Cheering in Hasenheide: Croatia fans are proud despite losing the World Cup

Created: 12/14/2022, 6:30 p.m

By: Peter Loder

Around 20 Croatian fans cheered on their team on Tuesday evening.

© weaver

They were disappointed with the course of the game, the result and the premature elimination of the World Cup in the semi-finals.

And yet the almost 20 Croatian fans were able to leave the Brucker Fohlenhof shortly before 10 p.m. on Tuesday evening, proud of their homeland and heads held high.

Furstenfeldbruck

- In the Fohlenhof they had previously witnessed the 0:3 defeat against Argentina.

Since the start of the World Cup, Lenz Huber's sports bar in Hasenheide has developed into a stronghold for Croatian football fans living in the county town.

Two hours earlier, the crowds, most of whom had slipped into their traditional red and white jerseys, had sung along to the national anthem with a hand-on-heart gesture.

The fact that their heroes' clothes were arranged in the usual checkerboard pattern, but were blue, was not taken as a bad omen at the time.

Ante Bosnjak, who founded the FC Croatia FFB hobby football team more than a decade ago together with his colleague Tado Kopic, who fell ill that evening, was confident at the start: "We'll win 2-1 in extra time."

But just 30 minutes later it was suddenly quiet: the penalty whistle in Doha, more than 5000 kilometers away, shrilled through the Brucker pub.

Suddenly the battle cry voiced by the fans fell silent.

"Messi is just Messi," Bosnjak said afterwards about the Argentinian star kicker when the 0: 3 bankruptcy was perfect.

"The penalty changed everything.

The 2-0 win before the break was decisive.” Compatriot Antun Nadj agrees, but: “It wasn't a penalty, I'm angry, but that's football.”

Neutral spectators such as Bruck's former storm ace Edi Schneider looked at the defeat more soberly: "Unfortunately, the whole game wasn't exciting." What the former SCF president Marlon Cecic confirmed: "Argentina was simply better and seemed more compact." Meanwhile, Bosnjak was already counting Croatian successes in World Cup history and came to an encouraging result.

"By the law of the series, we'll be world champions in 2038."