France vs Croatia prediction: EUROPE: UEFA Nations League – League A – Play Offs betting tips on match 2025-03-22 19:45.
[p]Sitting on the bench for the 166th time – the joint third-most by a manager for a single international team in football history – France boss Didier Deschamps saw his side brushed aside with consummate ease by Croatia. A 2-0 defeat in Split on Thursday now leaves the French fighting to reach the final four of this edition’s UEFA Nations League (UNL), a competition they won back in 2021. [/p]
[p]Les Bleus will be looking to overcome that defeat in this second leg, and a glance towards H2H history should raise some much-needed confidence, as Thursday’s loss acted as just their second in 11 games against Croatia (W6, D3). If that wasn’t enough to inspire confidence, the last time that they lost the first leg of a tie by two goals – a World Cup play-off against Ukraine in November 2013 – they still stormed back to win 3-0 in the return leg to progress.[/p]
[p]Croatia will be desperate to avoid a repeat of that outcome as they travel to Paris in high spirits and looking to claim another scalp. Long-serving manager Zlatko Dalić will know this tie is far from over yet, but only once since December 2022 have Croatia lost an international fixture by a scoreline large enough to see them knocked out in regulation time here. [/p]
[p]In order to seal progression to the last four of the UNL for the second successive time, Croatia will need to seriously improve upon their recent away performances as they’ve failed to win any of their last three internationals on the road (D1, L2). To make matters worse, each of those have come in this competition, conceding the opening goal within the first ten minutes of two of those matches. [/p]
[p]Players to watch: Ousmane Dembélé netted France’s last international goal on home soil, and since the start of 2025 across Europe’s traditional top-five leagues no player has scored more goals than him (13). Ante Budimir opened the scoring on Thursday for Croatia to take his tally to four goals across his last five matches for club and country. [/p]
[p]Hot stat: France have failed to score in two of their last three UNL games, as many times as across their prior 15 competition matches combined. [/p]
[p][i]Written by Nathan Evans[/i][/p]