Dejan Lovren’s latest comments are likely to jeopardise his position in Croatia’s squad for this summer’s Euros, goal reports.
During the last international break, Lovren was publicly criticised by his national manager Ante Cacic for supposedly choosing to end his warmup early and return to the bench – ignoring the instructions of the boss.
But our centre-back has now told his side of the story, and intimated that unless he’s provided a guarantee that he’ll start for Croatia, he won’t get on the plane at all.
“I will not apologize, I will either travel to France as a starting player or I am not going,” the centre-back fired to Sportske novosti.
“Look, no coach in the world does such warming-ups, in Liverpool after 15 minutes of warming up you either enter the pitch or return to the bench.”
“And Darijo Srna came in, although 2 hours before the match he told Cacic he couldn’t play. I don’t want to look arrogant but Cacic told me I would play for 45 minutes and I didn’t. Also, Corluka and me didn’t play together in 4 man defence during test matches for Euro. We played in 3-5-2 vs Israel.
“It was not good because we never played that way before. I suppose we will play four men at the back at the Euros, so my guess is you have to play that in friendly matches. And how was I supposed to play well in a 3-5-2 if I can’t remember ever playing that?!”