The father of Croatia’s national football team manager, Zlatko Dalic, told N1 ahead of the World Cup final against France that he knows his son is now doing all he can to prepare the team for the historic match.

“I know him. He will do everything possible to prepare them for victory,” Ivan Dalic said. “He is ambitious and persistent in his work and I think he will prepare them well.”

The Dalic’s are from Livno, a town in the southwest of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the manager’s parents still live and where he often visits them.

Dalic is regarded the best football manager Croatia ever had but he himself believes it is Miroslav ‘Ciro’ Blazevic whom Zlatko Dalic refers to as “the coach of all coaches” while Zlatko can be “the manager of all managers”, the father said.

As a child, Dalic was persistent in everything he did, the father said.

He played for the local club, was good and obedient and left at age 15 for the Croatian coastal city of Split to join its team, ‘Hajduk’.

“He was successful down there and said right away: either I will play football or I will go to school. He kept coming back to finish high school and then stayed there to dedicate himself to football,” Ivan Dalic said.

Zlatko Dalic often visits Livno, almost weekly but since he is now in Russia, he calls twice a week, his father said, adding that he would love to see Croatia winning.

But “wishes are one thing, possibilities another. I would love it if Croatia would win, I don’t know. I think they will make it, they did every time so far and I think they will again this evening. I believe that he prepared them well,” he said.