After the draw in Varaždin against Northern Ireland, the Croatian women’s national team will play a return game in Belfast at 20:00 as part of the 2025 European Championship qualifiers.
The national team had an official training session in Belfast. On the eve of the return match against Northern Ireland, coach Nenad Gračan touched on the opponents who will welcome them on Tuesday, October 29.
For sure, a difficult and demanding match awaits us. In Varaždin, we saw that it is a very aggressive, quick, and fast national team. We must consider that here in Belfast, where the pitch is quite fast. The conditions are different than in our country; we have to be disciplined in the tactical sense, and we must not make many mistakes. What I believe our national team can do, and the girls realized this in the first game, is to open up a lot of space behind the middle line of Northern Ireland. We should use what we can to make a positive result – Gračan said
Despite the draw in Varaždin (1:1), captain Doris Bačić believes in a good result in return and emphasizes that the atmosphere has been great since the start of the gathering.
The atmosphere is perfect, just like before the first match. We have all been very positive about these two matches since the first day we got together, and we expect a positive result tomorrow as well. There is a lot of regret for the goal conceded in the last minutes in Varaždin, but we put that behind us and turn to tomorrow. We have a common goal: to advance to the last game of the play-off – Bačić said
If Croatia wins against Northern Ireland, it will play against the winner of the Norway—Albania match.
