The Croatians took a very hard victory against Tunisia yesterday, winning the game 25-23, but they had lots of complaints on how the Tunisians behaved on the field and how they tried to make up for the “lack of quality”. The common of their statements was that the Tunisians really “beat them up” up to “killing them”.
Mirko Alilovic: “They were “beating” us as if we were cattle, but we fought and we proved we were the better side. At the beginning it was disastrous. They were beating us and we were losing by two goals. Later we got back to our recognizable form, played our 5-1 defence, and we managed to win.”
Domagoj Duvnjak: “We got a lot of battering but what’s important is that we made it to the semis. In the first half we were very static in the attack, but we made up for it in the second half. The defence conceded less goals even though it could have been better.”
Blazenko Lackovic: “They went into the game at the limit of impossible foul play. They “killed” Cupic twice, they battered us everywhere, even though we could be partly blamed – we went into contact play too much, we didn’t play with brain but with our muscles more. I believe the referees should be blamed as well for tolerating all that.”
Igor Vori: “Yes, it was a hard game. In the beginning they did non-handball things. For example, Lackovic falls on the floor, and they hit him with knee. Apart from that, our game was very late, we saw all other teams playing and ours would never come…”
