On Sunday, the Balkan nation will play France for the biggest prize in football - Goal Croatia's Ante Buskulic tries to explain how they've got here
The pitch was small, bumpy and dusty. There were no floodlights, no locker room, and barely any grass.
But the little blonde kid from Zadar didn't care. He had a badly-worn ball. He had a Davor Suker shirt. And he had a dream.
Maybe, just maybe, if he had been in some major club's academy, with three coaches around him, with proper boots, playing on an artificial surface and changing in a five-star locker room, little Luka Modric would have lacked something; the key ingredient: hunger.