Kovac: Croatian hooligans embarrass us

The coach was furious with a section of the visiting support forcing their draw with Italy to a temporary halt with flare throwing and overshadowing a positive performance

Nivo Kovac expressed his disgust with a section of Croatia fans forcing their Euro 2016 qualifier to a standstill by throwing flares and fireworks on to the pitch in their 1-1 draw at Italy on Sunday.

With just over 15 minutes to play - and Ivan Perisic's goal having cancelled out Antonio Candreva's opener - the tie at San Siro was paused for around five minutes as fire crews extinguished the pyrotechnics which had been launched towards players by the visiting support.

The chaos overshadowed what was a very positive result for the Croatians, which sees them stay top of Group H on goal difference over the Azzurri, and Kovac hit out at those who had thrown flaming objects on to the pitch in Milan.

"I am ashamed, I already apologised to Italians, Croats are not that kind of people, we are losing our reputation because of small bunch of hooligans," he told HTV.

"If someone wants to protest over something, there are places to do that, but not the stadium, where families come, with children, and we have to fear for them.

Regarding the Croatia performance, Kovac was pleased with the relative success of their tactic of exploiting the flanks and admitted his surprise that the hosts were so defensive in home soil.

"In the game we dictated rhythm during entire 90 minutes, we only got lost after the interruption late on," he added. I am happy, we were closer to victory than Italy.

"They defended well, as they always do, but I didn't expect them to defend as much as they did at San Siro. Too bad we didn't win.

"We put pressure on their defenders who are not so good at passing the ball and we wanted to break through on the flanks. That is the way we scored and had some more chances that way.

"Perisic was great but so was everyone. We didn't want to chase the victory too soon, especially after Conte introduced Graziano Pelle and Stephan El Shaarawy who are very dangerous.

"Luka Modric felt pain in his adductor and will undergo tests in Madrid so we will know more tomorrow or the day after."