Wales begin life without Gareth Bale by making the daunting trip to play World Cup third-placed team Croatia on Saturday evening.

Both nations have aspirations to finish at the top of their Euro 2024 qualification group, which also features Turkey, Armenia and Latvia.

Croatia have impressed in the last two World Cup tournaments, finishing runners-up in 2018 and then third in 2022. However they’ve struggled to replicate those performances at the UEFA European Championships, failing to progress past the round of 16 in each of the last three editions.

They’ll aim to improve that next time round and are heavily fancied to seal qualification with ease, especially as they’re already assured of at least a play-off spot thanks to their performance in the Nations League.

Despite that, Zlatko Dalić’s men will want to secure their place with style, starting on home soil where they are protecting a proud record of never tasting defeat in a home Euro qualifying match (W27, D8).

Six H2H games without a loss against Wales will surely boost confidence that such a home record can be extended again here (W4, D2).

Players to watch: Ivan Perišić scored what proved to be the decisive goal in the last home H2H meeting (2-1), and has been directly involved in four Croatia strikes across his last six international appearances (G1, A3).

Nathan Broadhead will be eyeing his first cap for Wales; he’s already netted two club goals this month for Ipswich.

Hot stat: Croatia have conceded one or no goals in seven of their nine home games since the start of 2021, as well as each of the last three H2Hs.

Croatia form (all competitions):

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Wales form (all competitions):

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Croatia possible starting lineup:

Livakovic; Juranovic, Sutalo, Gvardiol, Sosa; Modric, Brozovic, Kovacic; Vlasic, Kramaric, Perisic

Wales possible starting lineup:

Ward; Mepham, Rodon, Cabango; Roberts, Ramsey, Ampadu, Wilson, Williams; James, Moore

Croatia 2-0 Wales

Although Wales have other quality players that they can call upon, none of them can match the quality that was offered by Bale. Against quality opposition, they may come up short, leading us to predict a relatively comfortable triumph for the home side.