\n<\/p>\n
Croatia booked their place at the 2026 World Cup with a comeback win over the Faroe Islands, whose slim hopes of qualification are over.<\/b><\/p>\n
The minnows took the lead in Rijeka when Grimsby Town’s Geza David Turi drove forward and had a shot deflected in.<\/p>\n
But Josko Gvardiol drilled a Croatia leveller seven minutes later into the bottom corner.<\/p>\n
Petar Musa then put Croatia ahead from eight yards out in his first international since 2023.<\/p>\n
And Nikola Vlasic made the win safe from Ivan Perisic’s cross.<\/p>\n
Manchester City defender Gvardiol said: “Our goal was achieved with a game to spare in the qualifiers. <\/p>\n
“We can proudly say we’ve qualified and we’re looking forward to it. <\/p>\n
“We’ll travel to Montenegro for the final match in a relaxed manner, but with the intention of taking all three points, as every game is preparation for what awaits us in the summer.”<\/p>\n
Faroe Islands boss Eydun Klakstein added: “I wish them all the best at the World Cup. They’re a small country just like us, and we always support nations like that at major tournaments.”<\/p>\n
Croatia are now six points above second-placed the Czech Republic going into Monday’s final games.<\/p>\n
The Czechs are guaranteed a play-off spot now, as the Faroe Islands – one point behind them – have finished their matches.<\/p>\n
Even if the Faroes had beaten Croatia, they would have been relying on the Czechs not to beat Gibraltar at home.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Croatia booked their place at the 2026 World Cup with a comeback win over the Faroe Islands, whose slim hopes of qualification are over. The minnows took the lead in Rijeka when Grimsby Town’s Geza David Turi drove forward and had a shot deflected in. But Josko Gvardiol drilled a Croatia leveller seven minutes later<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}