and Del Bosque responded with his final change in Thiago who came on for Fabregas.
