Opinion
World Cup finalists Croatia are a football team forged in war
Why the seemingly unbeatable France must fear tonight's opponents
Three of the four teams that reached the football World Cup semifinals represent Western European societies struggling with immigration and integration. The fourth, and most surprising, consists entirely of local boys from a tiny country.
Croatia's success has different origins than those of its rivals: in that country, football is more than a game. It's fed a war, the nation-building that followed - and the post-victory comedown, which, perversely, may have led to its team's stunning achievement.
For a country with a population of 4.2million, Croatia is spectacularly successful at sports. Besides football, it's got top teams in handball, water polo and basketball, and Croatian tennis players are part of the global elite.
In part, this probably has to do with genetics: Croats (and their neighbours from Serbia and Bosnia) are among the tallest people in the world, and many are naturally athletic. There are thousands of sports clubs, most of them left over from the former Yugoslavia's achievement-oriented sports project...
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