CROATIA'S VICTORY over England at Wembley back in November may have helped lighten Scotland's national mood after that last-minute heartbreak against Italy, but Slaven Bilic is more than capable of making us all feel somewhat inadequate again. Not only did the former Everton and West Ham player succeed in masterminding his own small nation's qualification for a major tournament at the expense of one of Europe's big guns, but last night came the news that he did so while resisting the temptation to jump at the first lucrative club job that came his way.

His former Goodison boss Walter Smith and his successor as Scotland manager Alex McLeish may have found their work at the SFA distinctly helpful in securing a route back to the club game, but Bilic warmed up for Wednesday night's visit to Hampden with a press conference in Zagreb in which he restated his determination to remain in charge of his nation for another two years - to take him through to the World Cup in South Africa in 2010. It must all have come as something of a shock to Bundesliga side Hamburg, who had promised him the chance of increasing his fixed annual salary from 50,000 to 2m, and were unsurprisingly confident of landing their man to replace the departing Huub Stevens after the Euro 2008 finals.

It certainly came as a shock to the Croatian sports media, and these are men who are rarely taken by surprise. One newspaper had even gone as far as all but handing his job over to either his former team-mate and ex-Derby County player Igor Stimac, or Branko Ivankovic, who is currently coach of Iran. "I had some offers but money is not important," Bilic said, leaving Croatian FA president Vlatko Markovic scrabbling around to conclude an improved agreement as swiftly as possible. "I am very happy that Bilic wants to stay because he has very good relationship with all of his players," Markovic said.

But then few people seem to revel in confounding the standard expectations of a jobbing footballer as much as Bilic does. Finding a professional footballer with a law degree is rare enough without insisting that he is also a selfless patriot and a warrior poet into the bargain. Bilic is the lead singer and guitarist of a rock band called Rawbau, and the beat combo are still in existence, even if they have found little time to gig too frequently on the circuit recently. "He is an unusual character," one Croatian journalist put it this week. "First of all, he is a law graduate - which is very unusual for a professional footballer. Then he is a composer, a singer and a poet."

Bilic's emergence as an impressive young football manager has been remarkable enough in its own right. Comfortable qualification for Austria and Switzerland, including home and away victories over England, would be impressive enough for a grizzled veteran, let alone a 39-year-old whose only previous coaching experience prior to getting the nation's top job was a few years spent as Under-21 manager. So callow does he remain that some more established members of the Croatian coaching fraternity such as Tomislav Ivic have insisted - not without justification - that Bilic has only proven so far that he is a great man manager, and remains unproven as a coach.

His next, and possibly greatest, challenge is filling the massive Eduardo da Silva-shaped hole in his side's team. Although young Schalke playmaker Ivan Rakitic is out due to injury, he has Mladen Petric, the Borrusia Dortmund player who swept in the winner at Wembley, Hamburg striker Ivica Olic and Ivan Klasnic - the out of favour Werder Bremen striker who was linked this week with a move to Rangers - as options to replace Arsenal's little naturalised Brazilian, who had his leg so badly broken in a challenge with Birmingham's Martin Taylor last month. All three are established European strikers but none can match the vital statistics of Eduardo, a man Federation president Markovic recently pointed out had effectively been 30% of the entire Croatian team, because his 10 goals in 12 games during qualifying had been decisive in six different games. It was certainly a distinctly underwhelming Croatia side which tumbled 3-0 at home to the Netherlands in their only previous match without him.

Croatia's current world ranking is 12th to Scotland's 14th, but national expectations in the football mad country insist their team make it out of a Euro 2008 group which also includes Germany, Poland and Austria. The nation of just less than five million people has only been a footballing entity in its own right since 1992, but - apart from Euro 2000 - has graced the finals of every major tournament it has entered since then, with its greatest moment coming when a team featuring Bilic, Davor Suker and Zvonimir Boban made it to third place in the 1998 World Cup in France.

One reason to remain cheerful is Luka Modric, the 22-year-old Dinamo Zagreb midfielder who was given his debut in Bilic's first game, and now finds Europe's top clubs queuing up for his services. Modric will definitely leave Zagreb in the summer, although his final destination remains uncertain. The player has had meetings with representatives of Chelsea this season, although Manchester City and Ajax are also thought to be interested. Shakhtar Donetsk have made the largest bid to date, some 25m, but the player himself would rather move west. Bilic, on the other hand, is going nowhere. Apart from, that is, to the very top.