Modric rises above the mediocrity

SOCCER: Rep of Ireland 0 Croatia 0IT'S NOT hard after a game like this to see just why Tottenham Hotspur are so keen to hang onto a player of Luka Modric's class. There was precious little of the pace or pressure that the 25-year-old usually has to operate under evident at the Aviva stadium last night but the midfielder still displayed that rare gift of adding a little extra to the otherwise fairly ordinary.

It’s the reason, one suspects, that if there were international transfers he’d be just the sort of player Giovanni Trapattoni would look to add to this Irish side as he prepares for a couple of tough games they really could do with winning.

Last night, though, not losing to opponents that probably edged things in just about every department through a terribly low-key but still intermittently entertaining scoreless draw must have seemed good enough for the locals. They were, truth be told, a little bit fortunate, but they will take enough positives away from the evening to feel they have maintained some of the momentum they have been building for the journey to Moscow.

Having scored 10 without reply in their four previous games confidence had to be fairly high amongst the Irish players coming into this game.

Still, the Croatians clearly had the ingenuity in midfield to unlock even a pretty decent defence and their own record of just one defeat since the trouncing by England a couple of years back seemed to suggest prior to kick-off that the game might produce goals and, perhaps, a bit of a jolt to somebody’s confidence. A re-reading of the statistics afterwards, of course, and you realised it had stalemate written all over it.

Certainly, as the evening wore on it started to become apparent that neither side was in the mood to go for goal with any sort of abandon. The visitors clearly should have a penalty a quarter of an hour in but neither goalkeeper had actually had to make a save of any real note before the break.Things didn’t get too much more hectic for them in the second half and the pace of the contest between the two boxes was all generally fairly pedestrian.

Inevitably, Modric was at the heart of most of their possession, playing like a man who was being paid by the number of occasions he got on the ball and his hunger to be centrally involved was almost as good to watch at times as his range of passing.

At least two of his free-kicks really should have led to goals for the visitors and even when he wasn’t looking to send somebody racing clear with the sort of first-time angled pass that seems to be his trademark, he consistently created time and space for players around him by acting as the fulcrum for some neat exchanges of short passes, several of which served, very effectively, to bring the visiting side’s advancing full-backs into play.

The Irish, to be fair, had their moments going forward too. Robbie Keane, Damien Duff and Stephen Hunt all looked lively while Glenn Whelan had a good night in midfield as, alongside him, Darron Gibson struck a decent enough balance between looking to add to the attacking threat and working to provide some defensive cover for the centre backs.

Gibson’s low drive after a darting run by Duff was actually the first chance of the game but like most of Ireland’s over the course of the 90 minutes, it flew far too close to Stipe Pletikosa to cause him any serious concern.

Shane Long, meanwhile, probably should have done more to test the goalkeeper after an early header that the 32 year-old at least had to get down quickly to. The striker comfortably beat what passed for a Croatian offside trap more than once but never seemed entirely certain what to do next and what looked to be a couple of chances to take off towards goal were squandered.

The Croats passed up a couple of clearcut opportunities to go in front with Niko Kranjcar getting badly under a shot from barely 10 yards out and Dejan Lovren completely fluffing his attempt to fire home a Modric free from beyond the far post where he was left entirely unmarked.

It wasn’t one of the Irish defence’s finer moments but then they did display their usual tendency to ride their luck at times. Kelly had more than he was entitled to expect when he threw an arm around Ivan Strinic early on and pretty much hauled him to the ground well inside the box but the Norwegian referee seemed happy enough to watch Richard Dunne hoof the loose ball away to safety as Strinic reacted with dismay.

Stephen Ward, too, had moments where things seemed to pass him by slightly and he was also just a little disappointing when pressing forward but he’ll doubtless benefit from the experience and settled nicely enough into central midfield when Darren O’Dea came on for Glenn Whelan a quarter of an hour from time.

In the end, though, two of the back four did combine to produce Ireland’s best part of the night, although Dunne misdirected his header badly off target after Seán St Ledger had set him up nicely with a well weighted cross from the right.

There was a semi close shave at either end between that and the final whistle but the goal that would have put some sort of gloss on things simply wasn’t to be.

REPUBLIC OF IRELAND:Given (Aston Villa); Kelly (Fulham), Dunne (Aston Villa), St Ledger (Leicester City), Ward (Wolves); Duff (Fulham), Whelan (Stoke City), Gibson (Manchester United), Hunt (Wolves); Keane (Tottenham Hotspur), Long (West Brom). Subs: Westwood (Sunderland) and Keogh (Wolves) for Given and Hunt (64 mins), O'Dea (Leeds United) for Whelan (74 mins), Cox (West Brom) for Long and Treacy (Burnley) for Duff (83 mins).

CROATIA: Pletikosa (FC Rostov); Corluka (Tottenham Hotspur), Lovren (Lyon), Simunic (Hoffenheim), Strinic (Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk); Srna (Shakhtar Donetsk), Vukojevic (Dynamo Kyiv), Modric (Tottenham Hotpsur), Kranjcar (Tottenham Hotspur); Eduardo (Shakhtar Donetsk), Mandzukic (Wolfsburg). Subs: Olic (Bayern Munich) for Eduardo (half-time), Ilicevic (Kaiserslautern) for Kranjcar (65 mins), Versaljko (Dinamo Zagreb) and Kalinic (Blackburn Rovers) for Corluka and Mandzukic (73 mins), Dujmovic (Dinamo Moscow) for Vukojevic (87 mins).

Referee: Tom Harold Hagen (Norway).