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Ammon News - Finally, Croatia were cowed. Borna Sosa lay face down on the turf, the industrious left-back’s desperate lunge across the Education City Stadium goalline just not enough.

Marcelo Brozovic, that tireless presence in the most persevering of engine rooms, was on his haunches, perhaps in the end his energy ultimately sapped.

Josko Gvardiol, one of the defenders of this tournament, was about a yard away, hunched over, hands on knees, staring through his protective face mask at the seemingly inevitable.

Finally, after this World Cup and even the one before, Croatia were broken. Neymar had scored at the end of the first period of extra-time in the quarter-final and Brazil, the favourites and five-time World Cup winners, were going through. Croatia were gone.

Surely, now, after all the additional minutes in the legs and the penalty shoot-out in the mind, the apparently critical blows and the comebacks, this group of indefatigables had run out of road.

Zlatko Dalic, the manager through Russia and now Qatar, too, wiped his hands across his face and looked to the sky.

Then, almost to everyone’s astonishment when we really should have known better, Croatia dusted themselves down and did what perhaps only Croatia can do. They summoned that inner strength once more, reached down into the depths and battled back to the light. Bruno Petkovic scored, with an albeit-deflected strike three minutes from time, and Croatia carried on.

Into penalties and into the World Cup semi-final. A second successive World Cup semi-final. The country comprising less than four million is once again among the four remaining teams on the game’s grandest stage.

Afterwards, an understandably drained but delighted Dalic said: “We showed again what it means to never give up, what this Croatia team is all about.

“Only Croatia could have done this. That has become sort of normal for us.”