EFC Brief

The one genuine Everton thread here is Nikola Vlašić, who pulled on the blue shirt back in 2017–18 before his move took him elsewhere. Watching a former Goodison man line up for Croatia at a World Cup is exactly the kind of footnote we live for, even if his Everton spell was brief and never quite caught fire. Unfortunately, the afternoon ended in defeat for Croatia, so Vlašić heads home on the losing side against a Ghana outfit carrying its own Toffee-tinged interest in the EFC-linked pair of Jordan Ayew and Antoine Semenyo. Beyond Vlašić, the Croatia squad is thick with EFC-linked names — Modrić, Kovačić, Perišić and Livaković among them — though those connections remain firmly in the rumour column rather than the record books. For now, it's the Vlašić reunion that gives this one its blue flavour, and a result that won't have him smiling.