England 7-0 Croatia
England 7-0 Croatia. Read it twice, because it still does not look like a real football score. On Saturday night in Rijeka, in a stadium filled mostly with schoolchildren, Thomas Tuchel's England produced the most complete away performance of his reign and handed Croatia the worst defeat in their history — eclipsing the 6-0 thrashing Spain inflicted in September 2018. Kane and Saka both scored twice, Bellingham scored once and made three more, and Anthony Gordon and substitute Morgan Rogers completed a Nations League Group A3 rout that leaves England second in the group — and leaves Croatia staring into the mirror.
The scoreline is staggering, but the manner was worse — at least, that was the verdict of the man who has carried Croatian football for two decades. Luka Modric, 41, Croatia's most-capped player, was withdrawn in the 57th minute of his 205th international with the game long gone. Then he did something he had never done in 20 years with the national team: he admitted he felt ashamed.
How the rout unfolded
The damage started after little more than seven minutes. Josko Gvardiol lost possession, Jude Bellingham released Harry Kane, and the captain slipped between two defenders to fire home. On 21 minutes Bellingham doubled the lead himself, poking in after Gordon turned Saka's cross back across goal. Gordon added the third on 39 minutes, stooping to head Jarell Quansah's right-wing cross, and a minute before half-time Bellingham crossed for an unmarked Saka to make it 4-0.
It could have been worse even then. Mateo Kovacic squandered what Sky Sports called a horror miss at 3-0 — the one Croatian chance of a night in which England's full-backs spent more time creating than defending. After the break, Elliot Anderson's low cross from the right found Kane sliding in at the back post for 5-0 on 53 minutes. Josip Stanisic's misplaced pass across his own box gifted Saka his second on 68, and with three minutes left Bellingham released Morgan Rogers, who controlled the pass with his heel and slotted home from an angle to complete the annihilation.
The setting was surreal. The game was played behind closed doors because of crowd trouble involving Croatia fans against France in 2025, with around 6,000 local schoolchildren and roughly 100 England supporters allowed into the Stadion HNK Rijeka — an official attendance of 6,342 in a country famous for hostile atmospheres. England's players had taken a dip in the nearby Adriatic earlier in the week, prompting Tuchel to warn the relaxed mood must not put his team into "holiday mode." It did the opposite.
Why this matters
This was the night England stopped being a team recovering from a World Cup disappointment and started looking like a team built to win the next one. Spain may be the world champions, but on Saturday in Rijeka England produced a performance their rivals will have watched with unease. As Sky Sports News correspondent Rob Dorsett wrote from the press box: "When England are rampaging all over the pitch like this, winning back possession when they have no right to do so, passing forward at every opportunity and finishing ruthlessly, there is no better team in world football to watch."
Tuchel agreed it was the high-water mark of his tenure so far. "It was a fantastic victory. It's an outstanding result, of course, and the performance underlying this result is just on the highest level, from the first minutes to the last," he said. "The speed and the technical quality today and the hunger off the ball was on the very highest level." Kane's verdict to ITV was simpler: "Unbelievable from start to finish. We spoke a lot about having a 90-minute game from start to finish, being completely dominant with the ball and without the ball. That was it right there."
The deeper significance is psychological. Tuchel's England arrived in Rijeka with questions still hanging over them — the 3-2 home defeat to Spain in September, a 2-0 win over the Czech Republic distorted by a first-half red card. This answered them against a top-10-ranked nation, away from home, in the most emphatic way possible. "We were so fluid right from the start. It just never stopped," Kane said. "We just kept the pace up and played through the gaps. We were very, very clinical."
Modric's shame — and what it signals about Croatia's ending era
Modric spoke to the Croatian daily Jutarnji, via Reuters, and held nothing back. "It is difficult to find an explanation for such a performance without duels, fouls, aggressiveness, togetherness... I've been here for 20 years, but for the first time I feel ashamed after a game," he said. "You can lose, or play against an opponent who is better — and they are right now. But in any case, losing like this and squandering the reputation we've built over the years is unacceptable. You can't play football like that. You can't play with two players less, you can't play like this, and we looked like we had 4-5 players less. A catastrophic night."
Consider who is saying this. This is the 2018 Ballon d'Or winner, the conductor of the team that beat England in the 2018 World Cup semi-final in Moscow and finished third in Qatar four years later. At 41 he is still the player everything runs through — which is precisely the problem. A federation that has failed to build the succession is still leaning on a man in his forties, and on Saturday the bill came due. Slaven Bilic, who took over as Croatia coach this summer, accepted responsibility: "Since taking over this summer, there have been issues — there certainly have. But the responsibility is mine... It was simply a collective blackout." His side have now conceded 12 goals in three matches.
