who earlier drew 0-0 with England,<\/a> will confirm Croatia’s place in the knockout phase.<\/p>\nSubstitute Ante Budimir’s goal nine minutes into the second half eliminated England’s final group opponents Panama, who have lost their first two matches.<\/p>\n
Panama’s pace in attack had caused problems for the 2018 runners-up during a goalless first period, and Croatia boss Zlatko Dalic reacted to his side’s disappointing first-half display by making two attacking changes at the break.<\/p>\n
One of those paid off almost immediately as Osasuna forward Budimir calmly turned in Josip Stanisic’s low cross at the far post.<\/p>\n
That goal ensured Croatia captain Luka Modric’s 200th international appearance ended in victory.<\/p>\n
The 40-year-old, who was replaced after 81 minutes, is the fourth male player to reach that milestone as he features in his fifth World Cup.<\/p>\n
The midfielder, who was lifted into the air by his teammates at the end, completed 88% of his passes, meaning he has completed 80% or more of his passes in all 19 World Cup appearances he has made.<\/p>\n
Croatia boss Zlatko Dalic, said: “He is still influencing matches and to play for your country 200 times, that is a lot. We need to be very happy to have him in the team. <\/p>\n
“Luka is very humble and this is why he is not for major celebrations. But I am very glad we marked this today in front of our fans.”<\/p>\n
Panama had chances to equalise and potentially extend their World Cup stay, but were thwarted by Croatia goalkeeper Dominik Livakovic, who made a series of saves in one frantic spell just before the second-half hydration break.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Croatia remain in contention for a last-32 spot at the World Cup after beating Panama in Toronto to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-655042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}