[steve8714]

It’s a skill, like wiggling your ears, that you develop with a lot of idle time.

[xp38]

Before they were even an independent country they were sort of soccer champions in that they won the 1976 North American Soccer League Soccer Bowl. You can look it up. This was the team logo at the time.

[kearnyirish2]

Uruguay has even less people - and two World Cups.

[adorno]

It’s like the number one sport in that country. Only other comparison I can think of, would be how kids in the Dominican Republic excel at baseball and have an inordinate number of people representing them in MLB. Same with the NBA, where blacks are the majority, while they only have about 12-13% of the general population. Black kids actually skip school in order to dedicate their time to, what many of them call, “their future”.

[Fiji Hill]

Croatians have also succeeded in real football. Gary Beban led his UCLA Bruins to victory over John McKay's USC Trojans and then to a Rose Bowl victory before winning the Heisman Trophy, and Georgia Bulldogs running back Frank Sinkwich was also a Rose Bowl star--his team beat the Bruins--and picked up a Heisman.

A number of Croatians and Americans of Croatian descent have also been basketball stars including Rudy Tomjanovich, Stojko Vranković, and Gregg Popovich.

[WASCWatch]

Croatia barely qualified for the world cup. They have a few players that are among the very best in the world at their positions. Luka Modric and Rakatic are stars with Real Madrid and Barcelona respectively.

They are the best conditioned team at the world cup, a big failing with Germany this year. The Croatian team just keeps going when most other teams run out of gas around the 60 minute mark. They’ve also had a bit of luck in winning with penalty kicks after 120 minute.

France is probably favored in the final, but the Croatian midfield is superior. Luka Modric has been the best player in the World Cup and the most important player for Croatia. He is a brilliant passer, defender, and organizer.

[katana]

Why have the New Zealand All Blacks been a hundred year dynasty in International Rugby Union? It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.

[alexander_busek]

A man who can make the perfect omlette can make nothing else.

Regards,

[higgmeister]

????? Is Soccer that game foreigners play where you want to commit seppuku after watching it for five minutes?

[Right Wing Assault]

They must not have smart phones there.

[discostu]

Because population theory is silly. You don’t needs 10s of millions to get 23 good players working together as a team.

[bert]

one time fluke

The perfect storm where Croatia was good and the others mediocre

[DoodleDawg]

What has population got to do with it? The U.S. has the third largest population in the world and at least 32 smaller countries were better at soccer than we were.