Good afternoon everybody and welcome to the Telegraph’s live blog of the Group B clash between Croatia and Albania at the Volksparkstadion in Hamburg. We will be taking you through every moment, every bulge of the net, every woodwork hit and every crunching tackle made as Croatia aim to bounce back from their disappointing 3-0 defeat to Spain in the tournament’s opening round of matches.
As for the Albanians, they nearly caused a mighty upset in their opening encounter with Italy, scoring after just 23 seconds, but the current European champions turned it around in true Azzurri fashion, eventually winning 2-1 thanks to goals from Alessandro Bastoni and Nicolo Barella.
Despite their underwhelming display against Spain, the Croatian squad are well used to playing on the biggest stage and will no doubt be favourites for this. Zlatko Dalic’s side reached the 2018 World Cup final and the penultimate stages in Qatar in 2022.
They have recovered from slow starts before, progressing from the group stage at Euro 2020 despite losing to England in their opening game, and as previously mentioned at the last World Cup they reached the semi-finals after an opening loss to Morocco.
“There is no room for pessimism, everything is still in our hands,” Dalic said. “Of course, we have to be better. It’s my job to turn the team around” he continued.
Their goal difference surely isn’t doing them any favours in the group but a big win in Hamburg today can make up for it, especially with Italy taking on Spain tomorrow night.
Euro 2024 has brought us plenty of goals thus far, let’s hope that continues today. Bring it on!