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ALEXANDRIA, Va. - After nearly a month, Croatia's World Cup team trained at Episcopal High School for the final time Tuesday and prepared to leave Alexandria for good, bound for Toronto and a Round of 32 match against Portugal.
The Vatreni arrived in early June as a curiosity — one of the world's best soccer teams, setting up camp at a boarding school in a Northern Virginia city of 160,000. They leave as a team back in form, through to the knockout round, and, by their own account, fond of the place that hosted them.
Asked on the team's final morning in the city what they would take away, two players offered answers that had nothing to do with soccer.
"The people were very nice to us"
For defender Marin Pongračić, it was the people. What he would miss most, he said, were those who looked after the team — the staff at the hotel and at the training center, who were "very nice and very friendly to us, always ready to help us, to give us a hand." The hotel staff, in particular, were "very welcoming," he said. "This was the nicest thing about it, and we were very happy to be here."
For midfielder Nikola Vlašić — whose header off a Luka Modrić corner beat Ghana and sent Croatia through — it was the facilities. He said he was struck by Episcopal's "crazy, crazy facilities," the kind he had not seen before.
"In Croatia, it's not even close to this. And this is just high school," Vlašić said. What stayed with him, he added, was "how much they invest in development" — in both sport and education. "I think this is one of the things that I will cherish about America."
It was an unprompted echo of what the school's own staff had said about the month. Dan O'Neil, Episcopal's director of auxiliary programs, told the Brief that maintaining the fields to that standard is a year-round commitment — one a World Cup team's praise only validated.
"It's in our DNA"
Vlašić also offered a window into the question that has followed Croatia for a decade: how a nation of about four million people keeps reaching the latter stages of World Cups, outperforming far larger countries.
"We are a really, really proud nation, a sport nation," he said. "Everybody is obsessed with football in our country." Beyond the obsession, he pointed to a deep well of talent across sports, hard work and, above all, belief. "It's just in our DNA," he said. "Success is a mix of all of these things."
In his case, the point was almost literal. Asked about it, Vlašić confirmed that his sister, Blanka Vlašić, is one of the most decorated high jumpers in the history of track and field, a world champion and Olympic medalist. When the Brief joked about the family's athletic pedigree, he conceded with a smile that his sister was the better athlete.
A month that started with a stamp and ended with a knockout run
Croatia's stay was not without its stumbles — the team opened with a 4-2 loss to England and briefly sat at the bottom of Group L — but it found its footing with wins over Panama and Ghana to advance as the group's runner-up. Along the way, the city embraced the team: hundreds of children turned out for a June community event, restaurants added Croatian dishes, shops flew the red-and-white checkers, and Mayor Alyia Gaskins traveled to Philadelphia for Saturday's decisive win.
Now the team moves on. Croatia faces Portugal on Thursday, July 2, at 7 p.m. ET at Toronto Stadium in Toronto, with the winner advancing to the Round of 16 against the winner of Spain–Austria. Under the tournament's structure — and as the team indicated from the outset — Croatia will not return to Alexandria; teams relocate to the city of their next match once the knockout round begins.
For a city that spent a month as the home of a World Cup contender, it is the end of an unlikely chapter. But if the players' parting words are any guide, the impression ran both ways.
"We were very happy to be here," Pongračić said.
Ryan Belmore
Ryan Belmore
