Aussie Croatian: The talent flow continues

When Mark Viduka, Jason Culina, Mile Sterjovski, Josip Skoko and many others took Australia to the last World Cup their Croatian heritage did not go unnoticed. Indeed Croatia themselves had three of our boys in their squad.

Many wondered if this was the end of the Aussie Croatian production line.

With Dario Vidosic taking the field in the Green and Gold in Melbourne the other night against Japan, Matthew Spiranovic picked for good things, I also noticed at a lower level Stephen Lustica, Australian Under 18 representative getting a goal for Gold Coast United in their recent win over the North Queensland nofury.

With another Aussie and Canberra Croatian Andrew Baresic also in the side clearly the influence of the Croatian community on our game and hopefully our national team will be around for a long time yet.

But why?

Why do our Croatian friends produce more, or seem to, top-class players in Australia than the Serbs, Italians, Greeks or any other immigrant group, including the English.