“A great opportunity to feel proud to be Croats, to feel united and see that, even though we are not a big country, with many victories in our history, we too can make it happen”. Fr. Kresimir Zinic, coach of Croatia’s football team of priests, said this speaking of his country getting to the final in Russia. Recalling the semi-final against France reached in 1998 by the team captained by Zvonimir Boban, the coach said: “they were very good, they made us dream”, but “the generation of Luka Modric, coached by Zlatko Dalic, is truly exceptional”. If we look at the religious aspect, Fr. Zinic stressed, “many of the players show that good and joy come from the Lord, and this is very important; they say ‘thanks to God’, ‘with the help of God’”. Then, he recalled the story of goalkeeper Danijel Subasic, whose father is Serbian and whose father-in-law, Ante, beat up his daughter, for he did not want her to marry a Serbian man. And then a nod to his decision to play with a picture, under his t-shirt, of his footballer friend Hrvoje Custic, who died of a trauma sustained during a football game. “I think that Subasic, like perhaps his parents, is Orthodox, while his friend Hrvoje was a Catholic. It is a beautiful lesson of how Catholics and Orthodox can be united”.