England and Croatia end long wait for semi-final spot
08 July, 2018
England and Croatia set up a semi-final date by recording victories in their quarter final fixtures against Sweden and Russia respectively. While England ran away to a fairly straightforward 2-0 win, Croatia had to deal with an astonishingly resilient Russian team who kept pegging them back every time it looked like the Croatia were pulling ahead. Harry Maguire and Dele Alli were on target for England with two headers. Russia's Denis Cheryshev started the scoring in the second match of the day with a goal that is a shoo-in for any list of great World Cup knockout goals. Andreij Kramaric then equalised for Croatia and it remained like that till the end of the second half. Croatia took the lead through Domagoj Vida in the first period of extra time but Russia equalised in the second period through Mario Fernandes. In the ensuing penalty shootout, both Danijel Subasic and Igor Akinfeev made one save each and Ivan Rakitic scored the decisive penalty that took Croatia to just their second semi-final in its independent history.