Croatia’s Pletikosa: Our team’s success at 2018 World Cup improved relations with Russia

MOSCOW, June 18. /TASS, Timofei Nezhdanov/. The Croatian national football team’s success at the 2018 FIFA World Cup provided for the improvement of relations between Croatia and Russia, retired Croatian goalkeeper Stipe Pletikosa told TASS on Tuesday.

For the first time in the history of the world championships, the Croatian national football team reached the final of the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, ousting hosts Russia in the quarterfinals and then beating England in the semifinals. In the final match at the 81,000-seat capacity Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow Croatia lost 2-4 to France to become the world’s vice champions.

"I am still cherishing all pleasant emotions left after the World Cup, while people in Croatia are breathing with this victory," Pletikosa said in an interview with TASS. "This championship demonstrated the world the Croatian team’s football, we played with enormous motivation, emotions and people liked it."

"Moreover, the successful result of our national football team at the world championship was significant not only for football, but for the business as well since relations between Russia and Croatia are now improving in various spheres," he continued. "As we say in Croatia - the best ambassadors of the country are athletes."

Pletikosa, who also goaltended for the Russian football club Spartak Moscow between 2007 and 2011, praised the generation of Croatian footballers playing at the 1998 FIFA World Cup, when the national squad of Croatia reached the semifinals stage, but was stopped by France losing 1-2.

"That generation had a lot of strong personalities," the 40-year-old retired goalkeeper said. "It is worth recalling that almost each team had a player with a number 10 on his jersey, which meant that he was a super-footballer, better than the rest and was the leader, but this is not the case anymore."

Pletikosa debuted in the Croatian national team in 1999 and appeared in 114 matches before he announced his retirement in 2014, right after the FIFA World Cup in Brazil. He is the third-most capped footballer in the history of the Croatian national team following Darijo Sma (134 appearances) and Luka Modric (122 appearances).

Last summer Russia hosted its first-ever FIFA World Cup, which kicked off in Moscow with a remarkable opening show at Luzhniki Stadium on the evening of June 14. Russia selected 11 host cities as the venues for the matches of the 2018 World Cup and they were Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, Kazan, Saransk, Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Samara.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino said after the world championship that Russia staged "the best World Cup ever." According to the Russian Federal Agency for Tourism, some 2.9 million foreign visitors arrived in Russia last summer for the FIFA World Cup.

In late December, FIFA announced in its statement that the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia set a new record of audience in the history of world football championships as over half of the world’s population watched matches on TV at home, out of home or on digital platforms.