EURO over for Croatia's Budan
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
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Croatia's striking options have been reduced by one after Parma FC forward Igor Budan dropped out of Slaven Bilić's squad for the quarter-finals and beyond.
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Arthroscopic surgery
The 28-year-old contested the last 18 minutes of his team's Group B opener against Austria, but lay behind Ivica Olić, Mladen Petrić and Ivan Klasnić in coach Slaven Bilić's order of preference. "Budan has left us," said Bilić on Wednesday. "He's gone to Italy for an arthroscopic operation." Top scorer for Parma FC over the last two seasons, Budan came into the tournament complaining of knee pains and collected his injury during training.
Knežević out
Bilić also confirmed that Dario Knežević will take no further part in the finals, after the 26-year-old centre-back strained knee ligaments against Poland on Monday. Meanwhile, Darijo Srna and Ivan Rakitić are carrying slight knocks but should feature in Friday's quarter-final against Turkey. "They ought to be fit for the game," explained Bilić. "I don't want to talk about percentages but I talked to the doctors and I talked to the players and both parties are pretty confident."
