England face Croatia at Wembley today, and while the focus was on Ross Barkley and Ruben Loftus-Cheek in Gareth Southgate’s team, there’s also a Croat in Chelsea’s ranks we shouldn’t forget about.
Mateo Kovacic was an unused substitute against Spain, and he hasn’t even appeared on the bench for them in today’s game.
#ENGCRO pic.twitter.com/uiPKSdjSrD
— Henry Winter (@henrywinter) November 18, 2018
Kovacic not even in the Croatia squad despite Rakitic’s absence. I just spoke to some Croatian journalists who said he didn’t train yesterday & there’s a suggestion of a small muscle injury #cfc
— Liam Twomey (@liam_twomey) November 18, 2018
According to Twitter user “Carefree Youth” – who definitely has some kind of connection at the club given the insider information he regularly has – the midfielder didn’t train with his country yesterday either. That, plus his mission
https://twitter.com/CarefreeYouth/status/1064147519289069568
That’s a real shame for Mateo and for us – the only good thing is that we’re extremely strong in that position at the moment. His competitors Barkley and Loftus-Cheek will take advantage not only of his absence in the midfield today, but also potentially at Cobham over the next few weeks.
We await official confirmation of the problem from the Croatian FA.
