Croatia

Croatia gained independence from Yugoslavia in 1990 and in that year the Croatia national football team was founded.

The team’s first qualifying campaign was that for Euro 1996 when Croatia managed to make it to the final tournament. They successfully qualified for the European Championship thrice and in 1996 and 2008 reached the quarterfinal.

The World Cup qualifying campaigns ended successfully thrice and the 1998 World Cup came out to be the most glorious when the team finished third and Davor Suker became the top scorer.

Some interesting tidbits about the team are that it is the only one which was ranked 125th in the world rankings and moved to the third position and that Croatia managed to play in the qualifying campaign for the World Cup 2002 and 2006 and reached the finals without being defeated.

Today Croatia is ranked 9th in the FIFA World Ranking.

The team’s most eminent footballers are Davor Suker, who is the top scorer (45), and Dario Simic, who has the most caps (100). Slaven Bilic, a former Croatian footballer, guided the team from 2006 to 2012 and Igor Stimac is the head coach today.