Dinamo Zagreb Coach Nenad Bjelica singled out “extraordinary” Josip Ilicic for attention as they host Atalanta in the Champions League.
It kicks off at 20.00 UK time (19.00 GMT) in a group with Manchester City and Shakhtar Donetsk.
“We are ready, we’re in good shape with 25 players available and can’t wait for the game to start,” said Bjelica in his Press conference.
“We sent two scouts to attend Genoa-Atalanta, while I have watched all their games so far this season. I don’t want to say too much about how we’ll approach them, you’ll see when the match begins…
“Much like Benfica, Atalanta play very attacking football and are full of talented, quick and fairly small players. We were able to stop Benfica and a player who today is worth €125m like Joao Felix, so we can do it again.
“Josip Ilicic is truly extraordinary, as he can always come up with something in the pass or the shot. We need to pay close attention to him.”
The star man in the Dinamo Zagreb side is undoubtedly Spain Under-21 international Dani Olmo, but he has only played one domestic game so far this season.
“He arrived late because of the European Under-21 Championships, so we tried to keep him for the biggest matches. We’ve had a lot of squad rotation with the Champions League preliminary rounds, sometimes switching 11 players from one game to the next.”
