Perched high in the reaches of Moscow's Luzhniki Stadium, Slaven Bilic and Ryan Giggs were united on one point; Croatia were more deserving winners of this year's World Cup final.
Despite the 4-2 scoreline in France's favour, and the good-fortune of Hugo Lloris' error for Croatia's second of those two, the former Croatia manager and player, and Giggs, believed the now two-time champions had got away with this.
All beginning with the contentious penalty decision that went in France's favour, Bilic was somewhat magnanimous in admitting that the availability of VAR would ultimately allow such decisions to be made. Giggs, by contrast, believed the whole thing to have been a "joke of a decision."
Regarding what was to happen now for a team that lost a World Cup final after performing so well throughout the tournament, Bilic was less hopeful; "The last 20 years we spent thinking about how Lilian Thuram scored a couple of goals against us, so, make no mistake, we're going to think about this and it's going to haunt us."
One feels it is the manner in which Bilic perceives the defeat that is the most damaging:
Many people are saying that Croatia doesn't have enough class to become a world champion, but for me, neither does France.
For me, France were better than Croatia only from the moment where they scored the third goal, to the Lloris mistake - we are talking about 10 minutes.
Unimpressed by the 2018 World Cup winners, Bilic believes it was the individual "class" of a few French players that ultimately made a difference.
Reluctantly, Bilic did sign off with a less than hearty; "Congratulations to France, of course."
