A back injury meant that Mladen Petric missed the last few games of the Bundesliga season with Borussia Dortmund but Croatia coach Slaven Bilić has received encouraging news from his medical staff that has cleared Petrić for training. Bilić reported that his player’s injury is almost 90% healed and that he doesn’t envisage a problem with his participation in the finals.

Petrić has been in impressive form for his country during the qualifying campaign, netting four goals in one game against the minnows of Andorra and more memorably scoring the winning goal in the 3-2 Wembley defeat of England in October 2007.

At a recent get-together, Bilić underlined how important a victory is in their opening match of the Euro 2008 finals against Austria on June 8^th, reminding everybody that each time Croatia have won their opening match in a major finals, they have always progressed through to the next stage. There were only seven players present at the get-together in Zagreb, but the rest of the players will join up this week from their respective teams in time for the friendly this coming Saturday against Moldova.