Hrvatska nogometna reprezentacija I am not "Dalicban" but the lad deserves some credit.
Croatia got a easy route to semifinals in 2018 because Croatia tops the group otherwise Croatia would have face France at round of 16 and not in the final.
You could say that the group in 2022 was easy on paper but the same easy Morocco beat Spain and Portugal and have many good players such as Hakimi, Amrabat, Bono, Nasiri with experience in Top 5 Leagues.
Even if we say the group was easy is not like the groups in 2006, and 2014 were more harder Croatia was a better team than Australia and Japan at 2006, and Cameroon and Mexico in 2014, Croatia should have at least reach the last 16 in both world cups and just don't deliver.
2002 is a diferent story, that Mexico team was legit maybe the best Mexico team in the last 2 decades, Italy was a very good team, that time Croatia won the second game against Italy and fu*k everyting in the last game against the Cinderella Ecuador.
Croatia got 2 promising wingers in Pjaca and Rog but sadly they were a magnet for injuries, in an alternative universe Pjaca and Rog are standard player for the Vatreni and Croatia plays a diferent kind of football, more direct with more paced and less predictable but we live in an universe where Pjaca broke his alc more times than Ivana Knoll use Ig filters in a day.
For me Dalic is more like a southamerican old guard coach, he is not the best at tactics and he knows it, so he is more concerned in group management, we could make all the jokes we want about Zlatko "toretto" Dalic and his magic word family but maybe that was what Croatia lacks back then, a more cohesive group and a better enviroment inside the group, players are not machines they are human beings after all and that social aspect is very important too not just in football.