Toughest possible draw for us (Croatia) to play against Netherlands that will be very keen to show themselves to the new coach and they are playing in front of home crowd. My early betting tip for this one is handicap on Netherlands. We are usually very bad when playing after season ends and out most important players like Modrić will probably be totally spent. I know it is the same for Dutch players but they have age factor to help them with faster recovery and home crowd should help a lot.
Maybe Spain would be the tougher one, the obvious choice for everybody was Italy.
I don't really agree about Modrić, he's playing less than before in Madrid and might be in his peak form by then.
He's got everything to prove in these 2 games so I don't doubt that he'll be up to the task.
Still, Netherlands is overall a better team than we are - so I agree they are the favorites. Spain would have been a bigger one though.
For Modric, this may be the last competition with the national team in his magnificent career and it is certain that he will be very motivated to finally win the first trophy with the national team.
The host of the competition is always in a slight advantage, but Croatia is always an unpredictable national team and can beat anyone when they play their best game, as they showed in Qatar.
Italy was very good at the last EP, but after that they didn't qualify for the WC again and it seems to me that they are in decline, so I give Spain a better chance in the second semi-final.
I think that a very uncertain and exciting tournament awaits us, and all national teams have equal chances to win the tournament.
