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THAT'S WHY WE'RE THE BIGGEST MATCH IN THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE QUALIFIERS
Sixty championship titles meet, Croatian U21 European Champion arrives. Get to know your opponent better!
As previously reported, our football team advanced through Valletta in the Champions League qualifying round with a 4-2 aggregation, with the Croatian Dinamo Zagreb being the opponent in the third round. The Croatian championship team defeated the Georgian Saburtalo in the previous round with a 5-0 overall result.
BATTLE OF THREE STARS
Our prospective opponent has won the league trophy thirteen times since 2006, and has only once finished second. Dinamo - just like Ferencváros - earned its thirty-first title at the end of the 2018/19 season - twenty-one Croatian, nine Yugoslavian gold - and placed a third star on their coat of arms and jersey.
ALMOST EVERY YEAR IN THE GROUP STAGE
The Zagreb have made it to the Champions League or the Europa League nine times in the last ten years. Last season they reached the round of 16 in the EL, where they were eliminated by Benfica after an overtime. In addition, one of their biggest successes was their 2-1 win against Arsenal on the domestic field in 2015. Before the turn of the millennium, they were even more powerful in Europe: in 1961 they were KEK semifinals, two years later they were second in the IGC, and in '67 (ie two years after our IGC success) they won it.
THEY ARE COMING WITH THE SPANISH U21 EUROPEAN CHAMPION
Previously, Dinamo was made up of players who were an important part of the Croatian national team for the 2018 World Cup silver medal: Luka Modric, Marcelo Brozovic, Mario Mandzukic, Domagoj Vida or Mateo Kovacic.
Today they play at the biggest clubs in Europe, but they still have big names in the current team. It will be worth watching the European U21 champion and finalist Dani Olmo of Spain, as well as Bruno Petkovic, who has already scored four goals in the new season - two in the championship and in the BL qualifiers.
THE MUCH-SEEN COACH
The Croatian head coach is a former national midfielder Nenad Bjelica. As a trainer, he has travelled to the Spanish, German and Austrian leagues and eventually began his coaching career with the latter. He has won the Austrian second class in 2012 with Wolfsberger, then contracted with Austria Wien, then coached Spezia Calcio in Italian Serie B, before leading Lech Poznan. He arrived to Dinamo Zagreb in May 2018 and has since won two championship titles and a Croatian Cup.
Their home turf is Maksimir Stadium in the capital, built in 1912 and can accommodate more than 35,000 fans.
WE CAN GO BACK 56 YEAR LATER
By 1963, the FTC had already met Dynamo in the Semi-Finals of the Faircities Cup. The Croatians won 1-0 in the first match in the National Stadium, and though we were still leading in the first half with Máté Fenyvesi's goal in the playoffs, the Croatians pulled 2-1 to qualify for the final.
THE MOST PRESTIGIOUS MATCH IN THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE
Interestingly enough, in the third round of the CL Qualifiers, most of the championship wins will be "matched" in this matchup. In our case, both teams boast thirty championship titles, giving them a total of sixty top-notch gold medals. These duels are closest to ours:
- Celtic-Cluj Napoca 55 - 50 Celtic, 5 first place in Cluj
- Ajax-PAOK 46 - 34 for the Dutch and 3 for the Greeks
- Club Brugge-Dinamo Kiev 43 - 15 for Belgians and 28 for Kiev
What's more, in our duel, both teams are a real trophy stack, only the Club Brugge-Dinamo Kiev duel can approach it from the list above. This makes Fradi-Dinamo the most prestigious meeting in this round.
A FAMILIAR FACE IN DINAMO
We will also have a comer: Emir Dilaver, the winner of the 2016 Fradi Championship and three-time Cup winner, is a member of our opponent. Dilaver played at Ferencváros between 2014 and 2017, then left to Lech Poznan.
After spending a year with the Polish team, they finished third in the league. He proved himself to Dinamo last summer, scoring one goal during the season and spending one of his most playing time on the field. He earned a championship title with the team.
[uredio Bosskovitz - 01. kolovoza 2019. u 08:38]