{"id":340936,"date":"2026-06-18T05:43:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T05:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/340936\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T05:43:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T05:43:08","slug":"proud-croatians-make-presence-known-during-world-cup-in-north-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/340936\/","title":{"rendered":"Proud Croatians make presence known during World Cup in North Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

With a population about half that of North Texas<\/a>, Croatia is one of the smallest countries in this year’s World Cup<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But here locally, its supporters have been impossible to miss.<\/p>\n

From the sea of red-and-white checkers marching through downtown Dallas to enthusiastic fans filling the stands at Dallas Stadium, Croatians came to North Texas ready to make their presence known.<\/p>\n

“We are proud,” one Croatian woman said. “Our country is very small, and we can attend this big game in the world. So we feel very proud.”<\/p>\n

Among them were local soccer fans cheering on FC Dallas’ Petar Musa and developer Jeff Blackard.<\/p>\n

Blackard has spent decades building ties to Croatia, even creating Adriatica in McKinney to honor the country’s people and culture. This morning, he met up with Davor Suker.<\/p>\n

“Who was the Golden Boot,” he said. “Yeah, Golden Boot for the 1998 World Cup for Croatia. We had a good conversation, wished each other luck.”<\/p>\n

Local Croatian fans who watched the match at an Arlington sports bar said one of the most exciting moments was Musa scoring a goal for Croatia.<\/p>\n

“That was the biggest highlight for me because I thought, oh, how proud he has to be and his family too, to be in his home area and to score a goal,” Margaret Marsic Gariota said.<\/p>\n

“It’s a proud moment that three of our players are representing their country,” FC Dallas head coach Eric Quill said. “I mean, you couldn’t ask for the stars to align any better.”<\/p>\n

Although Croatia didn’t take home the win, fans said it was a great time for all.<\/p>\n

“Sure, we lost by a couple of points, but it was well worth being here for it,” fan Jack Gariota said.<\/p>\n

Now, the team is headed to Toronto to take on Panama.<\/p>\n

\n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n

In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With a population about half that of North Texas, Croatia is one of the smallest countries in this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[430,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-340936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-north-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}