Apart from being the best Croatian tennis player, Goran Ivanišević is also known as a passionate fan of football and the Croatian football team, which is why today, he will be carefully watching the World Cup final in Russia, where the Croatian footballers, or the Fiery Ones, as they are known, are fighting for the title of the world champion.
As the great friend of the Plava Laguna Croatia Open Umag, Ivanišević was among the first yesterday to arrive in Umag for the tournament, which is sporting the red-and-white checkers, like the rest of Croatia. Today at 5PM all the visitors and tennis players at the tournament will be watching the game live and cheering on our national team.
Ivanišević even dedicated last night’s exhibition match to the Fiery Ones when he played against Mansour Bahrami and Felix Auger Aliassime. He walked onto the court to the sound of Neopisivo, wearing the checkered jersey.
“Today, we are going to beat a Frenchman and a guy who speaks French, and tomorrow, the Fiery Ones will do the same to the French football team,” said Ivanišević at the start of the exhibition match and kept his word with a little help from Nino Serdarušić and Stefan Bojić. And now it’s the Croatian team’s turn to do the same.
“The World Cup final is the biggest sporting event in the world. I can only wish our footballers the very best. We have a fifty-fifty chance. After 90 minutes, someone will lift that trophy, and that someone will be – us,” concluded Ivanišević with confidence, earning a round of applause from the stands.
Even though it had started to rain shortly after the exhibition match began, the fans were not distracted and continued to cheer on the players who made them laugh with their tennis tricks and mutual jokes.
Petar Grašo ended the first day of the tournament with a two-hour performance featuring many of his old and new hits, which the 10,000 fans sang along with him. He had not forgotten about today’s match either and sang Srce vatreno in front of a packed Dance Arena. He was joined on stage by Danijela Martinović who celebrated her 46th birthday in Umag last night, and so Grašo and all the tournament visitors there sang Happy Birthday to her.
