Canada excited for ‘hell of a match’ against Croatia

Canada manager John Herdman said on Saturday his team was fired up for a test against Croatia after the Canadians fell to Belgium 1-0 despite outplaying them.

"We are excited. We have a hell of a match coming," Herdman told a news conference. With Croatia drawing Morocco, in which Zlatko Dalic's side had only two attempts on target, all four teams in Group F remain in the hunt to qualify for the knockout stage.

Dalic will hope that their performance against Morocco, in which the 2018 World Cup finalists seemed to lack sharpness going forward, was down to early-tournament teething problems rather than something more fundamental.

"Four and a half years have passed and Croatia has almost a whole new national team ... we cannot draw comparisons between the two generations of players," Dalic said.

Croatia are making their sixth World Cup appearance, having bombed out in the group stage on three occasions and twice embarking on stunning runs, reaching the semis in 1998 and the final last time around.

If they were unsure what sort of side they were going to face in Canada they will have a much clearer idea after Herdman's team outshot Belgium 21-9 to give the third-place finishers of the 2018 World Cup a run for their money.