The Croatia striker Andrej Kramaric, once a team-mate of Jamie Vardy at Leicester City, says that Gareth Southgate’s team are without any of the usual big name “international movie stars”, as the two sides prepare to face one another in a World Cup semi-final.

Croatia have already relocated to Moscow from their base near England north of St Petersburg ahead of Wednesday’s semi-final at the Luzhniki stadium. The squad trained in the Luzhniki complex on Monday evening with goalkeeper Danijel Subasic expected to be fit for the game.

Kramaric, 27, once Leicester’s record signing at £9 million before their 2015-2016 Premier League title-winning season, did not even play enough games that campaign for a medal.

“England are one of the favourites for me because they have a young, hungry team,” he said. “They don’t have any international movie stars in the team. Jamie is a great guy. We were together as part of that magnificent story at Leicester and I will remember that always.”

He added: “My story in England is a great story for me. It was my first time outside of Croatia and everything was really new. It turned out that I didn’t play that much. It was hard to get in the team because they were playing so well and no coach wants to change a winning team. However, when it comes to Croatia and this World Cup I do hope to be talking about it for years.”