First Touch ’26 - Croatia

First Touch | World Soccer · Dec 15, 2025 · 15m

Small but mighty, Croatia are the ultimate World Cup overachievers. In this World Cup Capsule, David Gass tells the story of a national team less than three decades old that’s already reached three semifinals and one final—an absurd record for a country of under four million people. We trace how Croatian football grew out of the Yugoslav era, from Hajduk Split and Dinamo Zagreb’s “Eternal Derby” and the legendary Torcida fan culture to independence, a brand-new domestic league, and a meteoric rise from 125th in the FIFA rankings to a third-place finish at France ’98.

From there, we relive the…