Jutarnji List is one of Croatia's more respectable newspapers, but their big sports exclusive this morning was headlined "Jutarnji goes training with Eduardo's executioner". Croatia had serious hopes of winning Euro 2008 this summer, but the loss of Eduardo has severely diminished them and the response has been widespread anger.
"This really frustrated me," said Vlatko Markovic, the president of the Croatian Football Federation. "When I heard what had happened I started to cry. When I saw how it happened ... it was without reason. I felt this was not random. It is a huge blow for Croatian football. It's a curse. We haven't anybody who can cover for his absence - that is a fact. The only sure thing is that [the national coach Slaven] Bilic will have to change our play and find a new answer. With Dudu [Eduardo's nickname] and without Dudu is not the same. All our play depended on Dudu."
An online petition demanding that Martin Taylor be banned from football for life has attracted over 30,000 names, many of them calling for retribution to be taken against the Birmingham defender. Jutarnji certainly wasn't pulling any punches, reporting how Taylor turned up to training in an Audi A6, and seemed untroubled by the events of Saturday. The general English reaction - gleaned from the usual sources of journalists, pub landlords and taxi drivers - that Taylor was clumsy, perhaps a touch reckless, was treated with mocking disbelief.
It would be easy for an English reader to moralise and wonder how on earth such a blinkered view could be taken - particularly when Eduardo himself has publicly defended Taylor - but the hounding of Deportivo La Coruña 's Argentinian midfielder Aldo Duscher after he had injured David Beckham ahead of the 2002 World Cup was just as unedifying.
A comparison with that incident at least reveals one slight silver lining: there is at least no doubt. This is not like the metatarsal injuries that afflicted Beckham - and later Wayne Rooney - in the build-up to major tournaments. Eduardo will not play in Austria this summer; there will be no procrastination, no agonising wait as newspapers print mock up X-rays and seek advice from faith healers: it's over. Bilic will not face the temptation of taking him half-fit and praying for a miracle; he can begin planning now how Croatia will play without their totem.
As far as positives go, that's about it. Two years ago Croatia had an awful World Cup. They were sluggish and boorish, and went out in the first round. Nobody then would have thought that they would have gone into Euro 2008 as everybody's favourite dark horses, and that they did was down largely to Bilic and two players: Eduardo and Luka Modric.
Modric will, hopefully, still be there, pulling the strings in the middle of a glorious creative line with Niko Kranjcar to his left and Darijo Srna to his right, but it doesn't matter how beautifully the bullets are crafted if there is no marksman to fire the gun. Vecernji List was trying to make the best of it this morning, pointing out that Mladen Petric and Ivica Olic, the likely strike pairing if Bilic sticks with the same formation in Eduardo's absence, have scored 21 goals between them in the Bundesliga this season, but that really is cold comfort.
There is one other option: Ivan Klasnic. Inconsistent but blessed with power and touch, his career looked as though it could be over when he had to have a kidney replacement last year. He returned at the end of November, though, and has since scored four goals for Werder Bremen. "It was a terrible shock," Klasnic said of Eduardo's injury. "I've spoken to him and told him he has to keep his head up. He said that he'd thought about my illness and how I've returned and he said that was an example to him at the moment. We have to pray for him and his return."
Both Petric and Olic have looked good alongside Eduardo, but both really are there to offer a physical foil. "He's not just a good player but a brilliant person," Petric said. "He's a special player and he's irreplaceable in the national team. Olic is in good shape and he's scoring regularly. He's probably first in line to take Eduardo's place."
Neither, though, has Eduardo's guile, his opportunism or his finishing ability. Eduardo is the sort of player who can rescue a side when they are playing badly with a moment of spontaneous invention; Petric and Olic both need the chances creating for them.
In Tallinn in June last year, for instance, Croatia found themselves frustrated by Estonia's hard-pressing and, with half an hour gone, had created nothing. Then a loose ball fell to Eduardo inside the box, he turned sharply and hooked a shot into the bottom corner. It was a goal from nothing, and it won a game that could easily have stagnated. Quite aside from his obvious ability, Eduardo is an escape clause.
So can Croatia still mount a challenge in Euro 2008? They can. For all the wailing and the gnashing of teeth, they were never a one-man team, but it will be much harder for them. The question mark previously was always whether, with just Niko Kovac protecting the back four, they would be good enough defensively (they did, after all concede three in Israel and two at Wembley in qualifying). There is now an added doubt about their potency.
The solution may be for Bilic to temper his attacking principles, leave just one centre forward and add an additional holding player, switching from a 4-1-3-2 to a 4-2-3-1. Marko Babic of Real Betis perhaps could be brought in alongside Kovac or, if Bilic wants to maintain the sense of adventure he could drop Srna, a full-back with Shakhtar Donetsk, back as the second holder, and bring in Schalke 04's hugely talented 19-year-old Ivan Rakitic on the right. Srna is a fine crosser and it would be galling to reduce his opportunities to arc balls into the box from wide, but the sacrifice might be worth it to add an extra runner behind Petric.
The thought of three such technically gifted players as Kranjcar, Modric and Rakitic operating in the same midfield is beguiling. But the truth is that however appealing the permutation Bilic selects, it would always look better with Eduardo at the front of it.
