It was nearing midnight at Mano, a restaurant tucked away in the exclusive suburbs of Zagreb, when Slaven Bilic leant forward and made a murmured prediction that cut through the warmth of the atmosphere like the chill of winter. “Two-nil,” he said. “Next September here: 2-0. The same again.”

Bilic smiled, but not in a way that suggested he was anything but deadly serious. He is a product of his country. Good company and a fine raconteur, but, when serious, few are as frostily ruthless. One of the reasons Fabio Capello, the England manager, sought so passionately to play Croatia in September when the fixtures were decided on Monday is his belief that, by then, Bilic will be lost to international football, snapped up by an ambitious club in either the Barclays Premier League or the Bundesliga.

He could be manager of Fulham but preferred to fulfil his destiny by taking his country to the European Championship finals in June. Also, a young coach of Bilic’s talent deserves better than a perennial fight for survival. He merits a team with potential, one looking to move to the next level. In Germany he has been linked with Schalke 04 and Borussia Dortmund.

Coaching Croatia is about more than money for Bilic, who earns about £45,000 a year. He first impressed while in charge of the under-21 team, earning roughly half that. Had he been motivated only by his pay packet, he would be sitting in West London. Some things are more important.

“Look, nobody forced me to sign the contract, nobody put a gun to my head,” Bilic, 39, said. “I didn’t get enough money and I’m the first to say that it is a disgrace for Croatia. But the manager before me received that sort of money as well. I work almost for free, but I get other things.

“Pride, that is one side, but what I have truly gained is the knowledge that I can cope with the pressure of any job in the world. Even if one day many years from now I became the manager of Real Madrid or Manchester United, I know I will never be under more pressure than I am in Croatia. This job is everything. It is personal. It affects my mother, my children, because I’m managing my country. I now know I can be manager of the club with the greatest pressure. And that makes me happy.

“Capello? I am under more pressure than Capello. You may think no other job has more than managing England, but he has a contract, he doesn’t know English people. His family is not in England. So whether he gets slaughtered on the front pages or the back pages, it doesn’t matter — he has that contract and he is going to do the job.”

And he will do it well, Bilic insists. England “decided to go for the best and that it why you have now got Capello. But that does not mean Croatia are not still the better team.

“Capello is a great coach. In Croatia, if someone comes and sits at your table and after 20 minutes he is telling you all the systems and the tactics, then we will say, ‘Who do you think you are, Capello?’ Not José Mourinho, Sir Alex Ferguson or Marcello Lippi, he is regarded as better than all of them. Absolutely the best. Yet he cannot do everything.

“When my players are playing in a big game against England, for the four weeks before the match that game is in their heads. It is all they talk to each other about and I talk to them, too. But your players don’t have time to think about Croatia. It is Arsenal on Saturday, then Barcelona next week.”

Life is different, and more difficult, for the coach of Croatia, Bilic said. “If we do not do well, it affects everything. Suddenly I am not a good person, my tie isn’t tied properly, I can’t play guitar well. It is about me. The pressure Capello is under is business pressure. It may be enormous, but it is business. My pressure is personal.

“So, yes, I felt sorry for Steve McClaren [Capello's predecessor]. It was the same for him. If you are an Englishman, there is no bigger job than being manager of England. It is like a priest becoming the Pope. And McClaren got that and then he was unlucky. Big-time unlucky.

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