For balance: six days earlier, this same Croatia side were unbeaten in nine official home matches. Spain, the world champions, also beat them 4-1 in September. One catastrophic night does not erase a decade of overachievement from a nation of fewer than four million people. But it does accelerate the reckoning — and Modric's unprecedented admission of shame may turn out to be the most useful thing to happen to Croatian football in years, if Bilic uses it as the jolt his rebuild needs.
The numbers behind the humiliation
The 7-0 eclipses the 6-0 defeat to Spain in Elche in September 2018 as Croatia's heaviest ever loss — and it is England's biggest-ever Nations League win, surpassing even the 5-1 thrashing of Croatia at Wembley in 2009 World Cup qualifying. It was also, per TNT Sports, England's biggest victory over a nation ranked in FIFA's top 50 since 1992, and Croatia's first competitive defeat in Rijeka.
Harry Kane's brace took him to 89 England goals in 124 caps — 36 clear of Wayne Rooney in second place on the all-time list, and his 11th goal in his last 12 internationals. He is now one cap from Peter Shilton's England appearance record of 125, and could draw level on Tuesday when England host the Czech Republic at Wembley. "Would be nice," Kane smiled. "That is why he [Tuchel] takes me off, to save me for the next one!"
The group table tells the story of the autumn: Spain top with nine points after a 3-1 win over the Czech Republic — Lamine Yamal curling in another brilliant goal as the champions stretched their unbeaten run to 40 games — England second on six, Croatia third on three, and the Czechs pointless. The top two reach the quarter-finals in March 2027. Croatia's slide is stark in sequence: a 2-1 win in Czechia, a 4-1 home defeat to Spain, and now 0-7 in Rijeka.
What it means for England under Tuchel
Beyond the scoreline, the performance answered the structural questions. The front four were, in Sky's words, electric and devastating. Elliot Anderson and Alex Scott — on his first England start — bossed the midfield battle against far more capped opponents. The full-backs were creators: Quansah crossed for Gordon's goal, Lewis Hall spent the second half pressing Croatia's goalkeeper. Gordon's strike made it four goals in his last four England appearances, and Bellingham, restored to the starting line-up, produced the complete number-10 performance: a goal, three assists, and the pass of the night for Rogers.
There is a subplot worth watching, too. Kane and Yamal both scored twice on Saturday, and both are in contention for the Ballon d'Or when it is awarded on October 26. England's captain is making a late, thunderous case. And for Tuchel — 18 wins in 24 games in charge — the "brotherhood" forged at the North American World Cup now has its signature away performance.
The skeptic's case deserves its hearing: Croatia are old, transitional, and were missing their home crowd. The true measuring stick remains Spain — world champions, 40 games unbeaten, three points clear, and the team that beat England at Wembley last month. England's November trip will matter, but the group still runs through the champions. What Rijeka changed is the expectation: England's floor is now this. Anything less will feel like failure.
What happens next
Tuesday is double-header day. Croatia host Spain in Split — the world champions, unbeaten in 40, arriving to face a wounded side whose captain has just questioned its pride. Modric's message to his teammates: "We need to pull ourselves together, stay together because a new difficult game awaits us. And we have to show our true colours, that there is defiance and pride in us, desire, willingness, togetherness, these things cannot be lost overnight."
England host the Czech Republic at Wembley the same night — and Harry Kane stands one appearance from immortality. Expect Wembley to be loud, expect Tuchel to rotate little, and expect the record books to need updating.
November brings the return leg, with Croatia travelling to England. By then we will know whether Rijeka was the night a golden generation finally ended — or the night its last great captain shamed it into one more fight. Either way, October 3, 2026 is now a date in Croatian football history, for all the wrong reasons — and in English football history, for all the right ones.
Sources and reporting notes
- Reuters — Modric's "ashamed" quotes to Jutarnji, heaviest-defeat record, group standings
- Sky Sports — Tuchel reaction, Rob Dorsett analysis, post-World Cup context
- TNT Sports — Modric's 205th cap, 57th-minute substitution, Bilic reaction
Verification note: The match was played behind closed doors at Stadion HNK Rijeka following crowd trouble involving Croatia fans in 2025; the official attendance was 6,342, made up mostly of local schoolchildren. The Kane, Modric and Saka photographs are file images from the 2026 World Cup (June–July 2026) and the stadium image is a file photograph — none depict the October 3 match.