All Croatian soccer/football fans should know by now that by 2010 Slaven Bilic will no longer be the coach of our national team. Bilic's reason is that four years at the helm is enough. This shouldn't matter even though Bilic is the best coach Croatia has had since 1998 when they took the bronze medal in France defeating the likes of Germany and the Netherlands Eduardo da Silva is back and that should be enough to qualify us for South Africa 2010. If Croatia does not qualify (a chance but it seems very likely that they will even if they have to rely on a playoff in order to do it), Bilic will be available for a club gig as early as November 2009 or else any European club interested in this Croatian rocker/coach will have to wait until after the World Cup in 2010.
Even though Bilic has expressed interest in coaching a few English Premier League clubs, German side Schalke 04 has expressed interest in Bilic, but Bilic has turned them down according to this article.
Owners of the German club approached Bilic during the weekend with an offer that would allow him to take over as interim coach until the end of the season after firing Fred Rutten last Thursday but accepting this position would mean Bilic leaving the national team about 7 months before World Cup qualifying is over.
Croatia's next match is a World Cup qualifier against Andorra on April 1st.
Croatia is currently 2nd in Group 6 with 7 points (2-1-1) and four matches-- 5 points away from England--currently at the top of the group. In Europe, the winner of each group qualifies directly while the top 8 of 9 second place finishers must play off against each other to fill the 13 spots that UEFA gets to send to South Africa.
Bilic told one German newspaper: "It is a huge honour for me to be considered a candidate with such a big club. I thanked them and repeated that I just want to focus on the Croatia national team at the moment."
Monday, March 30, 2009
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