Slaven Bilic is back at the Croatia helm and preparing to face England in Rijeka in the Nations League on Saturday, a welcome test for the former West Ham manager as he replaces the history-making Zlatko Dalic.
The return is one Bilic had once seemed to rule out. Nine years ago, in the lobby of a hotel in Canary Wharf, just before his third Premier League season in charge of West Ham, he used a rare interview with Croatian media to say: “I don’t believe in comebacks.” His time with Croatia, he suggested, was long gone. “I have nice memories and wouldn’t want to spoil them,” he said. “I don’t like coming back. It’s not the fear of failure, just the feeling that something has run its course.”
And yet here he is, nine years after that interview and 14 years after his first spell as Croatia manager ended. In the intervening period he worked in the Saudi Pro League and the Chinese Super League, as well as at West Brom and Watford, and spent 23 months out of work from August 2024.
Age has added some sophistication to the 58-year-old’s appearance, his styling reading as a patchwork of homages to the great managers of the modern game, but he remains unmistakably himself: direct, eloquent and above all passionate, a contrast to Dalic’s restrained, humble, almost priest-like persona. When he made his first public appearance back in the job in July, it was as if somebody had opened the windows and let in fresh air.
No coach would find it easy to succeed Dalic, who made history by leading Croatia to second and third at the World Cup. But Bilic was always the best choice, not only because he knows full well what he is dealing with, but because of a lingering sense that he laid the foundation for the success that followed. The feeling is that he began to plant what blossomed into Luka Modric’s and Dalic’s team, and that he made Croatia dream big for the first time since his generation of 1998 as a player, a cornerstone being the famous 3-2 victory at Wembley in 2007, when Croatia won not because they needed to but because they could and felt fully confident in their strength.
Bilic is also probably the only one who could have convinced Modric to stick around. Fittingly, the 41-year-old scored the first goal of the second Bilic era, in a 2-1 win in Prague against Czechia last Saturday, and rushed to embrace his manager. “Luka is everything to us, he’s just incredible,” Bilic said.
When it comes to his managerial work, Bilic needs to prove himself again. He is inevitably no longer the manager he was during his first reign, and it remains to be seen how he applies his experience. It is too early to tell after only two games, the second a 4-1 away defeat by a vastly superior Spain for which he rotated heavily, but there are already clues.
Under Dalic, Croatia often waited and relished their underdog role, then were deadly on the counter, despite not having many quick players and despite a creative midfield being their main strength. Bilic wants to dominate. He wants his players to press high, take more risks and for more players to arrive in the opposition area. He wants his centre-backs to step up with the ball rather than wait for Modric or Mateo Kovacic to drop back to the edge of the box to take possession. He wants his team to be brave, attacking and as passionate as he is.
Whether he can do it with a squad that, despite a significant infusion of fresh blood over the years, is still dominated by veterans such as Modric, Kovacic and Ivan Perisic, is the open question. He believes he can. Bilic always believed. In 2012 he was convinced his Croatia could win the Euros, only for them to go out in the group stage, and now he says he can match Dalic’s success. Maybe he really did not believe in comebacks nine years ago, but that did not stop him keeping faith in bigger things.