It was a surreal scene: young men in their 20s and 30s, hot and sweaty and some wearing only underpants as they prepared to take a shower, chain-hugged by a middle-aged woman wearing the famous red and white checkerboard shirt as her entourage clicked their phone cameras and filmed the encounter. But, for all its awkwardness and unspoken innuendo, it didn’t cause that much of a stir among the Croatian public.

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After the team won their penalty shootout against Denmark on Sunday in Nizhny Novgorod and were celebrating qualification for the World Cup quarter-finals in the dressing room, they were paid an unannounced visit by Croatia’s president, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic. As the videos published across her official social media platforms show, she first congratulated the manager, Zlatko Dalic, giving him a big hug, then applied the same highly informal procedure to several of his players, stepping over boots, socks, shinpads and water bottles scattered across the floor and not deterred by the fact that a few of them, such as Ivan Strinic, the left-back, were less than decent for a public appearance, let alone a state visit.

Luka Modric was given a particularly extended and firm bear-hug, as well as what looked like a few words of encouragement. And that, of course, didn’t go unnoticed.

As is the case with pretty much everything of even mild public interest these days in Croatia, the event provoked strong — if brief — and sharply divided reactions. For some, it was a welcome proof that Grabar-Kitarovic, 50, is a down-to-earth, deeply patriotic mother figure who cares a lot about football and fervently supports the team — which wasn’t the case with some of her predecessors, especially those to the left of her political views. For others, it was a shamelessly hyper-populist PR exercise gone badly wrong, surely inspired by Angela Merkel’s similar dealings with the Germany team, though desperately distasteful in execution.

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But it’s not only a question of whether Grabar-Kitarovic was trying to benefit from the players’ stardust before next year’s presidential elections, or simply expressing her passion for her homeland and football; the issue is far more complicated than that.

Modric, Croatia’s captain, was recently charged with perjury; the prosecution said he gave false testimony in the Zdravko Mamic court case that ended in a guilty verdict against the man who has been the most powerful in Croatian football for more than a decade. The verdict seemed to support the notion that Modric lied and protected the man who made massive – and, according to the prosecution, illegal – personal profits from Modric’s transfer from Dinamo Zagreb to Spurs in 2008. The Modric trial is due to begin after the World Cup. Mamic has fled to Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country that has no obligation to extradite him because he somehow managed to acquire citizenship.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Luka Modric celebrates scoring against Nigeria. Photograph: Armando Babani/EPA

Mamic is – or was – a close friend of Grabar-Kitarovic’s. The former Dinamo and Croatian football federation executive was one of the financial backers of her presidential campaign, a guest of honour at her inauguration ceremony and organised various dinners and birthday parties for the president. This became public knowledge only after news leaked that Mamic had been under surveillance by a state intelligence agency during the investigation that led to charges against him; some of his private conversations with Grabar-Kitarovic – who, at the time, was not aware Mamic was being surveilled – were apparently recorded. They were not published but the president admitted she had them.

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“I never tried to hide that I met with Mr Mamic on a number of occasions, before I was told he was under those measures,” she told Nova TV in November 2017. “He organised various dinners for me.”

In Croatia football is never just football. It always has far-reaching social and political implications, and this is particularly the case with the national team.

In the 1990s the first president of Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, declared that “athletes are our country’s best ambassadors” and that remark has been taken as a truism and rarely questioned. It implied not only the ultimate honour but the ultimate duty as well. The Vatreni did not simply represent Croatian football; they represented the whole of Croatia in such a way that their fortunes and success were linked to those of the nation itself. And the duty extended to the general population. To suggest you did not care if they won or lost would have been deemed deeply unpatriotic and it did not matter whether you followed football or not — because, you see, it was not only about football. It was a matter of national interest, particularly after the team came third in their first World Cup in 1998.

The football federation has always tried to maintain the image of the national team as one big unifying force for all Croatians, regardless of political, club and other allegiances; as its president, Davor Suker, said before 2016 Euro, putting aside all problems such as allegations of institutionalised corruption within his organisation: “When the big tournament starts, we’ll all be in checkers.”

Well, perhaps not all. Croatia has changed a lot since 1998 when its football team achieved their biggest accomplishment. The current squad can equal that if they beat Russia on Saturday and qualify for the semi-finals. Doing that twice in 20 years would be a fantastic feat for a nation of just over four million, but it wouldn’t be as universally celebrated as 1998 was.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Croatia’s head coach, Zlatko Dalic, gives instructions to Mario Mandzukic during training before the quarter-final with Russia. Photograph: Ronald Wittek/EPA

Studies show Croatians are much less optimistic about their country’s future and there is a deep and growing distrust in institutions – political, judicial and otherwise. Amid perpetual conflicts among politicians, the economy is showing very few signs of improvement after recession and economic emigration is growing at a worrying rate. The concept of patriotism – a huge drive for athletes representing Croatia internationally in the 1990s, as well as for the general population supporting them – has been misused so many times by public figures who turned out to be villains interested only in their own benefits that it is often little more than a blanket covering up all the society’s ills.

Croatia of 2018 is a nation sharply divided over many different issues and football is not an exception.

While some – such as Grabar-Kitarovic – cling to the idealised image, there are many others who are not willing to tolerate political – and now, criminal – involvement in the game any more; not willing to tolerate the fact that players have kept silent about it the whole time. Some people decided not to support the team; some still do but feel the things swirling around it all have killed their emotion for it; for some, it is a continuous internal struggle.

What was once a connecting tissue for the nation is now very much a divisive factor. And that is unlikely to change much even if Croatia achieve the impossible and win the World Cup.