Easy pickings for Argentina

For the last 10 minutes of this game almost 20,000 delighted fans feted their team as though they had already embarked on their lap of honour in Paris in two week's time. If all their opponents lie down before them the way the Croatians did yesterday at the Stade Lescure, it's only a matter of ticking off the rounds.

However Daniel Passarella knows better than to expect such strolls in the knockout stages and Miroslav Blazevic, one can only presume, won't be so keen on his side dishing them out.

Whatever about Argentina's hopes for the next fortnight, the lack of Croatian ambition yesterday was the key factor in a game that had its moments, but painfully few of them.

The South Americans didn't look especially bothered about who they will play on Tuesday either and Passarella rested several important players. But those who came in at least displayed some sense of urgency with one, Hector Pineda, scoring the goal after 37 minutes that kept his side at the top of Group H. Pineda's goal put something of a gloss on his afternoon, but the scoreline flattered the losers - most of the chances and just about everything of substance in the game was produced by the winners, much of it in the front of Drazen Ladic's area.

Still, it is a tricky thing for even quality players to turn it on and off like tap water and lacklustre showings by the likes of Robert Jarni, Robert Prosinecki and, particularly, Davor Suker will not inspire much confidence that the team can do any better now than two years ago in England when they went out in their first knockout game.

Suker, who prompted the only break in the singing late on with a hopeless shot that the crowd jeered mercilessly, might have been expected to do a lot better against a defence which, even with the absent Jose Chamot, has not looked too great when tested.

At the other end, Slaven Bilic looked much more comfortable, the Croats' physical approach to the art of defending keeping them on top of things through the best part of the game and most notably during the first hour when lightweight Ariel Ortega was partner to Gabriel Batistuta. The robust approach of Bilic and company earned them a string of bookings. Zvonimir Soldo's yellow card rules him out of the next game.

The fact that through the closing stages several team-mates faced the prospect of joining him on the bench when the team returns to Bordeaux for the second round may have been a factor in their loosening grip on things, but not so large a factor as the introduction of Diego Simeone and Claudio Lopez. The latter came on for Ortega with nearly 40 minutes to play and, though he was not nearly so creative, he enhanced the frontline. The gifted Valencia player underlined the point himself when setting up the goal for Pineda, his neat little chip from 25 yards out setting his team-mate up for a shot which the 22 year-old put away in some style. Beaming afterwards, Passarella, who announced this week that he would resign his position after the finals regardless of how his team fare, was pleased with his side's win and the fact that it keeps them close to their St Etienne base for next week's game, but cautious about their longer term prospects. "We had two ambitions when we came here," he said with a hint of a chuckle "the first was to qualify from out of the group, and we've done that. Now it's time to move on to number two."