At Priestfield on Tuesday 25 August, League One side Gillingham FC played host to Premiership side Blackburn Rovers and their star-studded team of international players.
Whilst Gillingham may have lost 1-3, there was plenty to be excited about that evening, with all the top quality players Blackburn have, the return of ex-Gillingham keeper Jason Brown to Priestfield and of course, the return of Danny Jackman in a Gills shirt.
But another thing keen football followers might have been excited about was the fact that Blackburn's new signing Nikola Kalinic was making his first ever start for the club in the game against Gillingham.
To most, Kalinic is another one of those fancy foreign players that no one in England has ever heard of, but to the fans who also take an interest in the Premiership, this Croatian striker seems different from other foreigners to have played in the top flight.
For a start, he's only 21 years old and cost the Ewood Park club £6.4 million, which is quite a lot of money when you think that Simeon Jackson was a big money signing for the Gills with his whopping £150,000 price tag.
Although more importantly, Kalinic has won several caps through the ranks for Croatia, including two caps in the senior side, leading current Croatia manager Slaven Bilic to hail him as "the future of Croatian football." And this is exactly the point of my article: Is Nikola Kalinic really the future of Croatian football? Us Gills fans could well be qualified to answer that question, having seen the young striker first hand.
And in this case, the answer could actually be no. After missing a hat-trick of very decent goalscoring opportunities away at Sunderland two days before, Blackburn manager Sam Allardyce had high hopes for Kalinic, maybe even expecting him to get on the scoresheet.
However, once the game down in Kent had commenced, it was a different story altogether. Instead of tirelessly teasing and toying with the Gillingham defence, Kalinic found himself unable to break through the wall of Mark Bentley and Josh Gowling. Whenever the Croatian had the ball, no matter how deep into the Gills half he was, never could he get a shot on; he could only pass it out to the wings, or back to the midfield.
And when not in possession, the young Croatian again failed to sparkle. He was hardly ever picked out by his teammates, who always seemed to have better options on offer than him, and as for being an aerial threat, well, let's just say his fairly imposing figure never really caused much damage to the Gills.
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