Croatia return to action as they attempt to make it to Euro 2024 with a home fixture against Latvia on Friday at 7.45pm.

Team news: 

Both Josko Gvardiol and Mateo Kovacic have received Croatian call-ups following their summer moves to Manchester City, and they are joined by the usual suspects. At 37, captain Luka Modric is still going strong while 30-year-old Marcelo Brozovic is now playing in Saudi Arabia. It’s a strong squad, which also still features Tottenham’s Ivan Perisic. 

Latvia’s captain is perhaps the most interesting member of their squad. At just 22, Kristers Tobers has been named captain, with the midfielder currently turning out for Swiss side Grasshopper. Up front, they boast Spezia’s Raimonds Krollis, while the majority of the rest of their squad play their football in Latvia. 

Croatia -3 handicap

Croatia are vastly superior to Latvia, and they will be looking to run riot as they return to action. Their squad is made up of some of Europe’s best players and they’ve only lost once in 90 minutes since June 2022. 

That defeat famously came against Argentina in the World Cup semi-final when Lionel Messi utterly tore them apart. In Qatar however they did famously beat Brazil and enjoyed another hugely successful tournament. They are one of the finest football nations on the planet and recently only lost the Nations League final on penalties to Spain. 

They should smash Latvia here with the amount of attacking talent at their disposal. Latvia haven’t won since beating Lichtenstein in June 2022, so a Croatia win with a -3 handicap, or four goal win, at 9/4 seems like the sensible way of taking this challenge on. 

Croatia 4-0 Latvia

Picking a correct score with the same methodology could deliver us some huge odds. If we believe Latvia’s losing run will continue and Croatia will stick at least three goals past them, picking the home side to win 4-0 doesn’t seem outlandish. 

Having done the research and looked at the odds, I was somewhat surprised to see that the correct scoreline of 4-0 is available on Betfred at odds of 13/2. When you consider the domination that Croatia will have, them scoring four seems fairly reasonable, especially with their attacking talent.